"Portainer is up but login still failed"

Posted by fireballe123

Hi, just want to disclaim this is my first time posting on a public forum so I apologise if its not very clear. I was having issues with qbittorrent failing to load (localhost:8089) and after several hours of trying to make it work with Claude - I eventually reached a point where I ran sudo sparkbox doctor, a few steps later this message popped up with a recommendation to post it here. This is my first time trying to use anything like Sparkbox but it seems like everything I want and I'm trying very hard to make it work lol. I also know that getting the supporter tier probably would fix these issues very fast but struggling a little financially so will consider it in the future (if I can make this work) [ERROR] Portainer is up but login still failed (last HTTP: 000). This shouldn't happen after a clean wipe — check 'docker logs sb-portainer' and report back at https://demox.world/d/sparkbox with the log output. root@DESKTOP-EAVM0GC:~ docker logs sb-portainer 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/cmd/portainer/main.go:358 encryption key file not present | filename=/run/secrets/portainer 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/cmd/portainer/main.go:396 proceeding without encryption key | 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/database/boltdb/db.go:163 loading PortainerDB | filename=portainer.db 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/internal/ssl/ssl.go:79 no cert files found, generating self signed SSL certificates | 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/cmd/portainer/main.go:540 created admin user with the given password. | 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/chisel/service.go:227 generated a new Chisel private key file | private-key=/data/chisel/private-key.pem 2026/08/10 21:29:54 server: Reverse tunnelling enabled 2026/08/10 21:29:54 server: Fingerprint hCoBDNZnTXIqa5pSaEtbAtP40aIavgQ2XTSyFJlD/Fo= 2026/08/10 21:29:54 server: Listening on http:// 0.0 .0.0:8000 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/cmd/portainer/main.go:686 starting Portainer | buildnumber=27 goversion=go1.26.4 imagetag=2.43.0-linux-amd64 nodejsversion=v22.22.3 pnpmversion=10.27.0 version=2.43.0 webpackversion=5.107.2 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/http/server.go:366 starting HTTPS server | bindaddress=:9443 2026/08/10 09:29PM INF github.com/portainer/portainer/api/http/server.go:350 starting HTTP server | bindaddress=:9000~ (space between the 0.0 .0.0:8000 due to the flagging)

1 replies

Chris wrote:

Welcome, and don't apologise — that's a good report. You posted the one log that answers it. Portainer is fine: your log shows it booted and created the admin user. What failed is SparkBox reaching it on 127.0.0.1, and that's likely the same reason qBittorrent wouldn't load on localhost:8089. On Windows, WSL sometimes stops passing 127.0.0.1 traffic through to things that are listening — every local address hangs while the apps themselves are healthy. Try this first: open PowerShell on Windows and run wsl --shutdown, then reopen your SparkBox terminal. It closes your WSL windows and resets that networking layer; nothing is lost. Tom also shipped v1.6.546 today, which waits far longer on Windows before giving up here. Grab it with sudo sparkbox upgrade, then run sudo sparkbox repair-portainer again.