Members still having login problems

[themonarch]

Hi all,

Lots of my users/members are having problems with logging in and/or staying logged in. Here's what I've had them try:

VBulletin Login Problems

Try this 1st: Clearing your cookies and re-logging in:

It's here: http://www.nissaninfiniticlub.net/cookie_help.htm

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If that doesn't work, try this 2nd: Login and browse thru http://www.nissaninfiniticlub.NET instead of the .com address.

Check this too: Also, it's very important that your Internet Explorer setting(s) allow cookies. This site uses cookies to keep you logged in while surfing thru different forums.

Here's the Microsoft document detailing how to set your Internet Explorer to allow cookies.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/using/howto/privacy/config.asp

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Go into your User Control Panel on the forums and select yes for "Automatically login when you return to the site? (uses cookies)" and "Browse board with cookies?".

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Occasionally cookies will get corrupted with IE 6.0. To fix this you'll need to manually delete them. To do this:

Tools -> Internet Options -> Temporary Internet Files -> Settings -> View Files

Then search for the individual cookies for nissaninfiniticlub.net and delete them all. The name should be in the form of:

Cookie:usernamenissaninfiniticlub.net
and
Cookie:username@www.nissaninfiniticlub.net

...and any derivatives of the above.

Then highlight the individual cookies and delete each one found. After this, close all browser windows and restart IE.

Log back into the forums by scrolling down to the bottom of the main page of the forums and inputting your userid and password.

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There seems to be no solution that works for some of them. I've even went into the sessions table and deleted their id, but that still isn't working.

Any other help would be so appreciated. I must get 5 emails a day from people who can't login or stay logged in.

Thanks!

[themonarch]

Forgot to document some details:

Running VB 2.2.7

Here's the link to phpinfo:

http://www.nissaninfiniticlub.net/phpinfo.php

Server info:

Pentium III 850MHz with 512MB of RAM, running Red Hat Linux v6.2 and Apache Web Server.

MySQL 3.23.39

[Steve Machol]

What browsers are they using?
Do they use firewall or ad blocking software?
Are there browsers configured to allow cookies?
What are their ISPs?
What are the settings for 'Cookie Domain' and 'Path to save cookies? Did you make any changes to these settings?

[themonarch]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm polling them to find out. Generally it's from all over the map; aol users, earthlink users, edu users. Mostly using IE, however I have seen users try all my tips but still not be able to get it to work, ie stay logged in.

I also tried the sessions.php that's stickied but it didn't work either.

On the cookie path, I changed it when these login problems started happening and then I changed it back a day later, since by doing that I messed everyone up. It's currently:

Cookie Domain - blank
Path to saved cookies - /

[Steve Machol]

Leave the cookie stuff alone, because as you saw it will mess things up.

This does appear to be cookie-related so there is most likely something on these users' computers that is interfering with cookies.

Also it's been my experience that people do not really follow the steps to manually delete their cookies. Unfortunately unless you are sittting at their computer there's not much you can do about this.

[themonarch]

We can write our own php page to delete the cookies, right? This would force users to login on each visit and get a new cookie.

[Steve Machol]

No, if the cookies are corrupted then no script will remove them. They need to be manually deleted.

[mvigod]

there must be something else in play here. I have the same problems and follow the same fixes as the user who started this thread. I get 5 emails daily from users with this problem. I'll admit I'm not running the very latest version of vb because from the posts here it doesn't seem to fix this problem and I don't want to go through the hassle of rehacking until I'm sure it will fix it.

I've never had a problem with amazon or any other site corrupting my cookies and seems almost nobody does. Why is it only with vbulletin that cookies get corrupted? There must be some issue in the code that is doing this.

I've also seen where I try to logout and it goes back to the homepage and still recognizes me so I have to delete all my cookies to "really" logout.

Sometimes with the aol users I have them try IE and it works which is the only clue I have.

[Steve Machol]

Originally posted by mvigod
Sometimes with the aol users I have them try IE and it works which is the only clue I have.

Yes, that's a very big clue. In fact, this was one of the main reasons for the changes in the cookie routines in vB 2.2.7. This and vB 2.2.8 seems to have fixed most (but not all) reported problems. I encourage you to upgrade if you want to fix this.

[themonarch]

I agree it's something more that what I've heard from you guys on this issue. I've been hearing since revision 2.2.6 that "upgrade and it'll fix your problems" - but it doesn't.

I was thinking random thoughts about this today, and wondered if they logged in from a different pc and still have the same problems (which is the case for several of these users) what can be causing that? They go along for a while and then it goes wakko. They re-register with a different user name and that works - then I just add their post count back manually. So it could be the cookie but what if it's a problem with the user getting corrupt instead?

My experience of VBulletin so far has been a management nightmare. I know you guys are trying but nothing discussed so far has fixed these login problems.

[mvigod]

actually that has worked for some...I delete their old account and let them start new. If it was the cookie I would think this would not fix it as the cookie would still be there.

Just curious. Is the code for the fix limited to sessions.php, functions.php and global.php or doe these code changes/routines fall into other files as well? Usually the functions or routines for these types of things are modularized and would not appear in more than 1 file or 2 I would think.

[themonarch]

What about recommending Netscape Navigator or Mozilla to users? Seems IE, esp 6, has cookie issues.

[Paul]

vB2.2.9 should have an updated sessions.php that Scott is working on to deal with this problem. ISPs (like AOL) that use multiple proxy servers for their clients are confusing vBulletin and causing it to invalidate the session.

The temporary fix in vB2.2.8 will only work for AOL, as it uses a list of known IP addresses that are used by AOL.

If your users connect to your site using Internet Explorer and not the AOL browser, they will not experience this problem.

Hope this helps,
Paul

[themonarch]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks Paul!

[mvigod]

Is sessions.php the only file that has changed from the early 2.2.2, 2.2.3 versions which would need to be replaced or is there other associated code scattered throughout 2.2.8 2.2.9?

Another thing I don't understand is why IP's were ever even used with a cookie tracking system? Am I missing something here? If you stored a unique sessionhash in a users cookie or their username/password as well why would it have ever been necessary to track ip's throughout a session? Unless you were concerned somebody would end up with someone else's unique hash which is a moonshot it doesn't make sense. Just curious what I'm missing??? (sorry...the programmer in me must ask)