Can't login after installation

[PhilJollans]

Hi,

I know that this has been asked before, but I can't get past it and it is a complete show stopper for me.

I have installed subsonic on a debian Linux system in my local network, following the exact instructions on the subsonic web page. I can open the login page from a Windows PC on the local network, but I cannot login.
I know the default username and password are both admin. I have also tried deleting the directory /var/subsonic/db and restarting the service, but that made no difference.

Any ideas?

Phil

[GJ51]

What happens when you attempt login? Any error msgs?

Can you logon within the local host?

Most of the problems encountered hosting Subsonic on Linux are generally related to directory permissions. The Subsonic service must have access rights to the folders needed to run the program and access the data directories.

[PhilJollans]

The message I get is
Wrong username or password.

The linux machine does not have a GUI, but I found that the text based browser w3m was already installed. I can connect, but get the same error message when I try to login.

The service is running as root, so I don't think it should be a problem of permissions. However I gave all access (777) to /var/subsonic and its direct subdirectories db, jetty, lucene2 and transcode.
Are there any specific directory permissions I need to set on specific directories?

Phil

[GJ51]

Well then, I would suggest addressing the error message first. If you've tried all User/Pwd combinations that you are aware of and none work, the best approach would be to decode the admin password and try to regain the ability to log on that way.

Have you tried the Password reset routine at the logon screen?

If that doesn't work, here some instructions that have been around a while, but may still work.

Subsonic Password Reset

The Subsonic music streaming server currently has a built-in way to recover or reset a lost password. If for any reason that doesn't work, you can try these instructions that were posted a while back, but may still apply. If you try it and it works, please let me know and i'll update this post to reflect that it works on the version you used it on.

If you locked yourself out, don’t give up just yet. The password reset method described in this article has been tested successfully with Subsonic 4.1 and 4.2.

Solution

Subsonic stores user passwords in encrypted form in the program database, probably using salted BCrypt hashes, although the exact implementation has not been investigated in the context of this article. It is not technically feasible to decrypt these hashes and retrieve the original password strings.

However, current versions of Subsonic export the program settings to a text file each time the server is shut down, and they re-import this text file when it is started back up. This text file also includes the encrypted password hashes, and they can easily be replaced by substituting the corresponding line as follows:

Open the Subsonic control panel and stop the service
Open a Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\subsonic\db
(on Linux this may be under /var/subsonic/db or /usr/bin/subsonic/db)
Open the file subsonic.script in a text editor

Near the top of the file, find the following line: INSERT INTO USER VALUES('admin','enc:xxxxxxxxxx',0,0,0,FALSE)
Note that the xxxxxxxxxx value is a hexadecimal string that represents the encrypted hash of the user’s current password.

Replace the line above with the following: INSERT INTO USER VALUES('admin','enc:61646d696e',0,0,0,FALSE)
Note that the value 61646d696e is the hash for the password "admin"

Save the file

Restart the service in the Subsonic control panel.

It is now possible to log on with user name and password admin, which are also the default administrator credentials. Don’t forget to change the password to something else on the Settings screen right after logging on. Obviously, this technique works with any other user account as well.

[PhilJollans]

There is no password reset routine on the logon screen. Does this mean that I have an old version?

I don't know anything about the subsonic control panel. I stopped the service with "service subsonic stop".

The file subsonic.script previously contained the password 'admin' without the enc: prefix. I tried changing it and restarting the service, but it has made no difference.

Thanks for the help, but it seems like a hopeless case. Is there a log file with useful information that I could look in?

Phil

[GJ51]

It's beginning to sound like the installation just didn't go as it should have, At this point, I'd uninstall/delete what you have and start over.