Debugging session problems

Posted by arkepp on August 30, 2007 at 2:02pm

The following is a quick description of how I debug login problems in cases where the user is logged into Drupal, but not in phpBB or mysteriously falls out. This is also a respons to kjuib's request below, but it is easier to refer to later when it is a separate story.

EDIT: As of 01/2008 the _k cookie / user key table is no longer set. Long sessions should be used instead. The reason is that phpBB and Drupal should use the same mechanism, and Drupal only supports session ids.

1) Clear the cookies in your browser
2) Go to the Drupal front page (Drupal will not log you in on the first page view after clearing cookies, so you need to refresh this page before using the login form).
3) Clear the phpbb_sessions_keys , and phpbb_sessions tables (using phpMyAdmin or something similar)
4) Login to Drupal. Do not go to any other page.
~~5) Verify that the phpbb_sessions_keys has a new row with the correct user id~~ See above.
6) Verify that you have three cookies names phpbb_something_sid, phpbb_something_u, phpbb_something_k,
check the contents of _u and _k , they should respond to the user id and the inverse md5 of the key.*
7) Go to the forum, check the login link to see whether you are shown as logged in or not.
8) Verify that you have the same cookies as before. If you have two sets of cookies for phpBB, check the path and domains.
9) Go to a new page in the forum, check 8 again. The reason for doing this is that phpBB can show you as logged in on the first page and kick you out on the second.
10) Log out. Verify that the phpBB cookies are deleted, or at least that the _u is set to anonymous. Note that some browsers, like Firefox, don't update the list of cookies correctly when cookies are removed / expire.

*: If your cookie contains "12d354ddfda9a2a8" , then go to http://weirdsilence.net/tools/md5calc/ (or any other MD5 calculator) and paste this into the field. For the value above, "dfa340732d42215f70604849a140a32d" is returned. You then go into the phpbb_sessions_keys table (again, using phpMyAdmin) and search for the row with key_id equal to "dfa340732d42215f70604849a140a32d".

Comments

Error at step 8

Posted by Kjuib on August 31, 2007 at 2:39am

when I browse to the forums page I get another set of cookies.
original: test.asdf.com
new set: .test.asdf.com

it seems to add an extra period at the start. I tried playing with the phpbb cookie domain to no avail... any suggestions?

What is the cookie domain

Posted by arkepp on August 31, 2007 at 3:12am

What is the cookie domain set to in the phpBB admin section?

As suggested ( http://groups.drupal.org/node/5855 ), try setting it to asdf.com. Leaving the field blank also works for me.

Also make sure you are running the latest version of the module. I patched something (too lazy to look up the subversion log right now) on the afternoon of the 28th.

update

Posted by Kjuib on August 31, 2007 at 4:57am

I tried the following for the cookie domain: asdf.com, test.asdf.com,
I also updated the module to the latest... some problem is happening though.

Once I login with drupal I get 3 new cookies:
They have a Host: test.asdf.com

Once I open the forums page I get 3 new cookies:
They have a Domain: .test.asdf.com

I also noticed that sometimes the .test.asdf.com _u cookie has a value of 1 instead of the user id 1001 (the user I log in as).

Thanks for being so quick on the replies.

EDIT: I did get it working... but I had to put .test.asdf.com in for the phpbb cookie domain... now the user stays logged in on the forums.

Ok, good. Can you confirm

Posted by arkepp on August 31, 2007 at 1:42pm

Ok, good. Can you confirm that you downloaded the module after the 28th, and that you are indeed using phpBB RC5?

sure can...

Posted by Kjuib on August 31, 2007 at 3:50pm

I downloaded the rc5 last week... and I just updated to the latest module yesterday when you brought up that you did changes.

Apache: Apache/2.0.52 (Red

Posted by Kjuib on September 3, 2007 at 3:10pm

Apache: Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat)
PHP: PHP/5.2.3

The file was: data_global.php
and the cookie_domain is currently: .test.asdf.com

cant log in anymore

Posted by demon326 on September 3, 2007 at 7:57pm

Hi,
i cant log in anymore in phpbb 3 RC5 :(

i followd the instructions above and still cant log in!..

now where running php 5.x and apace 2.xxx and MYSQL 5.xx

but i think i have found the problem.. when i rename the htacces in the forum dir i can log in and do like always posting.. so i gona comment out the lines for log in and so untill you have a beter solution.

ow yeah i deleted the sessions table by acident and added it already back and then deleted the session_keys table content and know phpbb is saying i'm the newest user....

but i think it cause i made a drupal users and deleted in drupal and phpbb..

