Manager login problems

I am having a strange issue, and I hope someone can point me to the solution... I just installed and set up MODx 0.9.6.3 (new install) on a client’s server. When trying to login to the manager it usually takes several attempts to work. I’m not getting the user/pass invalid error ... so it’s "logging in", but it appears to just redirect to the login screen. Sometimes I can get in on the 2nd or 3rd try - sometimes it takes dozens of attempts (it always eventually works). This is obviously very frustrating - especially for my client.

Has anyone else seen this problem?

I haven’t seen that problem, but I’m curious to know what might be causing it.

Do you have special Apache configurations? Does the install work if you turn off friendly URLs? (I’m stabbing in the dark here...)

Login errors appear in a jsAlert() popup (declared in manager/processors/login.processor.php), then after a delay you’re back at the login screen. The only thing I can think of is that the js is not working for you and something is going wrong with the login. Do you have users restricted in any way (IP, day of week, etc.)?

Check the MODx error log.

BTW, what happens if you enter the wrong username or password?

This could also be a simple case of a corrupted file from the FTP transfer; might re-upload the manager/ directory again just to make sure they all made it in one piece.

Did you rename the ht.access file in the /manager folder (if you’re using friendly urls and have the one in the root renamed)? Sometimes that can have unexpected results if the rewrite engine has not been turned off for the manager files.

We are having the same exact issue on The RackSpace Cloud hosting platform called Mosso. We have two sites running on the cloud that are fine one is 0.9.6.2 and one is 0.9.6.3. Any additional sites that we try to install on the cloud hosting has this issue of not being able to be logged into the manager.

In a cloud environment the instance you’re hitting might be changing between requests. That means you effectively loose your session and would exhibit this behavior. Revo enables db based session handling which avoids this issue.

Quote from: rthrash at Apr 23, 2009, 03:15 AM

In a cloud environment the instance you’re hitting might be changing between requests. That means you effectively loose your session and would exhibit this behavior. Revo enables db based session handling which avoids this issue.

You can also reconfigure PHP to use some other session handler with MODx 0.9.6.x; one would think in a cloud environment, that would be done for you. (sigh)