Repeatedly Sign In's

MiG

I have a problem with my forum wich is that I ( and everyone else ) have to sign in on and off all the time. Let's say I'm signed in and want to take a peek at for example, the categories. The forum signs me off and want me to sign in again, back to discussions and hit the categories tab again only to find myself to be signed out again. Same thing when posting, I have to redo everything I've typed in and this happens all the time, no matter what I do. I'm a Firefox user and I guess Firefox handles cookies in a somewhat different way than Internet Explorer ( wich doesn't sign me off , by the way ). Sure I could use IE instead but since I'm a Firefox user I'd like to use that instead of IE because I use FF for everything I do on the net. Help please! Anyone know why my forum behaves in this way?

subterrane

Probably the server. - What server are you running (apache, IIS)? - What version of PHP are you running?

jsanders

i've got this problem as well, but i have my cookie and history settings very tight in firefox. i always attributed it to that, but if there's a way to make the remember me button work a little longer, that'd be cool. i know there's threads on this from the past (i searched) and mark had stated that he can't duplicate the problem. i'm not sure if any more discussion on this has happened since then.

vinay

I have no problem here, on ohhello or on my own installation. The only thing that logs me out is if I sign into the forum from a different location.

If I sign in today, and then come back tomorrow to this computer, i'm still logged in. However, if I log in today at work, go home, log in there and then come back to my work computer tomorrow, i'm logged out at my work computer.

The latter was done by design. At least, that's what I've read on the boards from Mark (iirc).

So, I'm guessing it's either your browser settings, or your server. Because it isn't vanilla. I say settings because I know Firefox in it's default config seems to have no problems with these same 3 installations.

stomptokyo

I'm having similar problems on my b-fest.com forum -- though it doesn't sign me out between every action, I don't stay signed in between visits, esp. if I close the browser. On lussumo.com I never have to log in, but on b-fest.com I have to sign in nearly every time. I'm using Firefox 1.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.4. Apache version 1.3.33 (Unix) PHP Version 4.3.10 http://www.b-fest.com/forum/

vinay

stomp, are you signing in anywhere else? Hmm I wonder why? It might be session thing. I haven't looked at the code for how vanilla does sessions, i do know that it does use sessions.

Just a thought. Though I could be waaaaay off base.

stuart

This one keeps me logged in, my own installation logs me out when ive been inactive for a while whilst still within the forum.

subterrane

I know jack and squat about sessions so... Let's get edumacated! http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/41/0.php So Mark has library/Vanilla.Session.class. The Comments say: // Ensure that there is an active session. // If there isn't an active session, send the user to the SignIn Url So, it sounds like there isn't an active session...now we have to figure out why.

vinay

Don't assume that's the only reason you get sent to the SignIn URI. That's just one way to get sent there. We have to elimiate all of the other possibilities before we assume that's the cause.

(again, I haven't looked at the sign in/session/cookie/user code in general.)

subterrane

From the docs I just skimmed, it looks like the point of sessions is to avoid cookies so I'd guess that it's probably the server.

There's several settings related to sessions that are in the php.ini file on the server, so that could be messing things up.

The session cache defaults to 180 (minutes??) so you could throw a page on the server and check to see what they are:

<?php
    echo 'session_cache_expire: ' . session_cache_expire() . '<br />';
    echo 'session_cache_limiter: ' . session_cache_limiter();
?>

Maybe they are set to something low? I dunno, I'm guessing.

MiG

I have an Apache server and I run this: PHP4u Version 3.0 Based on PHP-4.3.10

Mark

I'm having similar problems on my b-fest.com forum -- though it doesn't sign me out between every action, I don't stay signed in between visits, esp. if I close the browser. On lussumo.com I never have to log in, but on b-fest.com I have to sign in nearly every time.

That sounds like you've got your cookie domain set up incorrectly or you need to nuke your existing cookies on your domain.

What do you have assigned as the Cookie Domain on your "Application Settings" form?


Everyone else: It sounds to me like they're browser-specific. So what are your security settings?

lech

I've been noticing this on and off with vanilla here and my own installations. Sometimes I'll be signed in for days, while some days as soon as I revisit the tab, im forced to log in again. Mark, if the installation resides in its own directory, would including the path to that directory help seperate the cookie from all other cookies? ie: .domain.com/vanilla/ or just /vanilla/

Mark

I would do this: .domain.com/vanilla/ Because it will prevent other conflicts, yes.

lech

ok, I wasn't sure, I should probably correct the documentation later then.

stomptokyo

What do you have assigned as the Cookie Domain on your "Application Settings" form?

web path to vanilla: www.b-fest.com/forum/

cookie domain: www.b-fest.com/forum/

I've cleared all b-fest.com cookies from my browser, problem still exists.

lech

try
.b-fest.com/forum/

stomptokyo

Nope, that didn't fix it, lech. What else should I try? What's this about PHP sessions?

MiG

I checked the cookie in FF and it has a very short time span, a couple of hours only. It expires after a given time, wich I think is ( perhaps ) one of the causes for the signing out all the time. Can it be modified to expire at a later time or make it permanent until I clear the cookie cashe?

lech

I added a new bug to the buglist which should address this, currently the cookie-domain handling is a little off due to the implimentation which mark has it set at currently. so this is currently a bug.

stomptokyo

Roger that. Thanks for checking into it Lech!