cPanel 'switch accounts' menu disappears, refreshes to client panel [FIXED]
 

While setting up a new VPS today, I gave some space to a friend to host his domain. And just in case his wife or son wants to have their own site, I went ahead and set him up as a reseller. That way, he can monitor all of the accounts, but still give them their own cPanel separate from his.

So I set up a reseller domain, and two more domains:

• Account 1 - his main site + reseller account
• Account 2 - test/dummy account, to verify reseller was working
• Account 3 - another test/dummy account, to verify reseller was working

Account 1 had the password PQ123vczAD
Account 2 had the password PQ456vczAD
Account 3 had the password PQ123vczAD

Notice that the passwords for account 1 and account 3 are the same. I was simply being lazy, and setting up a dummy account that I would re-delete a few minutes later seemed like a waste of keystrokes to change it to "789". And how typical that a moment of laziness would lead to problems!

This is what the drop-down should look like, when you're on one of the client domains:

Attachment 1289


However, when the password for the reseller matches the password for the client domain, the dropdown for 'Switch Account' will disappear, and cPanel will refresh directly into the client cPanel. You can't click back to the reseller account, and you basically have to logout and re-login to get to the reseller panel. That, of course, defeats the purpose of the dropdown -- convenient access to all accounts/domains.

The problem goes away when you use unique passwords.

This problem will most likely afflict VPS owners, who have undoubtedly subscribed to the VPS for their own sites. It may also affect any reseller that happens to have the same password as a client. To some degree, this really comes back to good password policy, and using strong unique passwords for everything.

Hope this helps. :cool: