[rt-users] RT Web interface sometimes loses style

[Fabian Ritzmann]

On Wed, 2002-03-20 at 23:52, Alexander Dupuy wrote:

> We installed RT 2.0.11, and after working out some version conflict
> glitches between apache and perl everything seems to be working, except
> that sometimes the stylesheet doesn't seem to "take" and the styles of
> links etc. revert to defaults.  A few hits of the reload button usually
> cures this, but not permanently. We see this with both Netscape 4.77 and
> Konqueror 2.1.1 so I don't think this is a browser problem per se.

My installation displays similar problems. We are using Apache, RT's
"external" authentication and authenticate against a Kerberos server.
The Apache error log will show you what's going on.

For us, this happens because the stylesheet and the RT logo image that
are included in every web page are retrieved and authenticated
separately for every request. Since the Kerberos server sees these
requests in a very short time, it occasionally rejects some of them
because it suspects a replay attack.

> This is a pretty minor cosmetic flaw, but I'm wondering if anyone else
> has seen anything like it, and if there might be a fix.  We have been
> very pleased with the RT software otherwise; it's really quite good.

I haven't found a way of telling Apache not to authenticate the stuff in
the NoAuth section except taking an approach similar to the recommended
fastcgi setup. You would set up two virtual hosts where one serves the
NoAuth data.

Unfortunately, that requires to replace all references to NoAuth in the
RT source code by a configurable URL. It's probably just a couple of
minutes of work, but I haven't found the time to do that and submit a
patch. Here's how the Apache setup could look like:

AddModule       mod_fastcgi.c
Listen 443
NameVirtualHost vv.ww.xx.yy:443
<VirtualHost vv.ww.xx.yy:443>
        SSLEnable
        ServerName      rt.yadda.com
	DocumentRoot	/rt2/WebRT/html
        AddHandler      fastcgi-script fcgi
        ScriptAlias     /       /rt2/bin/mason_handler.fcgi/
        FastCgiServer   /rt2/bin/mason_handler.fcgi
</VirtualHost>
Listen 442
NameVirtualHost vv.ww.xx.yy:442
<VirtualHost vv.ww.xx.yy:442>
        SSLDisable
        ServerName      rt.yadda.com
        DocumentRoot    /rt2/WebRT/html/NoAuth
</VirtualHost>


Fabian

-- 
Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high
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