Lost login after an Internet power outage

Hi, I haven’t been here in a while but, I have an issue that I can’t find a solution for. today we had an outage and all day I have not been able to login to webmin. I keep keep getting access denied after 2 years of working fine. I can work with all WP sites but I can’t access the control panel. I’m sorry i don’t have much info on the panel but it is Ubuntu 22.04. Can someone please point me in the right direction? I have access through Putty but no access through a browser. Thanks in advance.

Ubuntu 22.04
|------------------------------|-------------------------------|
| OS type and version | REQUIRED |
| Webmin version | REQUIRED |
| Virtualmin version | REQUIRED |
| Webserver version | REQUIRED |
| Related packages | SUGGESTED |

Has the server been powered back up after the outage?

I’ve done many times. I know is on because I can access all sites on it. I keep getting 403
Access denied

@ilouie,

Can you SSH into the server?

Yes. using Putty. I’m actually debating wether to remove Webmin and re-install. But, I don’t know if that would lose all dbs and sites…

@ilouie,

If you can login via SSH as “root” user, or a user capable of “sudo” command, check the status of Webmin. Most modern distros use “systemctl” to control “services”, try:

sudo systemctl status webmin.service

This will check to see if the service is actually running, if not run:

sudo systemctl start webmin.service

If after confirming, or starting Webmin you cannot login via the browser, then there could be something else blocking your attempts like a misconfigured “firewall” or “fail2ban”.

webmin.service - Webmin server daemon
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/webmin.service; enabled; vendor preset>
Active: active (running) since Thu 2025-02-20 19:34:07 EST; 11min ago
Main PID: 1475 (perl)
Tasks: 1 (limit: 7017)
Memory: 20.9M
CPU: 20.540s
CGroup: /system.slice/webmi

try fail2ban-client status webmin-auth
did webmin show up after after power outage then after bad login you got the 403 error

Check your firewall.

A firewall cannot explain an “access denied” error (but maybe OP is not reporting the error exactly). A firewall would be a connection failed or timed out.

The same is true of fail2ban and Webmin not running.

An access denied error has to be Webmin (or some web server) responding with an error.

From CloudFlare “Error 1020 Access Denied” can be firewall, though I notice he mentioned 403.

How about clear the browser cache? Try from another PC, another location?

What does Cloudflare have to do with this topic?

If Cloudflare is involved OP should have mentioned that from the beginning. That’s a huge factor in questions like this, because Cloudflare is a proxy (a secret proxy, the worst kind).