# Finishing installation manually?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/finishing-installation-manually/102678
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [November 24, 2018, 7:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finishing-installation-manually/102678 "2018-11-24T19:27:22Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ylluminate](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ylluminate)
#### Post date: [November 24, 2018, 7:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finishing-installation-manually/102678/1 "2018-11-24T19:27:22Z")
I’m having some trouble finalizing some SMTP issues on a server and want to move forward with finalizing the installation manually while I sort out the other issues since another team member would like to continue on with effort that doesn’t pertain to the SMTP server issues.
I was able to `activate` the admin user manually by doing this:
```plaintext
cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
rails c
# Inside Rails with Pry:
> u = User.find_by_username_or_email('admin_user@domain.tld')
> u.activate
> u.save
> quit
```
However when I visit the site, (eg `domain.tld`) I still get the “ **Congratulations, you installed Discourse!** ” page. I can still only press the [Register] button.
How do I manually trigger the system to move past this step so that normal system usage can begin?
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2018, 4:43am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finishing-installation-manually/102678/2 "2018-11-25T04:43:00Z")
You need to have one user that is am administrator. After you enter the container.
```
rake admin:create
```
---
### Author:  [@ylluminate](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ylluminate)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2018, 5:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finishing-installation-manually/102678/3 "2018-11-25T05:05:13Z")
@pfaffman thanks for that. Worked great.
When I tried to use the same email address, it said the password was already set (as it was). I went ahead and changed the password via `rake admin:create` as per the prompt and then likewise granted admin privileges to the account. After this was done I revisited the main site and lo and behold Discourse came up properly and did not take me back to the setup process.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2018, 5:05am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/finishing-installation-manually/102678/4 "2018-12-25T05:05:23Z")
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