Really strange issue with Digital Ocean

Here’s my environment;

Digital Ocean Ubuntu 14.04LTS droplet VPS
PHP Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.3, Copyright (c) 1999-2014, by Zend Technologies

mySQL Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.37, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.3

I was and have been happily building up a blog and came to it and was unable to login to wp-login via the same credentials I’ve always used. No matter what process I use to reset the password, it doesn’t ‘take’

I’ve replaced the wp-login with a new one from a fresh WP install (modifying the appropriate section) but that didnt work

I’ve used WP Cli to ammend the user, directly. That does not work

I’ve gone into PHPMYADMIN and modified the user, re-hashing a fresh MD5 password – that doesnt work

I’ve built a new user in mySQL directly, still cant get in.

I’ve destroyed the existing user, and built a new one in myphpadmin but still cant access with any password I set.

I’ve ran various ’emergency’ and ‘password reset’ scripts to no avail

I’ve disabled all plugins

I’ve modified the theme ini file to attempt to allow entry but that does not work

in every instance, for every change, I’ve restarted mysql and apache and in all cases rebooted the VM

Help!? Please!?