XF 2.2 I can't access the admin panel!

[Dkf]

XF 2.2.13

Suddenly, I can't access the admin panel. I'm logged into the forum, but the /admin.php page doesn't show anything. There are no errors displayed, and nothing appears in the browser console either.

I’ve already tried the following:

Disabled:
App for Cloudflare® by DigitalPoint
Security by DigitalPoint

Flushed the Cloudflare cache
Restarted Apache on the server
Deleted all cookies

Nothing helped.

I have two-factor authentication enabled. Could that be the issue?
How can I disable two-factor authentication via MySQL?

 

[Jeremy P]

When you say it doesn't show anything, do you mean it shows a blank white page? If so, that points to a fatal error so you may want to check your server error log for more details. You can also try disabling listeners: https://xenforo.com/docs/xf2/add-ons/#regaining-control-panel-access

 

[Dkf]

When you say it doesn't show anything, do you mean it shows a blank white page? If so, that points to a fatal error so you may want to check your server error log for more details. You can also try disabling listeners: https://xenforo.com/docs/xf2/add-ons/#regaining-control-panel-access

No, after entering my username and password, I'm just redirected back to the same page.
No error message is shown. I even tried entering the wrong password — still no error.
I added $config['enableTfa'] = false; to the config file, but it didn’t help.

Before adding $config['enableTfa'] = false, I wasn't able to access the two-factor authentication settings in my profile settings.
When I entered the password again to access the settings, nothing happened.

 

[Jeremy P]

That likely points to an issue with something other than 2FA. The flag in the page I linked is:

$config['enableListeners'] = false;

You may also want to enable Cloudflare's Development Mode and disable any server-side (config.php) caching.

 

[Jeremy P]

Before adding $config['enableTfa'] = false, I wasn't able to access the two-factor authentication settings in my profile settings.
When I entered the password again to access the settings, nothing happened.

The last time I saw a similar issue it was because the xf_session and xf_session_admin tables were tampered with via phpMyAdmin and the primary key index was removed. You may want to drop and recreate them with the appropriate schema:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `xf_session`;

CREATE TABLE `xf_session` (
  `session_id` varbinary(32) NOT NULL,
  `session_data` mediumblob NOT NULL,
  `expiry_date` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`),
  KEY `expiry_date` (`expiry_date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_general_ci;

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `xf_session_admin`;

CREATE TABLE `xf_session_admin` (
  `session_id` varbinary(32) NOT NULL,
  `session_data` mediumblob NOT NULL,
  `expiry_date` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`),
  KEY `expiry_date` (`expiry_date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_general_ci;

 

[Dkf]

The last time I saw a similar issue it was because the xf_session and xf_session_admin tables were tampered with via phpMyAdmin and the primary key index was removed. You may want to drop and recreate them with the appropriate schema:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `xf_session`;

CREATE TABLE `xf_session` (
  `session_id` varbinary(32) NOT NULL,
  `session_data` mediumblob NOT NULL,
  `expiry_date` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`),
  KEY `expiry_date` (`expiry_date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_general_ci;

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `xf_session_admin`;

CREATE TABLE `xf_session_admin` (
  `session_id` varbinary(32) NOT NULL,
  `session_data` mediumblob NOT NULL,
  `expiry_date` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`),
  KEY `expiry_date` (`expiry_date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_general_ci;

Can I take these tables from the backup?
...made yesterday or the day before?

 

[Jeremy P]

The data is ephemeral, the only real consequence to dropping and recreating them is users will have to log in again. You could try restoring them from a backup if you wanted though.

 

[Dkf]

The last time I saw a similar issue it was because the xf_session and xf_session_admin tables were tampered with via phpMyAdmin and the primary key index was removed. You may want to drop and recreate them with the appropriate schema:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `xf_session`;

CREATE TABLE `xf_session` (
  `session_id` varbinary(32) NOT NULL,
  `session_data` mediumblob NOT NULL,
  `expiry_date` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`),
  KEY `expiry_date` (`expiry_date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_general_ci;

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `xf_session_admin`;

CREATE TABLE `xf_session_admin` (
  `session_id` varbinary(32) NOT NULL,
  `session_data` mediumblob NOT NULL,
  `expiry_date` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`session_id`),
  KEY `expiry_date` (`expiry_date`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4 COLLATE=utf8mb4_general_ci;

It worked. Thank you very much.

 

[Dkf]

The data is ephemeral, the only real consequence to dropping and recreating them is users will have to log in again. You could try restoring them from a backup if you wanted though.

The problem has come back again...
I followed your instructions.
Sometimes I can access the page domain.com/admin.php,
but I can't navigate further through the admin panel menu.

 

[Dkf]

The data is ephemeral, the only real consequence to dropping and recreating them is users will have to log in again. You could try restoring them from a backup if you wanted though.

I want to write a few words about what the problem was and how I solved it with the help of ChatGPT.
I am very grateful to it. Without ChatGPT, I don't even know how much time I would have spent searching for the problem. But with it, I managed to fix it in 15 minutes.
I did what it told me, copied the server logs to it, and described exactly what I saw on the screen.

As soon as it saw that there was "Zaraz" in the Network tab, it wrote the following:


What is Zaraz
Zaraz is a Cloudflare script automatically injected into your site. It is used for analytics collection and managing third-party scripts.
Sometimes it breaks the admin panel, especially in XenForo, because it interferes with requests and JavaScript.


A very likely cause: Zaraz from Cloudflare
Cloudflare inserts this script as:

www.xenforoforum.com/cdn-cgi/zaraz/s.js

It can:

• modify request headers,
• interfere with XHR requests,
• interfere with cookies or sessions.
  

I enabled Zaraz probably about a year ago. And yesterday, Cloudflare possibly released an update to Zaraz, and that’s when the problems started.