Support

On one of my websites a user blocked himself. I tried to unblock him via Admintools control panels Auto IP Blocking Administration and deleted the records in the Security Exceptions Log. When I checked in the Joomla User Manager the user was still blocked. This occured for the first time. Usually I could unblock users via Admintools control panel.

When a user is blocked by their own actions, it isn't the user that is blocked but the IP address. You cleared the IP address when you cleared the log and auto IP block list.

The only way a user ID can be blocked is when the user permissions of a back end user are modified when Admin Tools is disabled This is to prevent privilege escalation by the user, or by an extension. So it is possible that Admin Tools did it, but it doesn't seem likely from your description.

In this case, go ahead and unblock the User ID. We will not be able to figure out what happened because the log has been cleared. Clearing the log was a necessary step in getting to this point but it is getting in the way of figuring out how we got here.

Thanks for your response and support Dale.
This user often has problems with his login. In my Admintools settings users are blocked after 3 failed logins (treated as security exceptions) and persistent offenders are blacklisted. I do not know what happend or what else the user did but he was blocked in the Joomla User Manager (not enabled and not activated any more). Unblocking his IP did not help. I had to enable and activate him in Joomla's User Manager.
Maybe this is not an Admintools issue at all???

Admin Tools can do that, but it doesn't seem to fit the situation. It is possible that something else did it.

If the user is blacklisted, you need to take his IP out of the blacklist, out of the auto ban list, out of auto ban history and out of the Exceptions Log. If you don't get them all, he'll just get banned again.

Going forward, we will be able to see what sort of exceptions are in the log for his IP. That will let us see what is going wrong. For someone who has consistent problems being locked out, we either need to educate the user or fix the problem that is causing the security exception. We know for next time to capture the Exceptions Log before clearing it.

This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.