Keep getting logged out

kps · 12 Aug 2013, 19:33

I frequently find myself logged out of Deskthority, often when trying to preview and post, but also at other times.

Troubleshooting: It seems that DT sometimes, for no apparent reason, sends a new set of session cookies. See below for a log of HTTP headers sent and received loading a particular sample page.

Speculation: Perhaps when the browser sends a bunch of requests at once (e.g. for multiple images) with the original session, eventually the server processes one of these after it has created one or more new session cookies, and decides the user is no longer logged in, and then sends deskthorit_3yukq_u=1.

Session log:

Spoiler:

Muirium · 12 Aug 2013, 19:57

Ditto. I've not checked logs, but I've experienced similar behaviour.

Is this a good time to also mention caching? So many long posts have died in the reply editor thanks to an accidental hit of a history button or an unexpected refresh of the tab; and it's not just me. Is there a good reason to lose its contents so easily?

webwit · 12 Aug 2013, 20:03

I experienced this myself, but in my case it was about cookie length exceeding max length. But I use some internal subdomains too, and your cookie doesn't seem too large. In any case, it went away when I deleted all my deskthority cookies. It's probably a bitch to debug, somewhere deep in phpBB.

Daniel Beardsmore · 12 Aug 2013, 21:51

Muirium wrote:Is this a good time to also mention caching? So many long posts have died in the reply editor thanks to an accidental hit of a history button or an unexpected refresh of the tab; and it's not just me. Is there a good reason to lose its contents so easily?

I suspect it's done to prevent browsers from never showing old views of forums/topics. phpBB probably just sets anti-cache headers on all pages, including ones where it's really stupid to do that. I always wanted an anti-anti-cache plugin for Firefox that prevents pages from preventing me from caching them (cf anti-anti-missile-missile-missile …) but I never found one. I didn't want to force pages to be cached, just to ensure that the browser can cache when it wants to.

kps · 12 Aug 2013, 21:58

Muirium wrote:So many long posts have died in the reply editor thanks to an accidental hit of a history button or an unexpected refresh of the tab; and it's not just me.

I use an extension/plugin called Lazarus that preserves text boxes; it appears to be available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.

Muirium · 12 Aug 2013, 22:19

Thanks. I mostly get bitten by this on iOS though, where plugins aren't. So I've gotten into the habit of copying whatever text I've written before changing tabs: because voodoo!

For any serious posting, with multiple pictures etc., I just stick to the big computer. But better caching / automatic and improved drafts (need attachments!) would be a huge help in every case.

kps · 27 Aug 2013, 15:57

Maybe something here will help? This seems to be a common occurrence with the festering pile of pus that is phpBB.

https://www.google.com/search?q=logging ... .phpbb.com

Daniel Beardsmore · 28 Aug 2013, 02:03

Muirium wrote:Is this a good time to also mention caching? So many long posts have died in the reply editor thanks to an accidental hit of a history button or an unexpected refresh of the tab; and it's not just me. Is there a good reason to lose its contents so easily?

Same problem I imagine that breaks Firefox's New Tab page:

: new-tab-broken.png (120.92 KiB) Viewed 8186 times

It won't cache the thumbnails for uncacheable sites. It's technically Firefox's fault for picking a useless implementation, but since phpBB sucks, they can have a generous helping of blame too. (For example, how the hell are you supposed to insert an image without the wretched name/size/view count/extraneous blank line footer? geekhack's image insertion actually works. phpBB's table implementation should die in a fire, too.)

Dubsgalore · 28 Aug 2013, 04:38

Getting the same thing on Chrome

webwit · 28 Aug 2013, 10:41

I once put in a mod with slightly more aggressive no-caching, which I disabled now. This possibly does not fix it, but if it does let me know. This might also fix the problem of losing your post when you hit a wrong button and then go back.

