Deleted Guest User - Cannot Log in, Now what?

[knowledgeblue]

We deleted the guest user and now Alfresco will not let us log -in, How can we recreate the Guest User or get in another way?

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: Failed to authenticate as Guest user.
   org.alfresco.web.app.servlet.AuthenticationHelper.authenticate(AuthenticationHelper.java:185)
   org.alfresco.web.app.servlet.AuthenticationFilter.doFilter(AuthenticationFilter.java:67)

[andy]

Hi

Can you recreate the guest user as admin?

Regards

Andy

[knowledgeblue]

We actually found another workstation that still had a session still open to Alfresco. We went to that device, logged on as admin and reassigned the Guest User a Home Space.  It appears the Guest User was not actually deleted, but the Guest Home Space was deleted. So now every thing is back to normal.  However, it probably is not a good that you can delete the Guest User Space shut down the system. Is this a bug?

[paulhh]

Hi

For future reference, another way to get to the login screen would be to use:
http://server:8080/alfresco/faces/jsp/login.jsp

It isn't a bug, in the general sense, because it is perfectly ligitimate to remove or change a user's home space.  To catch this, we would have to put a test in every space delete to see if it was the space registered as the guest user's home space, which seems over the top.  If an admin deletes the guest home by mistake, then getting in using the URL above will allow a new guest space to be defined.

Cheers
Paul.

[paulhh]

Another approach is to use the FTP, CIFS or WebDAV interfaces to just recreate the guest user's home space/folder.

Cheers
Paul.

[glenvers]

I have accidentally deleted Guest home space, and in my case the URL given above doesn't solve the problem, still having the same error message : "org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: Failed to authenticate as Guest user"

[steve]

Hi,

You could always disable Guest access until you can recreate the space you deleted.

Steve

[john]

Hi,

I'm having exactly this problem.  Hitting server:8080 produces this result:

HTTP Status 500 -

type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception

org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: Failed to authenticate as Guest user.
   org.alfresco.web.app.servlet.AuthenticationHelper.authenticate(AuthenticationHelper.java:209)
   org.alfresco.web.app.servlet.AuthenticationFilter.doFilter(AuthenticationFilter.java:67)

note The full stack trace of the root cause is available in the Apache Tomcat/5.5.12 logs.‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Trying to log in manually through
http://server:8080/alfresco/faces/jsp/login.jsp
gives me a normal login screen, but for any all all users, even Admin, I get this result:

javax.faces.FacesException: Error calling action method of component with id loginForm:submit

caused by:
javax.faces.el.EvaluationException: Exception while invoking expression #{LoginBean.login}

caused by:
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: java.lang.Object.getHibernateLazyInitializer()Lorg/hibernate/proxy/LazyInitializer;‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Show details gives a very long stack trace that still doesn't reach the end (it stops at "5 more").  I can post that, if it would help.

Basically, it appears that the guest user has been disabled or deleted, and that I can't get in because of it.  I can't recreate the guest user because I don't have access and I don't know what the guest user would look like if I did get access.  Do you have any suggestions?

Running 1.3.0 on Fedora Release 4, with Tomcat.

If a reinstall is required, would I need to destroy and recreate the SQL database, or could I just reinstall the Alfresco files themselves and save the data that was previously entered?

[john]

After stopping and restarting the server, the admin password works again.  Given that I know nothing about Alfresco and am arriving *after* all the damage has been done, what, exactly, should I do to ensure that the Guest user is there properly and configured correctly?

[john]

Update:  Telling the system to undelete everything it could resulted in the guest space being restored, and Alfresco is now back up and running as it should be.

Knowing the correct procedure to restore the Guest Home if it *wasn't* possible to undelete it would be good, but currently it is up and running correctly.