If you are running Discus 4.00.1 or higher, you can access your board using "Emergency Access Mode." This assigns a temporary password so that you can log in to administration and set up your password or do other emergency maintenance.

1. Access your board's emergency access facility at a URL like the following:

   http://your.server.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi?pg=emergency

   Note that you added ?pg=emergency to the "normal" URL to your board.

2. Follow the instructions on the emergency access page to obtain the temporary password file and upload it to your server. (For obvious security reasons, a different temporary password is chosen at random each time the screen is generated, the password does not take effect until you've uploaded the corresponding emergency password file to your server using FTP, and the temporary password expires 1 hour after you upload that file to your server.)

3. Log in with the temporary password that's presented on the emergency access screen. Then go to Profile Manager and change your password.

This procedure applies to versions 3.01, 3.10, and 4.00.bXX of Discus and Discus Pro.

1. With your FTP program, log into your server and transfer the passwd.txt file from your Discus administration files directory to your computer using ASCII mode.

2. Open the passwd.txt file in a text editor, such as Windows Notepad.

3. Locate the entry for the superuser. It should be the first line in the file. It will look something like this:

   admin:shck3S/.dsfj:email@domain.com:Full Name:1:0:0

   The second entry in the line, which is underlined in the example above, is the encrypted password entry for the superuser. Delete the encrypted password entry, to make it look like this:

   admin::email@domain.com:Full Name:1:0:0

4. With your FTP program, use ASCII Mode to transfer the passwd.txt file back to your Discus administration files directory, overwriting the previous file. Be sure to use ASCII mode.

5. Set permissions on the file to 0666 (rw-rw-rw-) or 0777 (rwxrwxrwx).

6. Log into administration with the superuser's username, leaving the password box blank. Follow prompts to set up an initial password and to re-register Discus.

Note: Your superuser's username may not be "admin" if you manually changed the superuser username by editing discus.conf. Most people do not do this. The superuser's username is indicated in your discus.conf file.

If your passwd.txt file has been corrupted (e.g. due to a server crash or a full disk), you may need to edit the passwd.txt file manually to put in place the login details for the board administrator.

1. Open your FTP program and connect to your server. Navigate to your Discus administration directory (typically named something like discus_admin_23456789).

2. Using ASCII mode, transfer the passwd.txt file from your server to your computer. On your own computer, put the file in a place where it will be easy to locate, such as the desktop.

3. Using a plain text editor, such as Windows notepad, open the passwd.txt file. If the file is indeed empty, you will see no text. (If you do see text, STOP. Follow the emergency access mode procedure for Discus 4.0, or the editing passwd.txt file for Discus 3.1 and lower.)

4. Add the following line to your passwd.txt file and then save:

   admin::email:fullname:1:0:0:0

5. Using ASCII mode, transfer the passwd.txt file from your computer back to your server. Note that this will overwrite the empty passwd.txt file currently on your server.

6. Enter your administration program using username "admin" and leaving the password blank. You will then be prompted to choose a password.

Following recovery of the admin login, you may wish to recover your moderator data. You can do this through recovery of the passwd.txt file from a Discus Professional backup (in the Backup Manager, open the backup and choose passwd.txt from the list of files). If you do not have a backup, you will need to re-create all of your moderator accounts, and fix the profile settings for the "admin" user, with the Moderator Manager and the Profile Manager, respectively.

File corruption problems can occur due to a server crash or full disk. Protect yourself against these problems by following these simple steps. First, check your disk quota often, using the disk quota checker in the Discus administration program as well as any tools your web host may provide. Second, keep regular backups of your board (in Discus Professional, use the Backup Manager to make board backups frequently). Finally, in Discus Professional 4.0 or above, enable the MySQL database back-end for much more robust and reliable storage of moderator and user data and enhanced board performance.