Old:

Code: Select all

	/* BEGIN changed by webwit */
	//header('Cache-Control: private, no-cache="set-cookie"');
	header('Cache-Control: private, no-cache="set-cookie", no-store');
	/* END changed by webwit */
	header('Expires: 0');
	header('Pragma: no-cache');

New:

Code: Select all

	/* BEGIN changed by webwit */
	header('Cache-Control: private, no-cache="set-cookie"');
	//header('Cache-Control: private, no-cache="set-cookie", no-store');
	/* END changed by webwit */
	header('Expires: 0');
	header('Pragma: no-cache');

webwit · 28 Aug 2013, 10:48

kps wrote:Maybe something here will help? This seems to be a common occurrence with the festering pile of pus that is phpBB.

https://www.google.com/search?q=logging ... .phpbb.com

One theme there is that security kicks in somehow, for example because you're logged in from different machines. This is what my situation was when I had the problem, I have the forum spy running at my home computer and then I run deskthority from elsewhere. This usually works without problems, but maybe there's something in phpBB to prevent someone else stealing your cookie, and it was incorrectly triggered.

Halvar · 28 Aug 2013, 17:27

webwit wrote:I once put in a mod with slightly more aggressive no-caching, which I disabled now. This possibly does not fix it, but if it does let me know. This might also fix the problem of losing your post when you hit a wrong button and then go back.

Nice -- the Firefox new tab preview problem is fixed now.

Daniel Beardsmore · 28 Aug 2013, 22:28

So it is! Yay! Also, private messages you're writing are no longer lost if you hit Back by mistake.

Thanks webwit.

rindorbrot · 02 Sep 2013, 16:07

I also get logged out often, sometimes multiple times a day

CeeSA · 16 Nov 2013, 12:28

I have a problem with Firefow 26.0.
After I pressed the login button, the counter (return to index page) count down, but afterwards I am immediately logged out.

Login with chrome is no problem.

I try to turn off all Add-On's in FireFox without any success.

Anyone could help?

webwit · 16 Nov 2013, 13:34

Have you tried clearing dt cookies?

CeeSA · 16 Nov 2013, 17:17

I tried it 1 min ago without any success....

webwit · 16 Nov 2013, 17:22

I'll clear your session info which is stored in the database in a minute. This will log you out on all browsers. Let me know if this has any effect.

CeeSA · 16 Nov 2013, 17:39

No effect

webwit · 16 Nov 2013, 17:41

I hope it's just because that is a beta version.

Daniel Beardsmore · 16 Nov 2013, 18:08

CeeSA wrote:I try to turn off all Add-On's in FireFox without any success.

I presume you tried Firefox's safe mode?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tr ... -safe-mode

Another option is to use a clean profile. Close Firefox. Find your Firefox profile, and move it to another folder, e.g. desktop:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pr ... -user-data

This is a like a completely reversible factory reset: to restore your old profile, close Firefox, delete the newly-created profile, then move back your old one to its original location.

If you still have problems, you might need some sort of spy extension. A long time ago, I wanted to use SourceForge in HTTP for performance reasons on my old Mac clone. However, they mandated HTTPS login. If I chose to revert to HTTP after login, I would get booted back out again, around in circles. iCab had a full session transcript log and on inspecting it I noticed that SourceForge were deleting my cookies every time I logged in. I asked them — they couldn't explain it. (Developers everywhere always construct a human shield around them of clueless support people who know nothing, have access to nothing, and do nothing.)

Turns out that the cause was the Inktomi caching proxy network in use by ntl, and thence my Mac was being seen as two different IP addresses: one for HTTP (the Inktomi proxy) and one for HTTPS (cannot be cached, so servers saw my real IP). This violated SourceForge's perfectly legitimate session security, but instead of reporting an error message, they just wiped my session cookies and pretended nothing was happening.

(Coincidentally, the error I get from our customer database at work is a session timeout message: this happens if I'm connected remotely and the VPN goes wobbly and needs a reconnect, and RAS assigns me a new IP address. The session timeout message is an assumption made by the code on being given an unrecognised session ID, that it must have been purged from the session table previously. Maybe one day I'll program it to actually compare the two IP addresses and report a more useful message, but even something like "You have attempted to use a session belonging to another computer, you fool!" wouldn't be correct in cases such as these: same computer, different IP address … Sometimes there are these edge cases that do take a lot of effort to report back to the user correctly.)

CeeSA · 16 Nov 2013, 21:26

Update: in private mode my login remains logged in...
There is an add-on called 'private tab' I use know for deskthority.net.

Thank you all for your tips and care.

xbb · 17 Nov 2013, 15:36

if you want to switch profile without moving the profile folder itself you can start firefox with the -P option it will let you choose your default profile or create/delete more.

rindorbrot · 07 Jan 2014, 20:43

After it had worked in the last while, I now have these problems again (since about a week now).