Automatic Login Not Working as Expected

Hypersphere · 06 Jan 2015, 20:55

I was not sure where to post this question or otherwise to whom it should be directed, so I decided to post under "Deskthority talk".

For the past few weeks or so, my automatic login to DT has not been working as expected, regardless of whether I am connecting from my home office or work office.

I always login with the option to stay logged in. Nevertheless, at various times after logging out and then trying to log back in, I need to re-enter my username and password. Sometimes this happens several times within one day.

I usually connect via a Mac using Google Chrome as my browser.

By comparison, I have auto-login activated on my GeekHack account, and I never need to re-enter my username and password on that site.

Is this a new security precaution that has been instituted on DT?

Thanks for any help that someone who runs things might be able to provide.

ne0phyte · 06 Jan 2015, 20:58

I've experienced this ever since I registered. Every now and then I have to login again.

Muirium · 06 Jan 2015, 21:02

I go months at a time without issue. Logged in on 3 or 4 different machines. The *real* problem is text size. Webwit broke that setting's persistence long ago!

Meanwhile, it's vice versa for me and GH. I only follow a link there every month or so, but every time it's back to the default wince theme and needing me to trigger Safari's auto-password entry. (And yes, I have the check box on the GH login form set to remember me always.) I don't expect any better though. I'm so infrequent they've had to restore from a backup since my last login!

chzel · 06 Jan 2015, 21:03

Do you explicitly logout or just close the tab?
It is working fine for me when I just close the tab, I never logout.
Maybe clearing the cache and cookies could help?

7bit · 06 Jan 2015, 21:05

Yeah, text sizes are not good, we need larger than 200!!!

I doubt Muirium will ever have that problem.

Given how often he posts, his session will never expire while he is near a computer!

Muirium · 06 Jan 2015, 21:07

Expire? That only happens in a fridge…

002 · 06 Jan 2015, 22:52

Nothing has changed with security that I am aware of.
Do you use the Tapatalk app by any chance, Hypersphere?

matt3o · 06 Jan 2015, 23:54

it happens to me all the time. I usually have to relogin twice a day (to say the least). It happens the same on another community I visit that uses phpbb, so I guess that's the problem.

Hypersphere · 07 Jan 2015, 00:03

Well, I guess "it's just one of those things". It's not a major headache to login again, even if it is several times per day.

webwit · 07 Jan 2015, 00:42

I think it's a Chrome bug where for some reason it forgets the cookie.

Muirium · 07 Jan 2015, 00:44

I don't use Chrome, which meshes well with the fact I don't see it. If I had to login a few times every day, I'd be bitching and moaning by day 3…

scottc · 07 Jan 2015, 00:55

I don't see it either. Latest Firefox on Linux here.

Hypersphere · 07 Jan 2015, 01:27

Hmm. Might have to switch to Firefox or Safari. Thanks for the tips.

matt3o · 07 Jan 2015, 08:42

I did some research, it seems that you can solve it by manually deleting the cookie and having phpbb create a new one.

I just tried, so far so good. I'll keep you posted.

I don't think it's a "chrome bug" per se, but a phpbb bug on chrome (otherwise we would be kicked out from every website on the planet)

Madhias · 07 Jan 2015, 08:55

I have this issue also, but not that much anymore (or at least it is now a long time when it happened). I am also using Chrome, on different machines.

seebart · 07 Jan 2015, 09:08

strange I have never experienced this. I use the latest builds of Opera and sometimes Firefox.

Khers · 07 Jan 2015, 13:04

I'm using chrome and I haven't experienced these problems.

Muirium · 07 Jan 2015, 13:08

Hyper's a Mac user (for the most part) but Matteo's Linux all the way, so this is apparently cross platform and not just one port of Chrome. Unless you run it on Windows and that's the "good" one. Wouldn't surprise me. Cross platform browsers aren't my favourite things.

Khers · 07 Jan 2015, 13:11

I'm also a mac user, and as I stated above, I have never had these issues - on the desktop that is. When on my phone (iOS, Safari), I always need to log in, but that doesn't happen too often so it's not so much of a nuisance.

Muirium · 07 Jan 2015, 13:19

Fair enough. Pretty random then. As in it consistently affects some people but not others.

A possibly related issue is what I so often get when I pull back out of a thread to the forum spy: its contents seem to be buffered, and dead. This doesn't happen on straight loads of DT, but when moving between threads, even when clicking the forum spy button. It's either live or it's not, in which case it will never update, even with days old content. I have to manually reload the page to make it live again. Happens in TenFourFox as well as Safari, and also on iOS as well, but not so much an issue here as I've so little ram things are very frequently reloaded from scratch.

All while remaining signed in, of course!

matt3o · 07 Jan 2015, 13:26

PS: it also happened on my macbookair

it seems that for some reasons the cookie is sometimes malformed. deleting it manually seems to fix it. so far I've not been disconnected, but it's early to say.

7bit · 07 Jan 2015, 13:55

webwit wrote: ↑I think it's a Chrome bug where for some reason it forgets the cookie.

Wait!

I thought it were a security feature.

chzel · 07 Jan 2015, 15:31

webwit wrote: ↑I think it's a Chrome bug where for some reason it forgets the cookie.

Chrome "Version 39.0.2171.95 m" (latest) on Win7 64bit here and working perfectly, no random logouts.

matt3o · 07 Jan 2015, 15:36

could it be related to static IP?

how many with this problem have a static IP?

chzel · 07 Jan 2015, 15:40

I am on dynamic, but don't think it expires too often. Haven't really monitored it but I could.

edit: I do not have this problem.

matt3o · 07 Jan 2015, 19:25

got kicked out again.

webwit · 07 Jan 2015, 20:00

Static IP addresses shouldn't be a problem, I disabled some security checks earlier (it's a phpBB setting which I might enable again now it doesn't seem to change anything), which includes IP checks. Not static IP though, but whether the IP changes.

Hypersphere · 07 Jan 2015, 22:18

From my home office, I sometimes use VPN so that I can access on-campus services; does this cause problems with connecting to the DT server?

webwit · 07 Jan 2015, 22:37

I don't know. Maybe you can try another browser to check if the problem persists or goes away. Then we know a little more.

Nuum · 07 Jan 2015, 22:40

I also use a VPN to my University from time to time, I'll check if I get logged out when I use it next time.
Otherwise I get logged out very seldom, I'm using Opera 12.17 on Windows 7 64bit.