Upgrading to 1.3.3 locks me out

When I upgraded to 1.3.3 from 1.2, I get locked out of the web interface. I have a sneaking suspicion that upgrading is erasing Appwrite’s configuration and that’s why I am getting locked out. Ordinarily, it summarily logs in without my having to enter a password. I can’t send myself a password reset link because there’s appears to be a bug that prevents the SMTP from connecting.

What's in your appwrite folder?

You mean the docker-compose.yml and .env files? They are there. I just realized I put in a different _APP_OPENSSL_KEY_V1. Might that cause a problem?

Thanks, that indeed was the problem. Does that mean once we pick a key, we are stuck with it forever?

It seems like it.

You can see here
https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/blob/master/app/init.php#L434
Any data that is inserted into the database will use the provided key for encode and decoding the encryption,

So if you'll change your key, then all the fields that are set to be filter through is filter will become inaccessible, for example the console user password attribute.
https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite/blob/master/app/config/collections.php#L1259

     [
           '$id' => ID::custom('password'),
           'type' => Database::VAR_STRING,
           'format' => '',
           'size' => 16384,
           'signed' => true,
           'required' => false,
           'default' => null,
           'array' => false,
           'filters' => ['encrypt'],
     ],

P.s. from what I see the password itself will be written in a one-way encryption behind the two-way encrypt filter. That mean that even after the decryption process the value of the password will still be hashed-encryption.
So it's add another level of safety around the save hashed password.