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Password problem fixed

I fixed the password problem that I mentioned yesterday. It actually turned out to require some detective work. To test my Movable Type installation on a new server, I backed up my database and loaded it on the new MySQL server, installed Movable Type, and then tried to log in. At that point, Movable Type told me my login was invalid.

After trying a number of things, I had to start hacking on some Perl. I’ll spare you a lengthy narrative of the diagnostics and tell you that it turns out that the crypt() function on the old host returned something different than the crypt() function on the new host.

Because Movable Type stores an encrypted password in the database, the comparison wasn’t turning out the same. What I wound up doing was copying the original password encrypting code out of the Movable Type application and running it on my password on the new server. I took the resulting encrypted string and set my password to that in the database, and then I could log in again.

3 Comments

  1. Archived for posterity in the Troubleshooting forum over at forums.textdrive.com (c.f. http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?pid=39760).

  2. I’ve done my share of hacking scripts to make them work. Sometimes I wonder how people who can’t program manage to use the internet at all.

  3. A similar thing happened to me, and the quick ‘n’ dirty fix was

    NULL the password field, Log in with a blank password, and Then set the password using the program

    Of course, if the app didn’t allow blank passwords on login (best practice, anyone?), then this scheme won’t work. (Un)Fortunately, most people didn’t get the BestPrac memo.

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