Setting up OctoPi to operate your 3D printer has many advantages, but all these advantages don’t mean much if you somehow find yourself unable to log in to the OctoPrint interface one day for no apparent reason.
In this guide, we will walk you through the process of logging in to OctoPi (OctoPrint) and point you toward alternative methods and solutions to any problems you may face along the way, such as issues with credentials or accessing the server itself.
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How to Login to OctoPi (OctoPrint)?
Under normal circumstances, all you need is a device that has an Internet browser to log in to OctoPi, as OctoPi makes it pretty straightforward to access the OctoPrint interface by creating a special address that all devices on the network can access.
So, provided that everything is working as intended, entering the address octopi.local into your browser should take you straight to the OctoPrint login screen and allow you to access the OctoPrint interface after you enter your credentials.
On the other hand, if you cannot access the OctoPrint interface by using this address, it does not necessarily have to mean that your OctoPrint server is entirely inaccessible, as the octopi.local address may not work in every scenario, whether due to router or operating system incompatibilities.
In this case, logging in to your OctoPrint interface will require you to take the additional step of finding the IP address of the OctoPrint server, which will provide you with a more reliable way of access that is practically guaranteed always to work.
Finding the OctoPi (OctoPrint Server) IP Address
There are two methods you can use to find the IP address of your OctoPrint server, regardless of whether it’s running on a Raspberry Pi (OctoPi), or any other machine (such as a spare laptop), which are to utilize the router interface or the server machine itself to gather the necessary information.
Finding IP Address from Router Interface
We can consider the router interface method to be the more convenient of the two, as it will allow you to access the IP address of your OctoPrint server directly on the current device you’re using.
To start, you will need to find the IP address of your router, also known as the Default Gateway.
While the exact process will depend on the operating system you’re using, you should be able to access this information in the network settings of any major operating system.
For instance, on Windows, you can use the ipconfig command in the Command Prompt to retrieve this information.
Once you have found the IP address, you will need to log in to the interface of your router by navigating to this IP address on your browser and entering your credentials.
If you have never modified these credentials, you can most likely find them by looking for a sticker under the router that has them or searching online for the default credentials that belong to the brand and model of the router you’re using.
Next, you will need to locate the client list section in the interface, which will display the names and IP addresses of all the connected devices in your network.
As the location of this section will differ from router to router, you will most likely need to spend some time going in and out of menus to find it. When looking, try to find menus with titles such as LAN or DHCP, as it’s likely that the client list is in there somewhere.
Once you find the client list, the last step is to locate the device your OctoPrint server runs on by its name and note the corresponding IP address.
For instance, in the example above, you can see that the octopi device is connected to the network with the IP address 192.168.1.2.
Finding IP Address from Server Machine
If you weren’t able to find the IP address with the router interface method for any reason, an alternative method you can use to get the IP address of your OctoPrint server is to use the server machine for the task.
For this method, you will need to be able to interact directly with the server machine, meaning that if you’re running a headless setup, such as OctoPi, you will need to plug a keyboard and a monitor into your Raspberry Pi first.
Once you have access to the machine, you will need to gain access to the shell, which means opening the Terminal application if your OctoPrint server runs on a machine with a desktop environment or simply logging in with credentials (username is pi and password is raspberry by default for OctoPi) if not.
Finally, run the command ip addr | grep -E inet | grep -E wlan if the device is connected to your network through Wi-Fi, or the command ip addr | grep -E inet | grep -E eth if it’s connected with an Ethernet cable, which will give you the IP address information
In the examples above, you can see that the Ethernet IP address is 192.168.1.7, and the Wi-Fi IP address is 192.168.1.2, with the OctoPrint server connected to the network with both Wi-Fi and cable.
On the other hand, if the command does not print anything on the screen, it means that your OctoPrint does not have a local IP address, indicating a problem with its network connectivity that requires fixing before you can access the interface.
While there are many factors that can contribute to the occurrence of such a problem, the most common ones are the usage of an incorrect SSID or password when setting up Wi-Fi or connecting the device with a defective Ethernet cable.
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Assuming that you have the IP address at hand now, you can simply navigate to it by using your browser, which should take you to the OctoPrint login screen, provided that there are no other issues.
Note that the local IP address of your OctoPrint server can and most likely will change whenever the router is power cycled (or when multiple devices are disconnected and connected again) unless you manually assign it a static IP (which can be done on the router interface or the server machine), meaning that you may need to find the IP address again in such a scenario.
On the other hand, if you have successfully found the correct IP address but still cannot reach the OctoPrint interface, you will need to move on to the next step of checking the service status of the OctoPrint server.
Checking the OctoPrint Service Status
Checking the OctoPrint service status is a fairly straightforward task that will tell you whether OctoPrint is working as intended on the server machine, allowing us to have a better idea of where the problem is.
To start off, you will need shell access on the server machine, meaning that you will either need to SSH into it (refer to the section below to learn how you can do that), or interact with it directly (which means plugging in a keyboard and monitor for a headless setup such as OctoPi).
