Created on 06-03-2005 12:00 AM
Description | If you cannot log into your FortiGate unit because you have forgotten or lost your administrator account password, you can use the information in this article to regain access to your FortiGate unit. If you are a registered FortiGate user, you can always contact Fortinet Technical support to obtain a procedure for resetting your administrator account password. See the related article at the end of this page "Contact Fortinet Technical Support" for contacting a support center near you. You can also attempt to use the information in this article to regain access to your FortiGate unit and (if possible) reset your administrator account password yourself. The procedures in this article are do-it-yourself procedures that have some limitations and require some technical knowledge. These procedures also require you to use a TFTP server to install a new firmware image on your FortiGate unit. This article contains two parts:
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Components | A FortiGate unit (any model) running FortiOS 3.0. |
Steps or Commands | Part 1: Resetting your FortiGate unit to factory defaultsEven if you cannot log into your FortiGate unit you can use the information in the related article at the end of this page "Loading FortiGate firmware using TFTP" to install firmware on your FortiGate unit from a TFTP server. When the new firmware is installed the FortiGate unit configuration is restored to factory defaults. All of your configuration settings will be lost, but you can log into your FortiGate unit using the admin administrator account with no password. Part 2: Restoring your FortiGate configurationIf you have previously backed up your FortiGate configuration, after resetting your FortiGate unit to factory defaults you can restore this configuration. Restoring the configuration makes it easier to get your FortiGate unit back up and running again. If you have not backed up your configuration for some time you will have to make additional configuration changes after you have restored this configuration. If you have a recent backup you may not have to make any changes at all to have your FortiGate unit up and running again. Before you restore the configuration you should edit the configuration file with a text editor to remove administrator account passwords. Then when you restore the configuration you will be able to log into the FortiGate unit using an administrator account with no password. The FortiGate configuration file contains the CLI commands required to configure the FortiGate unit. Some knowledge of the FortiGate CLI may be required to edit the configuration file. Also, configuration files use Line Feed (LF) to terminate text lines and not Carriage-Return/Line Feed (CRLF). CRLF is used by most Windows text editors. You may not be able to edit your configuration file correctly in some Windows text editors (such as Windows Notepad). You must edit the configuration file with a text editor that displays the configuration file correctly (see the example below). You can use Windows WordPad for this or any text editor that can edit text files containing lines that end with LF (such as many of the free text editors available on the Internet). When you save changes to the configuration file, remenber to save the file as a text file (and not in another format such as RTF). Note: You cannot edit encrypted configuration backup files. This procedure will not work if all of your back up configuration files are encrypted. To restore your FortiGate configuration:
config system admin |
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Technical Tip: Formatting and loading FortiGate firmware image using TFTP
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