DotNetNuke

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

mikeh36 — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 19:04:38 GMT

Well Kurt already got the problem sorted but I've run into the same issue when my temporary internet files folder got too big (hit the limit I set for it in IE's options). Cleared them out and all was fixed.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

janetlfox — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:35:01 GMT

I had set up a domain name forward that I set up at godaddy.com that redirected www.mydomainname.com/folder to www.mynewdomainname.com. This seems to have caused the cookie problem, I removed the forwarding and tried with med cookies privacy and it worked...

So there is a problem with forwarding domain names? Has anyone else had problems with forwarding domain names and Is there a way to accomplish this without causing problems?

Thanks for the responses I sure apprieciate it.
Janet

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

kurtstricker — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 17:20:02 GMT

I'm able to login using the medium settings in IE. First party cookies must be accepted for authentication.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

janetlfox — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 15:08:55 GMT

Update, on my previous problem with Other users not able to log in. The person I told to change the security on the cookies didn't know how, after I gave instructions he was able to log in.

So now my question is this. Why do the cookies have to be set at low privacy to log into the DNN 3 site? Can anyone explain this to me?

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

janetlfox — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 14:46:38 GMT

I'm having the same sort of problem....
however, I'm having the problem on a live site on my host server.

I am able to log in to all computers in my home....4 to be exact, I did have to lower the cookie security to be able to log into my site. People on other computers not in my house can not log in. No error message it just returns to the home page with the log in and register links still available.....

What the heck could this be. I did install a skin...also the Portal Store 6.5 which I've been having some difficulty with.

Home page id is NULL ...

any solution for this yet?
Thanks,
Janet

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

aaava — Mon, 30 May 2005 03:07:39 GMT

Hey Kurt:

The same thing happened to me late last night. But it was not quite the same. I was using the Snapsis skins at the time, and though I entered the correct login and password, it kept telling me it was incorrect. Even stranger, was that I was getting email about Password reminders (which just proved I was entering the correct values, and NO, my caps lock key wasnt on or anything like that) even though I hand't *clicked* on password reminders. What I did, was use a trick that Jon Henning had shown me in passing.

Try this. It *could* have something to do w/the current skin installed. Don't ask me why or how because I don't understand. Give this a shot: Force a change to a standard DNN skin, like so:

http://yourdomainname.com/Default.aspx?SkinSrc=%5bG%5dSkins%7cDNN-Blue%7cHorizontal+Menu+-+Full+Width

Replace of course, the 'yourdomainname.com' with whatever it is. If it's the skin that's causing it, this will force a replacement skin. If this doesn't work, add the tabid of the login page (I think 36), and do that to force a change to the login page skin itself. Perhaps that will fix it. I've had some *very* strange skins things goin' on w/this version of 3.0.13... you'll have to replace the web.config changes you made of course...hope this helps...

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

nbc — Mon, 30 May 2005 02:26:09 GMT

I'm baffled as to how a skin could have any effect on a login process. When kurtstricker was trying to solve his problem he at one point installed a new instance of DNN which would use the default skin, and had the same error. This tells you it is likely to be a problem with the local server environment but certainly rules out a skin issue.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

portvista — Sun, 29 May 2005 18:23:24 GMT

My point is that while Skins seem just like simple HTML files that get "included" in each page, they are actually a lot more complicated than that. It's not unreasonable to think the skinning system could have caused a problem, AND I would look there first if in fact there were some repeatable error with sessions or even authentication.

Reinstall of IIS and .Net was probably overkill, but sometimes it's better to kill the patient. lol!

I'll post another msg on why I think they are too complicated.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

J7Mitch — Sun, 29 May 2005 13:36:20 GMT

Thats good news that you got it working. I doubt very seriously it was a problem with uploading skins that caused you to have to reinstall IIS & the .Net framework though.

