Reset your GitLab root password from a terminal

Seriously ‘Invalid email or password’. I know for sure that it was correct, or wasn’t it? Are you in the same situation and resetting your password the old school way doesnt work for you then here is a solution to hack your back into GitLab. To make this work you need of course root access to your GitLab server.

Start by logging into your server with root privileges. Then start a Ruby on Rails console. Don’t worry if you have never worked before in Ruby, I hadn’t too, its really easy!

Start the console with this command:

Next wait until the console has loaded. You will see something like this if everything is OK:

Gitlab Rails Console

Gitlab Rails Console

Now there are multiple ways to find your user. In my case I know there was only one user and it had so it has ID 1. But you can also search for email or username.

Now lets change your password:

Its important that you change both password and password_confirmation to make it work.
Now lets save the changes.

The ( ! ) symbol is very important. Otherwise your changes are not pushed to the database. Now exit the console and try to login with your new password. It should work now.

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