This comes straight from the Useful Django Tip department: How do you reset the admin password for a Django project when you’ve forgotten it?

Bruce Kroeze suggested using Django’s shell to resolve this common issue and one of the comments his post received nailed it:

[omaciel@crutches souschef]$ python manage.py shell
Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Mar 22 2010, 10:30:12)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 0.10 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? prints more.

In [1]: from django.contrib.auth.models import User

In [2]: u = User.objects.get(username__exact="admin")

In [3]: u.set_password('whatever');

In [4]: u.save()

That’s it!

P.S.: Back by popular demand, posts in its full content!