Find the Initial Bitnami WordPress Password on Amazon Lightsail

2026-02-15

You create a WordPress instance on Lightsail, open the site and go to /wp-admin. The sign-in screen is there, but you never created an account during setup. Where did the credentials come from?

This is normal for the preconfigured Bitnami image. The database, PHP, web server and WordPress are set up during deployment. The image creates an initial WordPress administrator and stores its generated password in a file on the instance.

This walkthrough uses the SSH method from AWS’s Bitnami instructions. If your instance uses another WordPress blueprint or the newer Lightsail setup workflow, consult the instructions for that image.

The Bitnami default username is shown below.

user

To retrieve the initial password, connect to the instance over SSH.

1. Open a Lightsail SSH session

In Lightsail, find your instance and choose Connect using SSH or use its SSH quick-connect icon. The browser opens a terminal if your AWS account has the required access. A connected session looks like this.

bitnami@ip-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx:~$

The prompt means you are in the instance’s shell. This is where the file containing the initial password can be read.

2. Retrieve the initial password

Enter the following command.

cat bitnami_application_password

The output is the password generated at setup. Keep it private. If you are sharing your screen or saving a terminal transcript, stop before displaying it.

The command uses a relative path. If you have changed directories and cannot find the file, return to your home directory first, as shown below.

cd ~
cat bitnami_application_password

3. Sign in to WordPress

Open the site’s administration page once HTTPS is configured. With a domain and a matching certificate, the URL looks like this.

Use the address for your own site.

https://example.com/wp-admin

Username: user
Password: The initial value displayed in your SSH session

A successful sign-in opens the WordPress dashboard. It confirms that the account works and that WordPress can serve the admin page.

4. Update the account

Change the generated password from within WordPress. The initial value is still stored in a file on the server, so changing the account password makes that old value unusable for sign-in.

In the dashboard, open Users → Profile and set a new password in the account management section.

Set the account email to an address you can access. If the site can send mail, that address can receive a password-reset link later.

5. Which password does the file contain?

The password file preserves the value that Bitnami generated during setup. You can read the same file again with this command.

cat bitnami_application_password

After you change the WordPress password, the old file will no longer tell you the current one. If you lose the new password, use the account recovery options instead.

6. Why the account already exists

A manual WordPress setup asks you to create an administrator in the browser. A preconfigured Lightsail image is ready for its first request as soon as it starts. Its installer creates the account ahead of time and provides the initial credentials through the instance or the supported setup flow.

When the public site loads and the dashboard asks you to sign in, retrieve the credentials for your particular blueprint before assuming that the installation failed.

The first sign-in

For the Bitnami image in this walkthrough, the command reads the initial password from the connected user’s home directory.

cat bitnami_application_password

Once you are in, change the initial password and continue with the usual WordPress dashboard setup.

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