Difficulties with Loging-In

Difficulties with Loging-In

by Anja Choon -
Number of replies: 9

Hello everybody!

Some of my students have difficulties when trying to log in. In my class, most times when one logs in, he or she returns either to an empty log-in-form or to the page (s)he had used before. Most people then just use the link in the upper left corner of the site where one logs in and thereby arrive at the main page. There they see in the upper right corner that they are loged in. Unfortunately a minority of those students are then stilled not loged in and I have no idea how to help them.

I hope anybody in here could offer a helping hand. Thanks, Anja

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In reply to Anja Choon

Re: Difficulties with Loging-In

by Dixie Harrison -

This sounds rather familiar  smiley.gif  If it's going back to the log in page with no error, this is a problem that we have found comes from the person having a firewall.  I'm not in any way saying that's the only problem it could be, but when I've had students complain of it, it turned out to be Norton Personal Firewall.  If it's a firewall, they'll need to either tell the firewall to "trust" the site, or they'll need to disable it.

Dixie
*tickled pink she finally could offer something!!*  biggrin.gif

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In reply to Dixie Harrison

Re: Difficulties with Loging-In

by Sean Keogh -
That's what it sounds like to me. 've so far had four or five students with this problem. In each case it was Norton Personal Firewall.
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In reply to Sean Keogh

Re: Difficulties with Loging-In

by Anja Choon -
Dixie and Sean, thanks for your reply. I will tell my students and hope that this will end the problem. Anja
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In reply to Anja Choon

I just found something in the FAQ

by Anja Choon -

I can't log in - I just stay stuck on the login screen.

The most common cause for this is that your own computer (not your Moodle server) has a firewall that is stripping referrer information from the browser.

This can be fixed for everyone using your server by editing the Moodle configuration page and changing the variable "secureforms" to "No".

Another possible cause of this problem is that sessions are not configured properly on the server. You can test this by calling the script http://yourserver/moodle/lib/session-test.php.

 

Probably I will try to understand the other possible cause as soon as I get some time on my hands wink. Anja

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In reply to Dixie Harrison

Re: Difficulties with Loging-In

by Przemyslaw Stencel -
Dixie wrote: If it's a firewall, they'll need to either tell the firewall to "trust" the site, or they'll need to disable it.

Has anyone eventually made the Norton firewall "trust" a moodle site? How do we go about it?

I also have a student who's had the same problem with Norton and she actually disabled it. That's no solution, because it makes her computer vulnerable to attacks. On the other hand, setting secureforms to NO makes the site more vulnerable, if I understand correctly.
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In reply to Przemyslaw Stencel

Re: Difficulties with Loging-In

by Martin Dougiamas -
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I don't have Norton, so I can't tell you the exact menu, but the setting you're looking for is the one that disables "HTTP_REFERER".

This is a standard browser practice that passes the URL of the page linking to the current page (so that the current page knows where you're coming from). Secureforms relies on this to make sure you're coming from where you are supposed to be coming from.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Difficulties with Loging-In

by Dixie Harrison -
Thank you!  Now I know what to tell the students to look for.  As far as I know, all of them have ended up disabling their Norton for the period they are on the site - which, as someone else said, isn't a solution, but I couldn't find any good instructions on it, even on Symantec's website.
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In reply to Dixie Harrison

Re: Difficulties with Loging-In

by Przemyslaw Stencel -
Here's the relevant document from Symantec website.

I hope this is it, because I cannot verify it (no access to Norton PF)
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