Skip to content

docs: fix harmful FAQ password reset, dead link, and removed PHP/MySQL features in Windows guide #214

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
somethingwithproof wants to merge 3 commits into
base: develop
Choose a base branch
from
Open

docs: fix harmful FAQ password reset, dead link, and removed PHP/MySQL features in Windows guide #214

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
3 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
8125405
docs: fix harmful FAQ password reset and removed PHP/MySQL features
somethingwithproof Mar 10, 2026
e61c935
docs(faq): fix password-reset procedure
somethingwithproof Jul 22, 2026
a189519
Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/develop' into pr-214
somethingwithproof Aug 22, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
21 changes: 10 additions & 11 deletions Frequently-Asked-Questions.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -68,18 +68,18 @@ installation documents included that may also help.

**Q:** I have forgotten my 'admin' password to Cacti, how do I reset it?

**A:** To reset the admin account password back to the default of 'admin',
connect to your Cacti database at the command line.
**A:** Reset the password directly in the database. Connect to the Cacti
database and set the `admin` account's password to the MD5 of the new value:

```sql
```console
shell> mysql -u root -p cacti
MySQL> UPDATE user_auth SET password = MD5('newpassword') WHERE username = 'admin';

@TheWitness TheWitness Aug 16, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

We need to call out the SHA2() function and only the MD5() function if the SHA2() function is not in their MariaDB version.

@netniV netniV Aug 19, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Actually, this really shouldn't matter. Once the user logs in, it is updated by cacti to a more secure one anywa.y

@netniV netniV Aug 19, 2026

Copy link
Copy Markdown
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

At least I thought it was, I'm sure we used to do that, it may have been removed from develop as I couldn't spot it quickly.

```

Now execute the following SQL:

```sql
MySQL> update user_auth set password=md5('admin') where username='admin';
```
> **Note:** The stored value must be the MD5 hash of the password (use
> `MD5('newpassword')`, not the literal string). Cacti verifies passwords
> through a backward-compatible MD5 path and transparently re-hashes the
> account to bcrypt on the next successful login.

## Monitoring

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -244,9 +244,8 @@ change between the new small counter value and the large previous value. One way
to combat this issue is to specify realistic maximum values for your data
sources. RRDtool will ignore any value that is larger than the maximum value.

If you already have a spike on one or more of your graphs, there is a really
[useful Perl script](http://cricket.sourceforge.net/contrib/files/killspike2)
that will remove them for you.
If you already have a spike on one or more of your graphs, Cacti includes a
built-in Spikekill utility. See [Spikekill](Spikekill.md) for usage.

---

Expand Down