Regardless of whether you’re using SSH or physically accessing the Raspberry Pi, the default login/password combination for OctoPi is pi/raspberry.
Once you have shell access (known as Terminal if you’re using a device with a desktop environment to run your OctoPrint server), you will need to run the command service octoprint status, which will print information about the state of the OctoPrint server on the screen.
Under normal circumstances, the output of this command should look like the image below, where the Active section clearly states that the service is active and running.
On the other hand, if the service is not running for any reason, the Active section will state that the service is inactive, and you naturally won’t be able to access the OctoPrint interface in such a scenario.
In this case, we first recommend trying to bring the OctoPrint server back up by using the command service octoprint start (running this command can require sudo) and rechecking the status afterward.
Additionally, if that doesn’t work, you can try power cycling the server machine, which can be helpful in getting the service to work in some cases.
If the service comes back up after these steps, you can then try logging in to the OctoPrint interface as usual, which should work without problems.
On the other hand, if the service still stays down, we recommend inspecting the logs located at ~/.octoprint/logs/octoprint.log to see what’s preventing the service from running and applying the appropriate fix for it.
Additionally, you can use the information in these logs to get help in the OctoPrint community forum, as they can be hard to decipher without prior experience and knowledge.
Fixing the OctoPi (OctoPrint) Incorrect Login Problem
While being locked out of your OctoPrint interface due to invalid credentials can make it seem like reinstalling OctoPi is the only solution, there is a more convenient way around this problem.
Connecting to OctoPi (OctoPrint Server) with SSH
The first step to restore your credentials and fix the incorrect login problem you’re facing is to access the machine running your OctoPrint server directly.
For this process, we will be using SSH (Secure Shell), which makes it possible to connect remotely to the server machine and saves us from the trouble of having to connect a monitor and a keyboard to a device that otherwise runs headless, which should be the case for any OctoPi setup.
If you can directly interact with the machine running your OctoPrint server (for instance, if you’re running OctoPrint on a spare laptop or your desktop computer), you can completely skip this step as you won’t need it.
If you’re on macOS or Linux, start by opening the Terminal.
On Windows, you can use WSL to access a Unix shell, which will work the same way as the Terminal application on macOS and Linux.
While you can also use an SSH client such as PuTTY as an alternative, we will only cover the Terminal route in this guide.
Once you have access to the shell, input the command ssh pi@<ip_address>.
In this case, the <ip_address> portion refers to the IP address of your OctoPrint server machine, which is the same IP address you use to access the OctoPrint interface.
For instance, if the IP address of your OctoPrint server machine is 192.168.1.2, the command would be ssh [email protected].
Alternatively, if you’re an OctoPi user who utilizes the octopi.local to access the OctoPrint interface, you can use this address instead of the IP address, which will also do the job.
Afterward, wait for the password prompt to appear, input the password when it does, which should be raspberry by default if you are an OctoPi user who has not chosen not to input a custom password during installation, and press Enter.
Once that’s done, provided that you have entered the correct password, you will be successfully connected to the machine running your OctoPrint server and ready to move on to the next step.
If you are an OctoPi user having trouble finding the correct password, you can reset it by taking the SD card out of the Raspberry Pi, creating a file named octopi-password.txt in the root directory of the SD card by using your computer, and entering the password of your choice into this text file.
Finding the OctoPi (OctoPrint) Username
Now that we have access to the OctoPrint server machine, the next step is to find the first half of the credentials: the username.
For this process, the first thing you will need to do is to access the contents of the OctoPrint user configuration file by running the command cat ~/.octoprint/users.yaml.
Once the contents of the user configuration file are visible, you will find the username just below the _version key, and if there is more than one user, they will be listed underneath the same way.
For instance, in the above example, the username is octopi, which is the username we have chosen when setting OctoPrint up.
Resetting the OctoPi (OctoPrint) Password
Finally, the last step of the process is to reset the password, and once that’s done, we will have both the correct username and password to log in to OctoPrint.
For this process, you will first need to activate the virtual environment by inputting the command source <path-to-octoprint>/bin/activate.
For example, if the OctoPrint directory on your server machine is ~/oprint (which is also the default for OctoPi), you would need to run source ~/oprint/bin/activate.
Next, input the command octoprint user password <user>, where <user> refers to the username you found in the previous step.
Following our example from the last section, the command we would need to input in this case would be octoprint user password octopi.
Finally, enter the new password you want to use in OctoPrint when prompted, and press Enter.
Upon success, you should see the message “Password changed for user <user>”, indicating that you can now use your username and new password to log in to OctoPrint.
Conclusion
Things may seem hopeless at first glance, especially if you’re encountering login issues for the first time, but fixing your OctoPrint-related problems and successfully logging in to your OctoPrint interface again is almost always possible without having to set everything up from scratch.
While some of the solution steps we have gone through in this guide can be considered to be technically advanced, we hope that our explanations have helped you walk through them without any trouble!
Mike started his 3D printing journey with the Anet A8 when it first came out back in 2017, and has been obsessed with 3D printers ever since. Nowadays, he primarily uses his Ender 3 to print functional parts that make his life more convenient whenever possible.