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#35178 Backend 403 Error does not allow login

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Admin Tools version
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Latest post by on Thursday, 03 June 2021 20:17 CDT

Monday, 03 May 2021 10:06 CDT

robert4akb

Hello,  Am hosted with HostGator. A new clean install of Joomla. It appears that when HostGator installed the SSL certificate as well as the update to PHP to 7.4, it added the following text to .htaccess

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]

<IfModule mime_module>
AddHandler application/x-httpd-ea-php74 .php .php5 .phtml
</IfModule>

After the clean install of Joomla 3.9.26, I first install Admin Tools Pro 6.0.4 from a download. As soon as I do the quick install update of Admin Tools and log out and back in to the Joomla backend, I get the error message:

It appears you don't have
permission to access this page. 403 Error. Forbidden.

I assume it is your message as it appears to have the tiny icon for akeeba in it.  See the attachment.

 

Robert

Edited by on 2021-06-03 20:45 CDT

Monday, 03 May 2021 12:38 CDT

robert4akb

Update 1:

If I remove .htaccess and replace it with an .htaccess with only the above entry. I can now access my back end.  If I go back into Akeeba Tools and regenerate the .htaccess file, it is corrupted again and does not allow me into the back end again.

Monday, 03 May 2021 16:14 CDT

robert4akb

Update 2:

It now appears to be a combination problem (sort of) with my hosting company HostGator. It is their 403 Message I am getting after telling Akeeba to regenerate my .htaccess file is what corrupts things and throws the message when ever I try to log into the back end. If I go back to the limited .htaccess file, it works just fine but has none of the security features I want from Akeeba. So I still need help.

Tuesday, 04 May 2021 01:06 CDT

nicholas

This is an easy fix but you need to have some idea about what is going on. You are using the administrator password protection feature. The 404 is thrown because of a server misconfiguration. See https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/admin-tools/atadminpw.html under "404 Not Found error page or Joomla error page when enabling this feature" to understand why.

Here is a quick workaround:

  • Delete the .htaccess and .htpasswd files from your site's administrator folder. Do not touch the file in your site's root!
  • Login to your site and go to Components, Admin Tools, Password-protect Administrator
  • Make sure “Reset custom error pages” option is set to Yes.
  • Enter a username and a password (the password needs to be typed twice) which will be required to access the administrator folder.
  • Click on the Apply password protection button.

The “Reset custom error pages” option adds a bit more .htaccess code which tells the server to use its default HTTP 401 error page instead of a custom one, bypassing the server misconfiguration. However, not all servers allow this to work. If this is the case you'll need to ask your host to disable custom server error pages. Usually this is an option in the hosting control panel. I haven't used HostGator in 15 years or thereabouts so I can't tell you where that option would be; you'd better ask them if it comes to that.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Thursday, 03 June 2021 20:17 CDT

System Task
system
This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.
Edited by on 2021-06-03 20:17 CDT

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