# Stash Latest (2.12) : Lockout recovery process

Created and last modified by pwatson on Feb 25, 2014

This page describes how to recover administrator access to Stash when, as an administrator, you find yourself locked out of Stash and unable to log in. This situation can arise when all users are managed externally from Stash, and Stash becomes unable to access those user directories for some reason, including:

- The external user directory server is not accessible (because the network is down, or the directory is down, or the directory has been moved to another IP address)
- Users are managed in JIRA and the Application Link from Stash to JIRA has been accidentally deleted
- The admin password has been forgotten or lost
- The admin account is shaded by a remote account in an LDAP or JIRA instance that is connected to Stash but which is unavailable.

The lockout recovery process for Stash is:

1. Edit the `<Stash installation directory`>`\bin\``setenv.sh` file (or `setenv.bat` on Windows) and add the "`-Datlassian.recovery.password=temporarypassword`" argument to the `JVM_SUPPORT_RECOMMENDED_ARGS` property. The property value must be non-blank, and should look like this when you've done that:
   Here we are using "`temporarypassword`", but you can use your own value.
2. Start Stash.
3. Log in to Stash using the 'recovery_admin' username and the temporary password specified in Step 1.
4. Repair your Stash configuration. We strongly recommend that you do not perform other actions while Stash is in recovery mode.
5. Confirm your ability to log in with your usual admin profile.
6. Shut down Stash, remove the `atlassian.recovery.password` argument from `setenv.sh`, and restart Stash as usual.

## Attachments:

STASH211-recovery-login.png (image/png)
STASH211-SUPPORT_ARGS.png (image/png)