Thread

Kevin,

I appreciate your time.

This is going strictly from memory (when this happened earlier this week): but I thought I had some limited inability to stay logged in, but it was intermittent, and sometimes I could open up a new tab, and that tab was OK for a while. Later, this problem completely disappeared for my super-admin account even while regular users could not stay logged in.

I don’t have much in the way of differing member groups; the other user and my own, regular, member account are both the same group and both had the same problem of not being able to stay logged in at all.

I’m been using ExpressionEngine 1.7.0, build 20101018, for a while now, and it has been working perfectly up until just this week when the problem surfaced. To be perfectly honest, I can’t see going through all of the work (and it IS a lot of work for me) to upgrade to 1.7.1 unless you can say that there is something changed in 1.7.1 over 1.7.0 that addresses a known bug in 1.7.0 regarding login stickiness.

What other user session type option would you suggest? AFAIK, there is cookies, session ID, or cookies & session ID. I had been using cookies & session ID. Do you think that session ID only would work if cookies & session ID does not?

Thanks.

Hey Kernon—

I definitely understand that having to upgrade your installation can be a lot of work, but it’s a fairly important step in the troubleshooting process. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I could skip it and came to find that it would’ve saved me hours of troubleshooting if I had just upgraded EE before wasting all that time. The change log hits the high points concerning changes in the code, so there’s always the possibility that something related to your issue has been fixed and isn’t mentioned specifically in the docs. If nothing else, we always recommend upgrading to the latest version so that we know we’re both working with the exact same ExpressionEngine. The more differences between your environment and the environment I’m testing in, the harder it is to nail down problems.

All that to say, I would really recommend upgrading. If you don’t have the resources to do that, that’s ok. Just know that as a general rule, it could potentially save you quite a bit of troubleshooting time. It’s also a good time to take care of any potential security concerns that may have arisen since your build.

If Cookies only are working for you right now, let’s just leave it there for the time being. I don’t think Session ID only would work if Cookies and Session ID wasn’t doing the job. Let me see what my dev team has to say about the Session IDs issue and I’ll post back.

Thanks for your patience!

Kevin

Kevin,

I understand your point of view—it is obviously easier if we are both on the exact same version, and it would be great if (by some chance) the upgrade resolved the issue.  But that isn’t likely.  Given that this isn’t (apparently) a wide-spread problem, there must be some fairly unique combination of circumstances involved.

The proposition that the new version could actually fix the problem is not logical.  If you could explain how a version that has been working for weeks, if not months, suddenly no longer supports a key feature (cookies & session IDs), then I’d be more open to doing the work of the upgrade.

This would obviously be different if I had just started using this version and the feature didn’t work, or if I just starting using the feature for the first time.  And, if this were a minor aspect of the system, I could live with it.  But it’s not a minor thing.  Also, of course, it would be far different if I were the only EE installation experiencing the problem!

I’m hoping your senior people can come up with some ideas, and I will re-test the problem over the weekend (when members are less likely to be accessing the site).

Thanks.

Hi Kernon,

I have chased up this issue and we’ll update this thread as soon as we can. Please do let us know what else you discover from your tests over the weekend.

Cheers

Greg

Greg,

I haven’t been able to replicate the problem at this time.  I have used the same computer and browser where I was able to replicate the problem last week, but it isn’t happening now.

I’ve never researched how EE implements sessions; it is at possible that something could happen with the server that would temporarily mess up handling of sessions?

Because of a very important society election is coming up, I have mixed thoughts about whether to go back to cookies & sessions, or play it safe with cookies only.

Thanks.

Hi Kernon,

I’ve never researched how EE implements sessions; it is at possible that something could happen with the server that would temporarily mess up handling of sessions?

I would guess so though I’m not able to say specifically what that might be. We’ll update this thread as soon as we can.

Cheers

Greg

Hi Kernon,

We do not know what would have caused this. There was a bug with Sessions Only that has been fixed in the beta but I suspect this was unrelated.

Is anyone else still encountering issues if they switch back to Cookies and Sessions?

I switched back to “Cookies and Sessions” and had the executive committee vote, and everything has worked fine so far.

I’ll report back if anything changes (particularly as the full membership votes).

Of course, this is just one site.

Ok will keep this thread open for now. Glad its working for you.Feel free to report back with any updates