Docker instance with no admins: How to add a user to the administrator group, from the cli?

[JulianOliver]

I look after an instance that has found itself in the incredible situation of having no users in the Administrator group, as the last remaining account with such privileges accidentally removed themselves from that group. And so it follows we have a large wiki with many users, none of whom can configure and admin the instance.

Is there a way to promote an existing account to admin, from the cli (docker exec -it [...] etc), or simply adding them to that group?

I could poke around the Postgres db but fear breaking something I need not were there a known best practice solution to this problem.

Any expert input greatly appreciated!

[cookesan]

There is no need to guess the permission payload if the goal is only to put an existing user back into the built-in Administrators group. In the v2 schema the relation table is userGroups, users are in users, and groups are in groups. The setup code creates the system group named Administrators with manage:system, and assigns the initial admin by relating the user to that group.

Safest recovery route:

1. Stop the Wiki.js container, or at least make sure nobody is changing users/groups.
2. Take a database backup.
3. Look up the target user and the admin group:

SELECT id, email, name FROM users WHERE email = 'person@example.com';
SELECT id, name, permissions FROM groups WHERE name = 'Administrators';

4. Insert the missing relation:

INSERT INTO "userGroups" ("userId", "groupId")
SELECT u.id, g.id
FROM users u, groups g
WHERE u.email = 'person@example.com'
  AND g.name = 'Administrators'
  AND NOT EXISTS (
    SELECT 1
    FROM "userGroups" ug
    WHERE ug."userId" = u.id
      AND ug."groupId" = g.id
  );

Then restart the container and log in as that user. On the default v2 bootstrap the admin group is normally id 1, but selecting by group name is less brittle than hard-coding it.

[JulianOliver]

Worked like a charm. Thanks a lot!

Others in this rare predicament can confidently employ this solution.