Admin password DA won't stick ?

Hi,

We recently were asked to administer a DA server running on Centos. We already have 2 (Debian) and this 'new' server keeps having troubles with the admin password.

Login with the password belonging to 'admin' won't work. So, I log in with SSH and do:


And change the password to the one we had on file. This works, and I can log into DA no problem. Login / logout several times, works fine now.

After (??) days when I need to log in again, admin password doesn't work anymore. So I need to go into ssh again, and repeat the ritual.

And then it works again (for ... days...)

I'm not sure where to begin looking for this problem. So far I've checked all (user) crons running on this server but can't find a clue.

Last time I decided to change the admin password from within DA also (after of course changing it in ssh first before I could get in). Maybe DA does some magic ... But nope.

Any idea what could be wrong ? Searching forums for "lost password" always brings up the wrong threads (we didn't lose the password, DA loses it ...)

Thanks,
Martin

Compare the password hashes in /etc/shadow to when it works vs when it doesnt work and see if it has changed. DA just authenticates through the server to login. You must have someone or something changing it outside of DA.

Thanks scsi, found the issue (at last).

DA was not installed the usual way. For this particular server the hosting company installed it through a control panel. The control panel seems to overwrite whatever you put in as password. You needed to change the password through their control panel.

Your answer was spot on, "someone or something" changed it. And made me investigate literally 'outside the box'.

I wonder what is the control panel which allows to install directadmin? Is it custom-made one? Or any well-known?

Hi Alex,

I'm sorry but we don't have any prior information other than how it is set up now. So I'm not sure. Fact of the matter is that if I change my admin pwd in DA within xx hours it's changed back to the password that is originally set in the hosting panel. I found no crons doing that. Changing admin pwd on the console also only worked for a limited time before it got changed back.

Changing the password in the control panel (running on CentOS) of the hosting itself made it work. Oddly ...