Login won't resolve

[GKrabach]

Greetings PW community - I've got a site that I inherited, but brought it down to a local dev server (Ubuntu) in order to make changes before pushing those to the live version. I have the database connection setup and content displays as expected however I can't login. 

Environment info: 

• ProcessWire 3.0.33
• PHP 7
• MySQL
• Ubuntu server
• Admin url changed (to clients name )

Initial scenario: I can access the admin login page just fine, however when I was submitting the request I was receiving the CSRF login error ("This request was aborted because it appears to be forged"), so I went and found the login troubleshooting guide: https://processwire.com/docs/tutorials/troubleshooting-guide/page2. I took the following steps to debug:

• Verified that there is enough space left on HD to create the session file.
• Verified that the /site/assets/ subfolders exist and set permissions to 777 for testing
• Verified config.php is set to at least 644 (it is 777 now on my dev box for testing purposes)
• Disabled CSRF, session fingerprinting & session challenge in config.php
• I have installed an original copy of ProcessWire 3.0.33's index.php

After this, I stopped getting the forged attempt error, but now it was processing the login form submission and coming back to the login page w/o any errors or success message. So I enabled some logging: 

• Enabled debug in config.php (not receiving any on screen errors)
• Tailed apache error logs

Through tailing the logs I found that it was having an issue with sendmail (trying to use it, but sendmail wasn't installed). So I installed sendmail and configured it. Now it takes forever (approx. 4.5 minutes) to processes, and I'm not receiving any errors in the apache logs, and no errors are reported on screen when it finally completes/timesout.

 

[DaveP]

Hi GKrabach, and welcome.

Is it possible to see what is causing sendmail to be invoked? Normally, an admin login doesn't send an email. Is there a specific module (usually in /site/modules/) installed that is doing this?

You seem quite comfortable with all this stuff, so it might be worth installing Tracy Debugger as it can be enormously useful.

[GKrabach]

Dave - you were right, there was a module (LoginNotifier) that was in here, and as soon as I removed that I removed the lengthy processing time, however it still is processing the login form and just coming back to the login form with no errors/messages.

I'll see if I can get Tracy Debugger working, not familiar w/ how it works and getting it installed, but I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, if anyone has any recommendations, please let me know. Thanks!

[adrian]

@GKrabach - does the frontend of the site work correctly? Homepage and others? 

Maybe have a read through this: https://processwire.com/docs/tutorials/troubleshooting-guide/page2

[GKrabach]

Yes, as I mentioned, the database connection works fine and content shows up, and I've read through the link (actually linked to it in OP)

I just ran a test of a known bag login attempt. That returns an unsuccessful login message as expected - the status only applies when you submit valid credentials.

[GKrabach]

The issue has been identified, although the cause is not known so if anyone can identify where/why this happens, please reply so it's documented for others in the future. The issue was the production server was HTTPS, and I was trying to login via HTTP. My assumption is, somewhere there was a redirect happening with the SSL that removed the messages. We just had to login w/ HTTPS.

[LostKobrakai]

There are redirects to https, but when redirecting all post data sent with the request are lost, therefore forms won't work if they explicitly use the http protocol.