How To Fix JAuthentication Error in Joomla!

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I recently had an error in Joomla! and was unable to log in to the administrator site. The error was:

  • JAuthentication::__construct: Could not load authentication libraries.
    Username and password do not match

I almost panicked. It turned out that I had accidentally disabled the authentication module and plugin thereby denying access to the site administrator. Here’s how I fixed the error…

Luckily some good folks at the Joomla Forum offered a suggestion that worked great. So next time you are in the same situation, here’s how to regain access.

Login to your database. If you are on a hosted site, you may have to use phpMyAdmin:

  1. Choose the database in question on the left panel / top.
  2. Now, when looking at the database displayed, on the left panel, choose _plugins or “jos_plugins” depending on whether you used a suffix when you installed Joomla!
  3. Choose the Structure Tab > Edit the “published” Field (7th item down) and change “0” to “1”
  4. Click “Save”
  5. Go to the Browse Tab > id = 1 > name = Authentication-Joomla > Now, click on Edit pencil and change published = “1” and click on “Go” (save)

That should do it. To be on the safe side, clear the cache on your browser, then try to login again.

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24 thoughts on “How To Fix JAuthentication Error in Joomla!”

  1. I have not had the problem in v1.6, but here is a link that may help – try the add new admin user trick:

    “Add a New Super Administrator User

    If changing the password won’t work, or you aren’t sure which user is a member of the Super Administrator group, you can use this method to create a new user.

    Navigate to phpMyAdmin and select the database for the Joomla! site in the left-hand drop-down list box. This will show the database tables on the left side of the screen.
    Press the “SQL” button in the toolbar to run a SQL query on the selected database. This will display a field called “Run SQL query/queries on database “.
    Delete any text in this field and paste in the following and press the Go button.

    NOTE: The following code uses jos_ as the table name prefix which is the Joomla default table prefix If you elected to change this prefix when you first installed Joomla, you will need to change jos_ to the prefix you used.

    SQL code for use with Joomla 1.6.xx:

    INSERT INTO `jos_users`
    (`id`, `name`, `username`, `email`, `password`, `usertype`, `block`, `sendEmail`,
    `registerDate`, `lastvisitDate`,`activation`,`params`)
    VALUES ('40', 'Administrator2', 'admin2', '[email protected]',
    'd2064d358136996bd22421584a7cb33e:trd7TvKHx6dMeoMmBVxYmg0vuXEA4199',
    'Super Administrator', 0, 1, '0000-00-00 00:00:00', '0000-00-00 00:00:00',"","");
    INSERT INTO `jos_user_usergroup_map` (`user_id`,`group_id`) VALUES (40, 8);

    At this point, you should be able to log into the back end of Joomla! with the username of “admin2” and password of “secret”. After logging in, go to the User Manager and change the password to a secure value and the e-mail to a valid e-mail address. If there is a chance you have been “hacked”, be sure to check that all users are legitimate, especially any members of the Super Administrator group.”

    Hope that helps.

    Warning: The password values shown on this page are public knowledge and are only for recovery. Your site may be hacked if you do not change the password to a secure value after logging in. Be sure you change the password to a secure value after logging in.

  3. Sorry for the late response. I have been offline for a while. I usually advise that folks take emergency issues to the forum as you are like to get faster responses. I have never used IP Converge.

  5. Thank you very, very much…that is a weird setting to leave unpublishable!!! But I think you should add the comments on the “User – Joomla” publish settings to your original post, as most people that have disabled Authenticate did so by disabling everything.

  9. Sorry to hear that you are having problems. Try this thread at the forum : Fatal error: Call to undefined onauthenticate(). The forum is usually better for quick resolutions.

    Here’s a quick snapshot of some solutions:

    1. It could be a permissions issue. Joomla needs the plugin folder to be 755.
    2. Re-upload the ‘plugin’ folder and overwrite the existing ‘plugin’ folder. Then look at Joomla users table in phpMyadmin ( in browse tab ) and change the admin’s password with this code “226776f356d7ecf58b60bab12a05d38f” (without the quotation marks). This action will reset the password to “joomla”. Log in as administrator using admin’s username, and use password “joomla”. After login, you can change your password.

    Again, try the forum. It is a lot faster to get answers there. Good luck.

  10. Hello

    I’ve followed your instructions and now I got this error when I log in

    Fatal error: Call to undefined method stdClass::onAuthenticate() in /home/renderdc/public_html/libraries/joomla/user/authentication.php on line 121

    Please Help.

  12. Do you know where to find paid templates for my blog, i got blog on the same cms like yours.

  16. Sorry it did not work for you. What problem were you having? This is a fix for people who cannot log in to the back-end (as admin). Did you reset the published status of the plugin back to 1? JFusion installation should not affect your ability to login as admin. Give us a little more detail about the problem you were having and let’s see if we can help.
    Thanks for stopping by.

  17. hi, i tried what you wrote and it just remove the error but the problem still remain. any suggestion? i remember reinstalling jfusion.

  19. This error message usually occurs if you accidentally disable the plug-in “Authentication – Joomla” which is for the admin authentication, not the front-end login.

    Login to your Joomla database (through your ISP account if you are on shared hosting because you need to access your MySQL database), and change the published status of the plugin to 1 in the “jos_plugins” table. After that, you should be able to login without any problems. If you continue to have problems, please hit the forum: http://forum.joomla.org/ and search for the error you are getting. A blog post may not respond fast enough to fix the problem if you need immediate answers. Thanks for the visit.

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