403 forbidden error when grant admin privilege to a user

AI-generated summary

403 Forbidden Error When Granting Admin Privileges

Rick_Jing encountered a 403 error when attempting to grant a user admin privileges. Lilly suggested that the issue might be related to 2-factor authentication (2FA) being enabled on the admin account. Rick_Jing confirmed that 2FA was enabled, but was unsure about the specific settings.

Moin clarified that the general 2FA settings only apply to staff, and that account-specific settings can be found at yoursite.com/my/preferences/second-factor. Rick_Jing tried disabling the “Enforce second factor on external auth” setting, but still encountered the 403 error.

Lilly suggested that Rick_Jing might need to authenticate with 2FA himself or disable it in his own user preferences to resolve the issue. Rick_Jing thanked the users for their help and will investigate further.


when I tried to grant a user admin privilege this happened, is this a bug or I missed some settings or configuration? I need help for this.

Do you have 2factor authentication enabled for your admin account? I can’t reproduce that message without having 2fa on the admin account, but with the correct 2fa code, it gets overridden and I am able to grant admin access.


I’m not sure these are all settings for 2-factor auth, I enabled for staff before and I still have to input the code to sign-in, but I think I set it back to default earlier.
should I disable the first one?

That are the general settings where you can set who has to enable 2 factor authentication.
The settings for your account are at your preferences at {yoursite}/my/preferences/second-factor.

I tried to disable the enforce second factor on external auth, still 403, is anything else I missed configured?

I believe you need to be autheticate with 2fa yourself or disable it in your own user preferences like what Moin described above. I don’t know how your external authentication is configured though. I can reproduce the 403 you described, but with my correct 2fa code, it allows me to perform the admin action.

I will try to find out, thanks anyway