ATutor

Learning Management Tools


  1. Home



Pages:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15


usernamepassword fail on first attempt



  • 2009-08-21 19:58:05

    usernamepassword fail on first attempt

    Things to describe:
    Operating system ATutor is installed on - Linux
    ATutor version - 1.6.2
    Patch #s applied - all plus some custom
    ATutor theme name - custom
    PHP version - 5.2.10
    MySQL version - 5.0.81-community
    Webserver & version - ummm shared web hosting with cPanel & Apache?
    Copies of error messages -
    Changes to default settings -
    Web browser being used - Firefox 3 & IE 8

    I have been getting some login issues and i'm not completely sure what is causing it. As far as i can tell, this is the patern of behaviour.

    open atutor, login straight away, works fine.
    open atutor, wait 15 minutes or so, first login attempt fails, second login work fine.
    logout from atutor, login again straight away, works fine.
    logout from atutor, wait 15 minutes or so, first login attempt fails, second login work fine.

    The common theme appears to be leaving the login page idle for 15 minutes (i have not timed this).

    I thought it might be the auto logout security feature which logs out a user if they have been idle for x amount of time. this executes at the same time the user attempts to login causing the first attempt to fail but the second to be successful (because the page has refreshed).

    And before you ask, Yes, i have been using the correct usernames and password, i've tested it at least a dozen times :P

    Does this sound plausible? Is this something native to Atutor or a fault in my system?


  • 2009-08-22 09:32:53

    Re: username/password fail on first attempt

    I sounds like a session problem. It could be IE 8 related, or perhaps server related. Auto log is set to many hours, so that's probably not it.

    Try a different browser to begin with.

    Also make sure your custom theme is up to date. See the theme changelog for details.

    http://wiki.atutor.ca/display/atutorwiki/Themes+Change+Log


  • 2009-08-25 01:31:04

    Re: username/password fail on first attempt

    Thank you for the reply Greg.

    I have tested this in IE6, IE7, IE8, FF3 and Safari and they all exhibit the same problem so i would rule out a browser issue.

    The custome theme was created from a ATutor 1.6.2 installation and remains on a 1.6.2 installation so i don't think any part of it would be out of date unless a 1.6.2 patch altered something?

    Are sessions variable supposed to expire after a certain amount of time?

    What things on the server could be causing this? perhaps some PHP settings?


  • 2009-08-25 19:59:01

    Re: username/password fail on first attempt

    After speaking with my web host and doing some more research i added the following code to my .htaccess file in the ATutor root folder;

    php_value session.gc_maxlifetime 36000
    php_value session.save_path /home/instruct/public_html/demo/tmp
    php_value session.cache_expire 36000

    I also created a 'tmp' folder and set its permissions to 777.

    This appears to have fixed the issue.

    Greg, do you know if this presents a security risk to the ATutor installation?