[rt-users] Recurring Login Problem

[Stephen Turner]

Hello,

I'm looking for ideas on a very strange problem. (This is on RT 3.2.2, 
Oracle 9, fastcgi, solaris).

The symptom is that you log in to RT, click on any link and you are dumped 
back to the login screen. (Logging in again then puts you to the page you 
requested).Every time you request a page, you have to go through the login 
screen.

I found the problem posted before, and people suggested playing with 
browser cookie settings, but nobody reported the problem being solved. I 
don't think browser settings are the answer - here's what I've learned:

- the problem happens with these browser/OS combinations:

      MSIE 6 - Win XP sp2
      Firefox 0.9 - Win XP sp2
      Netscape 7 - Win XP sp2
      Mozilla - Solaris

- the problem does NOT happen with Opera on Windows XP or Solaris.

- The problem does not happen while connecting to other RT's we have set 
up, including mysql, Oracle, mod_perl & fastcgi setups. That's why I don't 
think the problem is a browser config problem.

- Session tracking on the server is done with Apache::Session::File, and 
for the problem connections, it appears that after login, the user 
information is not being stored in the session file. This appears to be the 
root of the problem, although I can't think why this would happen.

- This may not be relevant, but I noticed that for problem connections to 
the RT home page, autohandler seems to be called twice: once for 
index.html, once for bplogo.gif. Successful (Opera) connections show only a 
single call to autohandler, for index.html.

So, any ideas?

I'm particularly interested on hearing how the magic of storing the user 
attributes in the session data is accomplished. And what might cause this 
not to happen.

Thanks,
Steve


Stephen Turner
Senior Programmer/Analyst - Client Support Services
Information Services and Technology (IS&T)

sturner at mit.edu