Question

I upgrade to the new twiki (manually) and have a problem where the WIKINAME is sometimes being reported as TWikiGuest and not as my wikiname.

When I click the 'login' link on the WebLeftBar (I applied the patch MissingTWikiGuestLeftBarInTWikiRelease01Sep2004) in any web it then returns to the currect page except that now it reports 'Create personal sidebar '. No, it doesn't ask me to login (since I already logged in previously)

So, clicking the 'login' link seems to remind Twiki about my credentials but then it promptly forgets it when I navigate to any other link in the Twiki and it all starts over again.

To try and isolate the bug I added %WIKINAME% to the top of the WebLeftBar so that I could see when it changed. the preview cgi always reports who I am correctly. When on view it reports me wrongly until I click the login in link. I had a quick look at both those scripts, they are basically identical ,pulling the remote_user from the CGI $query object. No luck there.

I suppose I could have messed something up since I did a manual install, though I followed the TWikiUpgradeGuide closely.

Is there any reason why it would lose the remote_user sometimes and not others?

I have some screen shots that I'll try to attach

Environment

-- KevinBaker - 09 Sep 2004

• edit-left-bar-01: Editing the WebLeftBar to add WIKINAME

• Editing the WebLeftBar to add WIKINAME:
  WebLeftBar to add WIKINAME" width="744" height="721" />

• Previewing the edit. Notice that it has my Wikiname correct.:
  

• After the save. Notice that now the WIKINAME is TWikiGuest. where have I gone?:
  TWikiGuest. where have I gone?" width="744" height="723" />

• After clicking 'login' on the WebLeftBar. now I'm found again.:
  WebLeftBar. now I'm found again." width="743" height="720" />

• But clicking on any link again just makes it forget it again. Back to being a guest:
  

Answer

-- TrevisMartin - 09 Sep 2004

I did set the doRememberRemoteUser to 1 and it did not cure the problem for me. I have had to remove the personal toolbar because it was so confusing when it did not work. I think this feature needs some more looking at.

-- KennethLavrsen - 10 Sep 2004

I activated the doRememberRemoteUser variable and it seems to have fixed it. Thanks. It makes me curious though why/how Twiki loses the REMOTE_USER sometimes and not other times. Is it a known browser/server problem? Are other web applications affected by this?

-- KevinBaker - 08 Oct 2004

If your site requires authentication for edit and other modification tasks and doesn't require it for view, then this is the behavior you'd expect. The web server will set the REMOTE_USER variable if authentication is required for a script. It may not set it if authentication is not required.

-- ClaussStrauch - 08 Oct 2004

As a sidenote, you can stumble into this behavior as well, if you have been using SessionPlugin - and then add SpeedyCGI to your site. More information on this in SessionPluginDev and ViewauthAndSessionPluginFailsWithSpeedyCGI.

-- SteffenPoulsen - 08 Oct 2004