authentication failed for api key fire

[jmint0]

New install here, but gui features that use portalauth all fail with "authentication failed for api key fire". This means that update, plugins, health, traffic, and a slew of other features are inoperable.

May this error be caused by the default account not getting setup properly? Should the root user have an api key to execute these tasks? The root user did not have an API key and generating one did not help the problem.

I tried creating a "fire" user and an API key for that user and that did not seem to help either. Is fire a reserved userid?

Does anyone have tips on how to solve this problem? The closest I could find was the "Use the API" section (https://docs.opnsense.org/development/how-tos/api.html). Does the basic user interface require an API key? If so, how do I load that key or repair the key it needs?

[jmint0]

Potentially solved? Later that day, the error disappeared. The problem existed for no less than 6 days. All internal UI queries are working. In other words, updates, plugins, and graphing are all operational.

I wasn't clear in the initial request for help. The error 'authentication failed for api key fire'  may be found in /var/log/portalauth/latest.log.

Why would it take four ways for that error to resolve?