I think you should start

Posted by arkepp on September 3, 2007 at 8:28pm

I think you should start from scratch. If you have users in Drupal, that is fine as long as nobody with a user id of less than 100 logs in.

That would overwrite the search engine users that phpBB includes by default. You can of course delete them or change their user id, but be thorough, leftovers will probably create problems since you then have something that is both a search engine and a regular user.

When I say clear the database I mean purge all the rows, the table structure should never be deleted.

@arkepp..,yeah.. but the

Posted by demon326 on September 4, 2007 at 8:13am

@arkepp..,yeah.. but the strange thing is when there is NO redirect to the drupal login everthing works fine.. the users can log in on both but when these RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^mode=login(.)$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^bypass=true(.)$
RewriteRule ^ucp.php(.*)$ ../phpbb/login [L]
are uncommented i cant log in cause i'm the super users in drupal..,and starting from scratch is crazy :P its a live site with more then 153 users..

and yeah i know but i pressed the wrong button in phpmyadmin :$

anyway thx for the good support :)

but i still have stil have no avatars on the forum..

Step 8 screws me

Posted by Cross_and_Flame on November 21, 2007 at 4:06pm

Hello there,

Everything was working perfectly in my test subdomain.

However, when I moved it to the main domain, I cannot login to the forum.

So I moved it back to the subdomain, and I still cannot login to the forum.

I went through the steps, all was perfect, even the reverse md5, until step 8.

There, I go past the index and I am logged out. There is a new cookie added at that point called SESS****(lots of numbers). It appears to have an MD5 value.

Any help? Thanks in advance.

sounds like a problem that I

Posted by amigob on November 21, 2007 at 10:13pm

sounds like a problem that I also had

Did you flush the cache of phpbb ?

AmigoB

Another error at step 8 solved

Posted by airali on February 17, 2008 at 1:17pm

I had the two set of cookies too. I solved this setting cookies from my phpbb administration in this way:
domain: mysite.it [so without any dot before!]
cookie path: /

step 5

Posted by _Mitto_ on March 15, 2008 at 1:49pm

I get new row in "phpbb_sessions". Table "phpbb_sessions_keys" is stil empty.
http://www.slap-on.net/phpbb/diagnostic

So what do i have to do?

Edit: I was install drupal+phpbb again .. and for now it works.

I'm really do not follow all

Posted by MGadAllah on April 19, 2008 at 4:23pm

I'm really do not follow all the steps mentioned here guys, may you please any one accept or agree to add me to messenger for just 5 minutes to let me know how to do it?
Please help me with this issue or if any one here can do it I can give you my username and password to access the website.
Please help
Thanks

_k cookie OK (Not set)

Posted by MGadAllah on April 26, 2008 at 8:32am

Hi
After I run the diagnostic test I've found this row in the table
_k cookie OK (Not set)
Please tell me what is it.
Thanks

It means that the

Posted by arkepp on April 26, 2008 at 6:20pm

It means that the "permanent" login cookie has not been set. This is okay, because it's (currently) not used.

Problem at step 5

Posted by manojn on June 27, 2008 at 5:14pm

After i login to drupal, phpbb_sessions_keys table still remains empty!
Due to this, i get logged out of phpbb after a while where as im still logged into drupal.

Could someone help me understand this problem...

See EDIT above, I added

Posted by arkepp on July 2, 2008 at 11:54pm

See EDIT above, I added strike to 5) to make it more clear.

step 6

Posted by dwebster on February 22, 2009 at 9:54am

Hi,

This module isn't working yet for me. Users arent getting logged into phpBB. One thing I am noticing is that phpbb_oacz1_u , _k etc are not set until the drupal user clicks on website.com/phpBB . Your instructions seem to indicate that these cookies need to be set as soon as the user logs into drupal. How do I fix this?

Another thing I have noticed is that website.com/phpBB/diagnostic doesn't really do anything for me, it brings me back to the drupal home page. Is there something new I need to add in phpBB/.htaccess for this link to work?

I'm having the same problem,

Posted by ncameron on March 25, 2009 at 11:11am

I'm having the same problem, did you ever manage to resolve it? I'm using phpbb 3.0.4, don;t know if this is an issue.

Cheers,
Neil

--
Drupal Development for Pleasure and Profit
http://drupal.altate.ch

--
Open Source Web Solutions
http://cameronandwilding.com

to add to my previous post,

Posted by dwebster on February 22, 2009 at 10:07am

to add to my previous post, apache error logs report this : File does not exist: /var/www/html/sandbox/phpBB/diagnostic

the module is definitely installed..