Liferay cannot access login page

If you tinker with Liferay's page permissions, you may accidentally edit those associated with the "Welcome" page, effectively preventing ANYONE from ever logging in again.

To regain access you may try this (replace VERSION with your own):

• stop Liferay (stop Tomcat), on Linux you need to run: /liferay/apache-tomcat-VERSION/bin/shutdown.sh - you may need to be a superuser to do this. On Windows it's the same path but you should use shutdown.bat instead
• edit the portal-ext.properties file. You can find it under /liferay/apache-tomcat-VERSION/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes - and add this line:

 auto.login.hooks=com.liferay.portal.security.auth.CASAutoLogin,com.liferay.portal.security.auth.FacebookAutoLogin,com.liferay.portal.security.auth.NtlmAutoLogin,com.liferay.portal.security.auth.OpenIdAutoLogin,com.liferay.portal.security.auth.OpenSSOAutoLogin,com.liferay.portal.security.auth.RememberMeAutoLogin,com.liferay.portal.security.auth.SiteMinderAutoLogin,com.liferay.portal.security.auth.ParameterAutoLogin  

NOTE: With this, you are enabling the auto-login feature by ANY means on the portal, so remember to remove that line after you've successfully restored your situation.

• restart Liferay. It's the same as stopping but you should use startup instead of shutdown
• open any browser and point to:

http://LIFERAY_IP:LIFERAY_PORT?parameterAutoLoginLogin=ADMIN_USERNAME&parameterAutoLoginPassword=ADMIN_PASSWORD

Replacing LIFERAY_IP with your portal's IP (could be localhost), LIFERAY_PORT with your portal's port (could be 8080), ADMIN_USERNAME with the portal's admin username (could be test@liferay.com or simply test) and ADMIN_PASSWORD with the portal's admin password (could be test). EG:

http://localhost:8080?parameterAutoLoginLogin=test&parameterAutoLoginPassword=test

NOTE: You may input ANY user/password there, not necessarily the admin's ones, but that user must have the ability to edit the "Welcome" page's permissions, else he'll now be able to login albeit without the means to solve the issue.