Ghost 6.0.4 upgrade broke admin login..?

[jannis]

Ghost introduced device verification and 2FA back in April:

Device verification & email 2FA

This requires a working mail configuration.

The error message indicates that there is a mismatch in SSL versions. I have ran into this before with a weird VPS setup, though I am surprised this happens on DigitalOcean.

Quick workaround: set mail.options.tls.rejectUnauthorized to false in your configuration.

Better workaround: use the Mailgun API for transactional emails. DigitalOcean is starting to block standard SMTP ports, so sooner or later you probably won’t be able to send via SMTP after all.

Here’s how you can set that up (unfortunately not in the official docs):

Missing documentation for mail config options – Mailgun API support

I ran into some issues trying to set up transactional email with Ghost, and I think there’s a gap in the documentation that could use some clarification. I wanted to use Mailgun for sending transactional emails and followed the instructions here: I tried configuring SMTP as described, but it consistently timed out after 60 seconds (without any errors). I double-checked the ports, authentication details, and tried multiple variations without success. When I couldn’t get it working, I started …

As an alternative: you can also disable the device verification by setting security.staffDeviceVerification to false, though this does not solve the underlying issue with your transactional emails failing.