Cannot Log in to Ghost Admin on Google Cloud VM - Too Many Login Attempts and Email Configuration Issues

Developer help
1

’m running a self-hosted Ghost installation on a Google Cloud VM and I’m unable to log in to the admin panel at Ghost. Here are the details of my setup and the issues I’ve been facing:

  • Setup Details:
    • Ghost Version: 5.120.0 (installed via Ghost-CLI)
    • Ghost-CLI Version: 1.27.0
    • OS: Debian GNU/Linux 12
    • Node Version: v18.20.8
    • Database: MySQL 8.0.42, database name ghost_db, user ghost_user
    • Hosted on: Google Cloud VM
    • Web Server: I haven’t set up Nginx/SSL yet (used --no-setup-nginx and --no-setup-ssl during installation)
  • Issues Experienced:
    • I’m trying to log in with the user thetexasstoic@gmail.com (password: GhostAdmin123!), which I manually inserted into the users table with the Administrator role assigned (ID: adminuser2025, role ID: 682b92204e9aed81d9e728c6).
    • I keep getting a “Too many login attempts. Please wait X minutes before trying again, or reset your password” error. The lockout period has passed, but I still can’t log in.
    • When I try to reset the password, I get an error: “Failed to send email. Reason: Email has been temporarily rejected,” because email isn’t configured.
      • The Ghost service is running (sudo systemctl status ghost_ggedge-io shows Active: active (running) since Mon 2025-05-19 20:18:27 UTC).
    • I’ve cleared the brute table in the database to reset login attempt limits, but the issue persists.
    • The database has the default Ghost user (ghost@example.com) and my user (adminuser2025), but I can’t log in with either.
  • What I’ve Tried:
    • Reinstalled Ghost multiple times with ghost install.
    • Reset the database (DROP DATABASE ghost_db; CREATE DATABASE ghost_db;) and manually inserted my user.
    • Cleared residual state (moved /var/www/ghost/content, removed .ghost-cli, etc.).
    • Attempted to configure email but couldn’t proceed due to lack of a suitable SMTP provider.

Can anyone help me resolve this login issue? I need to either get past the “Too many login attempts” error or set up a free email service to reset my password. Any suggestions for free SMTP providers that don’t require payment verification, or other ways to fix this?

2

I’d try to avoid mucking around with the database directly. Good opportunity to get it messed up somehow.

While it’s possible to disable the device verification emails (which is like half of the posts in the last week), and it’s possible to get your first owner user created without functional email, and creation of additional staff users can be done by importing them instead of inviting them, you’d still need email to do the password reset.

A couple options here: How to deliver Ghost emails from your local dev setup
– the Google option is pretty easy, as long as your host isn’t blocking outbound email.

1 Like
3

many thanks - I"ll try that