Another post for me that is simple and hopefully serves as an example for people trying to get blogging as #SQLNewBloggers.

If you create a login and the user can’t log in, how many times will you change the password?

It turns out I’ll do it 5 times.

I was setting up a new installation of DLM Dashboard on a test machine. In the setup it asks for an account to run under. I dislike setting my own account (even for tests), so I flipped over to SSMS and added a new login, entered a password, unchecked “require change” and set this as a sysadmin. I clicked OK and returned to Chrome.

I entered the password and hit “Add”, only to get the “login failed” message for the user. Surely I mistyped something, so I typed the password again, with the same result.

Maybe I mistyped it in SSMS. Go back, change it to the same thing, adding a character in SSMS (let’s call this the first change) and then hit enter in Chrome.

Failure.

Maybe I mistyped it. Go back to SSMS, change the password again (now twice), this time making it simpler. Uncheck the “policy check” and try again.

Failure.

Hmmm. I’m confused. Let me type a password in Notepad. I’ll copy paste that in SSMS (now 3 times) and into Chrome.

Still a Failure.

At this point I’m confused. Why can’t a new user log in? I’m wracking my brain.

Maybe I have a sticky keyboard key? I’ll change the password again, this time to 5 of the same character (now 4 changes). I go slowly, typing the same 5 characters into Chrome.

Failure.

What’s the cause? I’m starting to wonder if perhaps logins aren’t allowed on a protocol, and it hits me. SQL Authentication.

I go to the instance properties and I never allowed SQL Authentication when I installed SQL Server. After all, this is a test machine.

Change that and restart SQL Server. Change the password again (5 times) to a decent password that won’t be guessed if someone gets to this machine.

DLM Dashboard setup proceeds.

SQLNewBlogger

We all make mistakes. We do things wrong. Talk about how you learn and figure things out. This is a good story and lesson for me.

Resources

I should know better.

Filed under: Blog Tagged: security, sql server, SQLNewBlogger, syndicated