MNET error in IE9

[Craig Eves]

This was reported by a myportfolio administrator (v1.5)

we have a small issue when transferring from moodle through to myportfolio.
For me the issue only appears for me on a PC with internet explorer 9 but works fine with chrome and firefox.

When I try to click on the myportfolio link in moodle I get an error page like this

Sorry could not log tou in

Looking at the source of this error page I can see this

    <script type="text/javascript">var strings = {"namedfieldempty":"The required field \"%s\" is empty","processing":"Processing","unknownerror":"An unknown error occurred (0x20f91a0)","loading":"Loading ...","showtags":"Show my tags","unreadmessages":"unread messages","unreadmessage":"unread message","couldnotgethelp":"An error occurred trying to retrieve the help page","password":"Password","username":"Username","login":"Login","sessiontimedout":"Your session has timed out, please enter your login details to continue","loginfailed":"You have not provided the correct credentials to log in. Please check your username and password are correct.","home":"Home","youhavenottaggedanythingyet":"You have not tagged anything yet"};

Sam McNeill has also been having trouble with the same link though he is on a mac and sees an error on chrome, safari and firefox. His error page looks different but has a similar error in the source for the error page

Site unavailable

    <script type="text/javascript">var strings = {"namedfieldempty":"The required field \"%s\" is empty","processing":"Processing","unknownerror":"An unknown error occurred (0x20f91a0)","loading":"Loading ...","showtags":"Show my tags","unreadmessages":"unread messages","unreadmessage":"unread message","couldnotgethelp":"An error occurred trying to retrieve the help page","password":"Password","username":"Username","login":"Login","sessiontimedout":"Your session has timed out, please enter your login details to continue","loginfailed":"You have not provided the correct credentials to log in. Please check your username and password are correct.","home":"Home","youhavenottaggedanythingyet":"You have not tagged anything yet"};

Would you have any ideas on where these errors might be coming from and how we might resolve them?

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

Hi Craig,

Those are just a bunch of translated strings that I think are included for javascript on every page (error or no error). They're unrelated to your mnet problem.

The "Sorry, could not log you in" error is often due to mnet misconfiguration, or sometimes due to expired host keys, so you could try regenerating the keys and see if that fixes it. But the exact cause will be in the webserver error log at the time the error occurred.

Very strange that the mnet error would occur in some browsers but not others though, I don't think I've come across that before.

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

I can't reproduce this with the latest code, so marking as incomplete until we can be sure this is actually a bug in Mahara.

[Craig Eves (craig-flexible)]

Hi Richard

I received this which details more about the error - hopefully this helps.

Hi Craig,

I have been looking at the traffic sent /received by the different browsers and there is definitely something different. The part of the error messages I sent you that looked interesting to me was the missing variables sesskey and related. When I sniff the traffic from firefox I can see values are being passed like this:

        'sesskey' : 'X0tK2ydq86GFeD31',\n
        'wwwroot': 'http://myportfolio.school.nz/',\n
        'loggedin': 1,\n
        'userid': 86392\n

However in internet explorer I see the following:

        'sesskey' : '',\n
        'wwwroot': 'http://myportfolio.school.nz/',\n
        'loggedin': 0,\n
        'userid': 0\n
Which obviously causes the error I mentioned in the previous email.

When I work backwards from here I can see internet explorer is doing something different with the negotiation

Vs firefox which works fine

I see also on the line a couple previous: Proxy-Authorization

IE Proxy-Authorization: Negotiate TlRMTVNTUAABAAAAl4II4gAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGAbEdAAAADw==\r\n
Firefox [truncated] Proxy-Authorization: Negotiate TlRMTVNTUAADAAAAGAAYAHwAAABsAWwBlAAAAAgACABYAAAABgAGAGAAAAAWABYAZgAAABAAEAAAAgAAFYKI4gYBsR0AAAAP/ZhgsHJQtT0KV6EYzqDS6VMAVABBAEMAQgBSAFUASQBDAFQARQBOAEcAUwAtAEIAUgBVAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

So the IE version looks to have lost a big chunk of the key which might cause the failure of the negotiation and disrupt the passing of the missing values?

And the line up one again relating to the cookie

IE [truncated] Cookie: __utma=61070256.1103620605.1331598478.1335130693.1335134134.19; __utmz=61070256.1332300789.9.2.utmcsr=webhelpdesk:8081|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/wo/SILu1GSSYVwZq5Kdj6QQOg

Firefox Cookie: __utma=61070256.537807588.1331781713.1334873344.1334876335.26; __utmz=61070256.1334107670.23.3.utmcsr=dev-classes.stac.school.nz|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/; mahara=8599e900b0b1153b139a7b5aa5de4aa5\r\n

I have cleared the cookies in IE but doesn’t make a difference, I suspect the line with the proxy-authorization is the problem though I don’t know why this would happen.

Thanks,

Brad Rush
ICT Helpdesk
St Andrew’s College
<email address hidden>

[Richard Mansfield (richard-mansfield)]

A couple of related posts:
https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=3478
https://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=4111

[Craig Eves (craig-flexible)]

Hi Richard

I suggested trying compatibilty mode in IE
i got the following reply that may help to track down the cause of this problem - Sam's email is <email address hidden>

Hi Craig,

1) We actually force all Moodle users into compatibility mode because of a bug in our Moodle Theme which was causing IE to render the site poorly. So, even in compatibility mode we don't get any improvement.

2) We can reproduce this every time but only when users are creating a new account on MyPortfolio i.e. they don't already exist. If the user is on MyPortfolio and they authenticate across using IE then there are no problems.

3) I'd be happy to provide a test user / password for our Moodle installation so someone could log in and click on the network block to push them over to myPortfolio.

4) Reading the bug report it looks like the apache error log will be on the myPortfolio server and not on our local Moodle server - we replicated the error just now and I was checking the apache error logs and there was nothing there.

Regards,

Sam McNeill

[Craig Eves (craig-flexible)]

The problem with IE9 and SSO is also happening in other schools - do you need any more inforamtion to try and reproduce this - I can probably get admin access to their Moodle if required.

I was at a Moodle meeting with other teachers last week and raised this issue and a number said they had it too. I've just asked for confirmation from the Papanui High Director of ICT and you can see this here:

Hi,
Yes this is definetly happening.
Our students can go from Moodle to MyPortfolio seemlessly in Chrome but not in IE. In IE they are not logged into MyPortfolio and so get an error.
Let me know how you get on.
Cheers
Jacqui

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Mahara because there has been no activity for 60 days.]