VICIdial login password vs registration password

Every VICIdial phone record has two password fields, and they do completely different jobs. The Login Password gets your agent into the web interface. The Registration Password lets the phone device itself connect to the dialer. People mix these up constantly, change the wrong one, and then spend an afternoon wondering why the agent screen loads fine but the phone never rings. This post pulls them apart so you always know which field to touch.

The Login Password is for the web screen

The Login Password is the password an agent types to sign in to the browser-based agent interface. It pairs with the Agent Screen Login field. That is its entire scope. It controls access to the web client and nothing else. Change it, and the agent logs in with the new value. It has no effect on whether the physical phone or Softphone can connect to the server.

The Registration Password is for the device

The Registration Password is the secret your phone device uses to register with Asterisk. When VICIdial creates a phone, it writes an entry into the auto-generated Conf file for that phone, and the Registration Password becomes the secret in that file. Your SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) or IAX device has to send that same secret to authenticate. If it matches, the phone registers and can send and receive calls. If it does not match, the device sits there unregistered and the agent has audio nowhere to go.

This is the field formerly labeled Conf File Secret, which is a more honest name for what it actually is. The shorter article on what the VICIdial registration password is digs into its limits and default value.

Which one does your softphone use?

Your softphone uses the Registration Password, never the Login Password. The agent uses the Login Password in the browser. Hold onto that split and the confusion goes away. The diagram below shows the two separate paths.

flowchart TD
  A[Agent at browser] -->|Login Password| B[VICIdial web agent screen]
  C[Phone device] -->|Registration Password| D[Asterisk conf file]
  D --> E[Phone registers and rings]
  B --> F[Agent controls calls]
  E --> F

Read the two lanes top to bottom. The left lane is a person typing into a web form. The right lane is a device handshaking with the server. They meet only at the end, when a registered phone is paired with a logged-in agent so calls can flow. Until both lanes succeed, the agent cannot take a call.

Why people get them wrong

The fields sit close together on the Modify Phone screen, and both say password. A new admin updates the Login Password, expecting the device to reconnect, and is baffled when Phone registration still fails. The opposite happens too: someone hardens the Registration Password to lock down the device, then cannot understand why the agent still logs in with the old web password. Each change only affects its own lane. Changing the web login does not change what the device registers with, and changing the device secret does not change the web login.

A quick checklist when a phone will not work

• Agent cannot sign in to the web screen at all: check the Login Password and Agent Screen Login.
• Agent is in the web screen but the phone shows unregistered or no audio: check the Registration Password against what the device is configured to send.
• You changed a password and nothing changed: confirm you edited the field that matches the symptom, not the other one.

Treat them as two locks on two different doors. Once that clicks, you will reach for the right field every time. For the wider picture of how phone records, extensions, and dialplan numbers fit together, the VICIdial phones pillar guide walks through the whole record field by field.

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