MT600 - GL admin and LuCI passwords wiped out by restore

Router
1

I had to regress to an older firmware version and forgot to keep my config data so I used the LuCI config restore to recover my configuration. This wiped out the password for my GL admin and LuCI logins. I’m reluctant to do a factory reset because the router is working (and being used) now, but I’m locked out of the admin console.

I can SCP into the router (using WinSCP) but PuTTY fails with Access denied.

Is there anything I can do short of a factory reset to fix this?

2

It sounds to me the router is already reset.

So if ssh fails with putty where does it fail exactly, did you got a message popup telling to trust new host keys?

If you clicked no, then ssh fails you must reset the keys in putty.

According to a google search:

You need to open regedit, press win+r and type it in there.

Then navigate to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\SshHostKeys

And delete the key with ip and port.

Then restart putty just in case.

Now it will give you the message again please click on yes and trust the keys.

3

As I said, I did reset it. Then I did a restore of the saved configuration in LuCI. That restored all configuration (VPN, server def, WiFi SSIDs and passwords, static Host definitions, etc.), but wiped out the passwords.

No. I expected that, but I just got the "Access denied". That makes absolutely no sense to me since WinSCP (which uses SSH) works. I read that SSH by default blocks logging on as root, but I assume that would have been mentioned in some web articles.

I know nothing about either PuYYT or WinSCP so maybe there's a logical reason for what I'm seeing.

I don't know if I can do anything even if I get into SSH with PuTTY. I saw that I can reset the password there, but there are obviously multiple passwords involved and I don't knowe which I would be resetting.

I'll give that a try.

Update:
Removing the registry record did indeed result in the host keys popup, but after that I still got the access denied. It sounds like I really don't know the password. WinSCP successfully logs on but it's using a saved (and undisplayable) password.

OK. I just tried WinSCP (on 2 computers) without using the saved configuration and they also failed with access denied so I really don't know the password ... but I did when I saved it months ago. Sheesh! I'll update this again when I get a new memory.