Manual:Resetting passwords

There are any number of situations where a user may need to reset their password.

Typically, people either forget their password or experience some kind of security breach that may have disclosed their password.

For most situations, they can reset their own password use>#Use Special:UserLogin|using "Email new password".

In situations that are complicated by the user forgetting their account name or losing access to their email, additional measures may need to be taken by an administrator or system administrator.

Use Special:UserLogin
If you know the username for an account, you can use the "Email new password" feature on the Special:UserLogin page.

To use the feature, visit the Special:UserLogin page for the relevant wiki, fill in the Username field of the form and press the ”Email new password" button.

A temporary password, along with instructions on how to reset the account's password, will be sent to the email address associated with the username.

Finding the username for a given email address
If you know the email address for a user, but not their username, query the   table of the MediaWiki database to find the associated username.

For example, to find the username for, run the following query:

Use the changePassword.php maintenance script
The  maint-scripts>Special:MyLanguage/Manual:Maintenance scripts|maintenance script allows system administrators to change the password for an account.

For complete instructions see .

If you are already familiar with maintenance scripts, run the following command from   subdirectory:

 Caution:  System administrators should not know the unencrypted password for user accounts. A user may use the same password over many different sites. If one of their accounts that uses the same password is compromised, then suspicion can be thrown on the administrator. It is better to use>#Use Special:UserLogin|use "Email new password" to force the user to reset the password for their own account or to set a temporary password the user changes directly afterwards.

Use Special:PasswordReset
Special:PasswordReset allows accounts with the 'editmyprivateinfo' permission to reset account passwords for the local installation of MediaWiki.

To use:


 * Type username you want to reset in box provided and click "Reset password"


 * An automatically generated password will be emailed to the user

For automatically inserting the username in links, use.

Use the resetpassword</> API
The <tvar|1></> API provides the same functionality as <tvar|2>Special:PasswordReset</>.

Direct database modification
To reset a password you can change the value of the  field inside the   table in your database.

However, it's generally far easier and safer to use>#Use Special:UserLogin</>|use "Email new password" or use2>#Use the changePassword.php maintenance script</>|use the changePassword.php script. You should only use direct DB modification as a last resort, as its very easy to accidentally mess up your wiki. Always backup your database before doing any manual modification. The following only works when using MediaWiki's default authentication provider. If you are using an extension that modifies the authentication process (Like LDAPAuth), the following may not work.

The format you see in the user table will depend on <tvar|PasswordDefault> </> in <tvar|LocalSettings></>. However if you use a different format, it will automatically be changed to the correct format the next time the user logs in. Thus for this guide, we show how to manually set the "B" format. This format is very easy to set from an SQL query. It is not the default format as it is weaker than pbkdf2, however that's ok as the user_password field will be upgraded to the correct format the next time the user logs in.


 * MySQL salted (<tvar|1>1234</> is the salt. You can replace it with any number as long as both places the number is used are the same) :


 * PostgreSQL salted :