Admin login after upgrade to v16

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Upgraded fine to v16
My main email account is working fine. It was the “admin” account before
I now cannot access any admin functions

root paths
/opt/stalwart/bin/stalwart-foundationdb
/opt/stalwart/bin/settings.json
/opt/stalwart/bin/stalwart.env
/opt/stalwart/etc/config.json (literally has the word foundationdb and thats it)

If I goto https://mail.mydomain.com I get the following error,
{
“type”: “about:blank”,
“status”: 404,
“title”: “Not Found”,
“detail”: “The requested resource does not exist on this server.”
}

If I goto http://mail.mydomain.ca:8080/admin/login
I can log in using my original email account, but it has NO admin permissions now
If I try to use the recovery mode it says invalid username or password. Please try again

My Stalwart Service file
/etc/systemd/system/stalwart.service

[Service]
Type=simple
LimitNOFILE=65536
KillMode=process
KillSignal=SIGINT
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5
ExecStart=/opt/stalwart/bin/stalwart-foundationdb --config=/opt/stalwart/etc/config.json
EnvironmentFile=/opt/stalwart/bin/stalwart.env
SyslogIdentifier=stalwart
User=stalwart
Group=stalwart
AmbientCapabilities=CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE

What am I doing wrong or missing. Its gotta be something right in front of my face.
I can send and receive emails no problem. All data is there. I just can’t get in as admin

I understand that topics in this category are triaged by a bot first but a human reply will follow up. If I’d prefer a human-only reply, I’ll add the no-ai tag to my topic.

on

2

There are two separate issues here. Let me address both:

Issue 1: Your account has no admin permissions

After the upgrade, Stalwart’s authorization model changed. There is no longer a special “admin account type” – administrative capabilities are now granted by assigning permissions or roles to a regular account. Your existing email account simply didn’t get the admin role assigned during the upgrade, which is why you can log in but have no admin functions.

Issue 2: Recovery mode login failing

The recovery mode login (STALWART_RECOVERY_ADMIN) requires you to have set that environment variable explicitly – it is not automatic. The username/password you enter must match exactly what is set in STALWART_RECOVERY_ADMIN=username:password in your service environment. Your stalwart.env file (at /opt/stalwart/bin/stalwart.env) is where you need to set it.

How to fix this

Step 1: Edit /opt/stalwart/bin/stalwart.env and add a line like:

STALWART_RECOVERY_ADMIN=recoveryadmin:SomeStrongPassword123

Step 2: Restart the service:

systemctl restart stalwart

Step 3: Navigate to http://mail.mydomain.ca:8080/admin/login and log in using the username recoveryadmin and the password you just set. The recovery admin credential bypasses the directory and works while the server is running normally – you do not need to enable recovery mode separately for this.

Step 4: Once logged in as the recovery admin, go to your main email account in the WebUI and assign it the admin role (under the account’s permissions/roles settings).

Step 5: Verify you can log in as your main account with full admin access.

Step 6 (important!): Remove the STALWART_RECOVERY_ADMIN line from stalwart.env and restart the service again. This backdoor credential must not be left permanently set in production.

Regarding the 404 at https://mail.mydomain.com – that is likely a reverse proxy routing issue unrelated to the login problem. Once admin access is restored, you can check your HTTP/HTTPS listener and proxy configuration.

References:

This is an automated reply from the Stalwart Help Bot. Other community members may follow up if this answer is incomplete or wrong. If you found it useful, mention @helpbot in any reply to ask follow-up questions and the bot will respond again.

3

Everything working now