---- portvista wrote
If there are any bugs in DNN, the skinnning system are where they are at. It's the most complicated and hacked up "template" system I've ever seen. ----

Thats a very critical statement portvista, do you care enough to back it up with some constructive suggestions?
If so, please start another thread and I would be happy to discuss the skinning architecture with you in more detail.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

portvista — Sun, 29 May 2005 02:05:12 GMT

If there are any bugs in DNN, the skinnning system are where they are at. It's the most complicated and hacked up "template" system I've ever seen.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

kurtstricker — Sat, 28 May 2005 23:44:50 GMT

Resolved!

Here's what I did. Removed .Net Framework, Removed IIS, Reinstalled IIS ReInstalled .Net Framework. Curious how setting the skins could cause this type of catastrophic problem. Very strage behavior indeed.

Cheer and thank you all for your support!

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

aaava — Sat, 28 May 2005 00:41:38 GMT

Hey. I had the same problem temporarily. I went to Admin->Settings...Advanced, and set my login page to my home page. Hey, what do I know, right? Well, that was the kiss of death. If you have access to query analyzer, open that, open a query window, and do the following:

use (whatever database you named)
select * from Portals

see if the column for 'LoginTabID' is <NULL>

if it's not, then perform the following in query analyzer...

use (seeabove)
update Portals
set LoginTabID = NULL

select * from Portals

It sounds to me like it's *possible* you changed the default page for the login. For the life of me, I don't unnerstand why in *practice* this option is there. In *theory* it makes sense, but since there's zero documentation for it, well...I'll leave it at that. Please let me know what it says in either case for that column in the Portals table....perhaps we can go from there...It needs to be NULL so the code can go to the normal login page.

And whoever has the documentation for ALL the database concepts and changes...why are you not making this available to us? It's like a black box right now (which by the way is actually an orange box, as I've learned...but that's another story..;-)). Seriously though, the docs for the DNN database are non-existent. And as the engine for the product, it's mind-boggling that ALL database issues get ignored by members of the core team responsible for it here. I've posted at least a half dozen questions about the DB changes for 3.x. Never, ever rec'd a reply from a core team member.

So that's my rant. It's not like you folks are being paid or anything and I realize this. So let me know if this helps, k?

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

J7Mitch — Sat, 28 May 2005 00:00:12 GMT

Yes, Request.IsAuthenticated should be true after the Auth Cookie is set.

One of the things you might run into when running on localhost is that your cookie has to be shared by all the apps that are running under the one IIS site in their own virtual directories.
This will sometimes get overlapping information in it and is the reason you sometimes have to delete it. You don't have to clear all your cookies though, just delete the localhost cookie(s).

Cookies are identified by domain which is localhost in this situation

Another time you can run into a problem like this is when you have child portals, but not parent portals because the parent portals have thier own domain or subdomain names.

So deleteing the cookie may be the answer and would explain why you can't login to the DNN2 portal any more also.
That doesn't explain why you get the same symptoms on another machine and on other browsers though.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

kurtstricker — Fri, 27 May 2005 22:22:54 GMT

portvista wrote:
It has to be cookies, because that's how Forms Authentication works. These are the EXACT symptoms of improper handling of .NET authentication via save cookie method. When you allow a user to login via cookie, you still must actually log the user in and assign the user id with the correct permissions for that session. If you don't, this is exactly what happens! I don't know how eactly DNN is screwing this up, but I have to clear my cookies occassionally -- I just hope it doesn't do that for all users. Check that there are no cookies in your cookie IE folder, empty cache, delete files.

I agree. The problem is I've done all the cookie and cache clearing I can with no luck. Also, after I had this problem I installed Opera and it had the same problem. I assume Opera uses its own location for persisting data...Also, I tried logging on from another machine and it too had this problem.

Re: Cannot Log In To DNN 3.0.13

portvista — Fri, 27 May 2005 20:54:52 GMT

It has to be cookies, because that's how Forms Authentication works. These are the EXACT symptoms of improper handling of .NET authentication via save cookie method. When you allow a user to login via cookie, you still must actually log the user in and assign the user id with the correct permissions for that session. If you don't, this is exactly what happens! I don't know how eactly DNN is screwing this up, but I have to clear my cookies occassionally -- I just hope it doesn't do that for all users. Check that there are no cookies in your cookie IE folder, empty cache, delete files.