UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Bug Reports Login problems

This happens occasionally, and I've always thought it was a problem with Javascript and/or cookies on the user's computer. Now I have a guy with very specific symptoms, and I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

Here's his description of the problem:
He has tried both Internet Explorer and Firefox without success, and it happens on two forums that run UBB. He also frequents other forums running other software and doesn't have this problem.

The odd thing is, he can "login" but when he goes to My Stuff he's no longer logged in.

I'm not sure what the interaction is, but this is clearly a unique circumstance consistent with a small number of users.

Any thoughts or ideas on what to check would be appreciated.

This a old story with a new twist.
Meaning Firefox.
IE has been a issue with the last few versions. Even with some patches to try to fix it.
It is pretty much a random issue with keeping login status.
Some have fixed it using compatibility mode in IE.
The usual response has been use Firefox instead of IE.
I know SD is working on more fixes for IE in the next release.
But if the user is having issues with Firefox I am at a loss.
The only thing that comes to mind is if you updated your site to 7.5.7 then the user should try to delete the cookies and try again.
The user can do that using mystuff-cookies.
The reason I say that is in 7.5.7 cookies were worked on in that version and your user has tried Firefox.
Firefox has always been flawless as far as I know.
Except for a few that have set exceptions for additional security settings.
But anyway with the current version it is possible to have a (corrupted?) cookie that needs to be reset. Since the new version has a new setting for cookies that sets a key value.
This new setting is in addition to the old cookie prefix.

He can't reset the cookies so I did. I asked him to let me know if that fixes it.

UBB.threadsâ„¢ PHP Forum Software 7.5.7

I notice in file libs/html.inc.php on line 1408

$autolog = md5("^^{$config['BOARD_KEY']}^^{$user['USER_ID']}{$user['USER_PASSWORD']}");

But if someone uses a temporary password the above will be wrong as it will use the old password and not the new password.

Yes, but on line 1369:
So USER_PASSWORD is set to USER_TEMPORARY_PASSWORD before $autolog is set.

Yes it saves the temporary password over the USER_PASSWORD in the USERS table
But did not update the array $user['USER_PASSWORD']=$user['USER_TEMPORARY_PASSWORD'];
before making the $autolog

Can you check again, I may still be wrong

I can't say how the temp password is saved currently.
But I do know that the temp password is just that and does not overwrite the existing password.
In fact I have tried this on the lost password feature.
It sends me a temp password but the current prior password still works. It does tell you that somewhere.
In fact I just tested it here.
The email I received is where the message states.

I realize this is an old thread, but I normally use Chrome and had to use IE today and I can't log into the forums. It keeps saying I'm not logged in. Do we have a solution or tweak for this? It'd be troubling if my forums were non-functional for all IE users. I do have users reporting issues with this.

Thanks!

Lisa

Do you have more than one tab open ?
What version of IE did you use ?

Reset the coookie. That's the only thing that works.

I tried resetting the cookie and it doesn't work. Whenever I tell this board it needs to remember me, it will log me out automatically when I navigate through the Forum.

I'm really fearful when I want to upgrade to the latest version as this will seriously affect my users.

Is there any tested and proven fix? I am running 7.5.6p2 now which is without these problems.

Did you reset the cookie from the Control Panel? Or from within your browser? The former has always worked for me.

This post is for informational purposes only.
I maintain a fresh install of Windows XP SP3 w/IE8 only for testing and troubleshooting.
This is not my main setup, so the VM described below is purely for testing feature scenarios on a fresh system without any other installations or custom settings interrupting the test environment.
---

Here is what I have:
Fresh install of Windows XP 2002.
Installed all the windows updates and updated to Service Pack 3.
Updated to the most recent version of Internet Explorer for Windows XP, IE8.

Here is what I did:
1. Using IE8, I browsed to the login page:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/login

2. Entered my credentials.

3. I was then sent back to the main page (ubbthreads.php/forum_summary) where I was told, "You are not logged in. [Log In]"

4. I browsed to https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/ubb/mycookies.html to clear cookies, but the problem still persists.

This is a completely fresh install of "Windows XP Version 2002 Service Pack 3" with all Windows Updates installed. Nothing else is installed.

I don't have this login problem on any of my forums; It's only on ubbcentral.com.

I also did a completely fresh install of UBBThreads 7.5.8 to a sandboxed server. I could log in and navigate as expected, using IE8.

To further my testing on this fresh install of Windows XP, I installed Firefox v26.0; And could navigate to ubbcentral.com and log in successfully. No problems.

Summery:
My servers are running php5.2.17 and I have no problems logging in to a fresh or current install of UBBT v7.5.8 using either IE8 or FF26 on XP SP3. But, attempting to log in to UBBCentral.com with IE8, and only IE8, fails; FF26 is successful.

Update PHP to 5.4.x and you will have the problem. I assume that's what UBB Central is running. I can confirm that I am running 5.4.16, and I see this problem, and deleting the cookies fixes it. (I just did one yesterday.)

ubbcentral is on php 5.3.x

So the problem exists in php5.3 and 5.4 but not 5.2. I was hoping 7.5.8 would fix the problem. Looks like I'm wrong.

No problems with the current version of Chrome or Firefox logging in when the server is running php 5.2, 5.3 and probably 5.4 and 5.5.

But, as you've mentioned, users of Internet Explorer 8 will probably have log in issues if the server is running php 5.3 (confirmed) or 5.4 or 5.5.

