Username and password quit working Rev 2.5.0

When I try to log in I get this error:

The username or password you entered is incorrect. Please check the username, re-type the password, and try again.


I use the Forgot Your Login option and I receive this error:

User not found with that email or username. Please try again.

I can no longer navigate to containers and the search feature doesn't work. I haven't touched any settings for months and just last week I was updating the site. Does anyone know what could have gone wrong? Everything just stopped working.

The first thing to try is manually deleting all files in the core/cache directory.

Just tried that and I'm getting the same results.

Can you describe what you did when you were updating the site?

Did you change any permissions?

Did you install any extras or enable any plugins?

I changed some CSS in a chunk and added an image to my images folder using WinSCP. Other than that nothing changed at all. I contacted IT support and they placed their backup from Jan 17 and the site started working again. Then when I updated the chunk it was working, and now it won't work again.

That's really odd. It may help to turn on Chrome Dev. Tools (Ctrl-shift-i) and watch the Network tab while trying to log in. You can click on the entries and drill down to see the request and response.

Another possibility is a Session issue, since the username and password are stored in the $_SESSION array for use by the login processor.

You can also look at the modx_users table in PhpMyAdmin to make sure the admin record looks normal. Check to make sure that there are no unknown users in the table (which would indicate hacking).

Look at the modx_user_attributes table too, to see if your user record has a proper email address.

Thanks for the help. We went back two weeks from a backup and it's working again. I haven't logged in yet or changed anything. I'm going to see if I leave it alone for a few days, if it will stay functioning. Then I'm going to log in and simply just change the CSS. I have a feeling it has something to do with MySQL, unfortunately I'm not allowed to use PHPMyAdmin here at work. I've been using MODX for ten years now and I've never had any issues with it. I'm pretty stressed out over this issue so I really do appreciate your help and suggestions. If it continues to do that I will have to pick at your brain some more.

I can't think of any way that modifying some CSS could affect the login process. I strongly suspect that that part of it is a coincidence, but if it happens again as soon as you make the changes to the CSS (after running fine for a week), I'm probably wrong.

Keep an eye on the MODX error log. If the login fails again, you can look at the error log file. IIRC, it's:

core/cache/logs/error.log

Also, since you're in, look at Manage -> Users and make sure there are no users that shouldn't be there. If the site has been hacked, maybe someone is messing with your user record.