I believe that some of the issues with IE not keeping people logged in is that we where using a very large value for the cookie expiration time and IE just "doesn't like it", it hasn't for quite some time; you can play around in Google and find plenty of people talking about it with other products. 7.5.8 lowered this timeframe (I think it's a week now versus a year) so IE should "play nice" with at least that part of the equation now.

Since upgrading to 7.5.8 we are getting an increasing number of complaints about people being logged out while reading or replying to a post. I haven't asked about browser versions, and the problem seems to clear itself (not verified in every case) by deleting the forum cookies (under My Stuff). I'm wondering if anyone else is seeing this issue crop up more in 7.5.8? I'm running on FreeBSD 8.3 RELEASE using php 5.4.23 and apache 2.2.26 if that matters to anyone.

I don't recall what verson you upgraded from.
But anyway it was suggested to use the mystuff>Expire cookies method.
Due to the new Board security key,etc.
It was also suggested to add a cookie prefix in the settings. so as not to have conflicts with other ubb boards,

That could have corrupted cookies.
Let alone the 7 day deal in IE.

It should have been a one time deal for the members.

We upgraded from 7.5.7. Yes, we do use the new cookie prefix. That may have something to do with it. I'll keep an eye on it.

As I said other than the 7 day default for ie , meaning they need to login every 7 days.
The expire cookies is supposed to fix any weird issues after upgrading and it was suggested.
In fact I upgraded a client and the admin had issues with rate topics.
Expire cookies fixed it.

Bark back if it is not the case.

As Baldeagle we also get A LOT of complains about people getting logged out from the forum after upgrading from 7.5,7 to 7.5.8. I have tested this myself and even after deleting all browser cookies and and forum cookies (under mystuff) I still beeing logged out after a while.

Our users tells us that the problem occurs in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Lynx, Maxthon and IE - on iphone, androide, windows and mac.
We have not getting reports on problems in Opera.
It also seems like the problem gets fixed for some users when they delete the cookies as suggested here.

After investigation further it seems like one cookie that stores the user_id gets set to 0 for some reason.
So this cookie gets set to 0 and when the user navigate to the next page we have no information about this user being logged in (so he gets logged out). We try to find out why this value is beeing set to 0, any ideas?

We also tried to change the cookie prefix to something new after upgrading.

So far, for us, it seems to be only people using IE that are affected.

Jeanette, I'm wondering if your issue is the one described here.

Thanks for answering Gizmo.

I have looked at that thread, but I dont think this has anything to do with our problem.

The problem is that the users gets logged out after just some clicks..
And this happens in every browser. I just can't figure out why the ubbt_myid cookie gets set to 0.

Here's every mention of ubbt_myid in the code:


Looks to me like it might be getting set to 0 in two places; libs/user.inc.php and scripts/logout.inc.php. I'd have to look at the code closer to see what the "0" refers to though. Maybe one of the whiz kids knows off the top of their head?

Thanks Baldeagle, I'll check this out.

Looks like one of the sessions (PHPSESSID, ubbt_mysess or ubbt_hash) is setting a wrong value and that makes the system to log out the user. This requires some more digging in the source code.. #fun

Well I don't have this issue with version 7.5.8.
Using ie or firefox.
At least with three sites I have updated as well as here.
Yes with the 7 day expire for ie, but not while browsing the forum.


I would suggest to open a support ticket. So at least it gets officially documented.

Possibly there is a issue with the installation and your current server configuration.
Or you performed some short cuts with the install/upgrade script.

Now as far as the lost password feature.
I have noticed that if you copy/paste.
There is a extra space added.

I did the upgrade for jeanettes' site; it was a textbook install, no hiccups of any kind.

I did the upgrade and followed the instructions precisely. I doubt seriously that is the cause of this issue, especially since our board isn't the only one experiencing the issue.

Then I am at a loss.
Because as I said I don't have the issue with firefox or IE accessing ubb7.5.8.
Also using vista and win7
I don't have Chrome installed.

It could be some specific client configuration. OS,internet security???????

I have not used win8 yet nor my ipad or android phone either.

Baldeagle I just visited your site.
Browsed several posts.
Worked fine for me.
Using win vista and Firefox 27.0.1 and trend micro as internet security

I'm still wondering if it has to do with what version of php you're running. I'm running 5.4.23.

It doesn't happen to everyone. It seems quite random, which makes me suspect that it only manifests itself when certain conditions are met.

Maybe.
I am going to upgrade somebody this weekend using php 5.4.22.
All the others were =< 5.3 as i recall.

5.3.3 is what I'm using; I figured most PHP issues would have been fixed in 7.5.8

Hopefully Ruben's upgrade this weekend will be useful in sorting this out. If he experiences issues, then that would point to a php problem. If not, then I think it's some weird combination of users' computers and knowledge of same that's causing the issue. I haven't looked at stats recently, but I'm sure the bulk of our users are using IE, and the complaints are only from a handful of them. That points to a desktop problem rather than a server problem, but we'll see.

Okay I just completed a upgrade where the client is using PHP 5.4.22.
I have not experienced any issues so far.

But I will defer to the members till they start to visit again.

Just another update:
Server Info
Server Type Linux
Server Load 0.52
Web Server Apache
PHP Version 5.4.22
MySQL Version 5.5.36-cll
UBB 7.5.8

I am using windows vista.
Trend Micro internet security
FireFox 27.0.1 and
IE 7.0.6002.18005

No issues what so ever.
For myself and so far any users