Hi everyone,

I just received a problem report from one of our users complaining about not being able to log in with her user account. When I tried to login with my own (admin) account I experienced the same issue:

- login page loads without any problems or errors
- I type in my credentials and click on login and ... nothing happens

The page recognizes the click and starts to redirect but then I get thrown back to the original login page as if nothing has happened.

Setting debug to 2 did not give me any information. Updating the installation to the latest version (2.62.2+170203) also did not resolve the problem. The strange thing is that this problem occured all of a sudden. I was able to login just this morning and now, without any changes I am aware of, I cannot.

Any ideas would be much appreciated. Thanks.

There are some reports about issues around certain browser os combinations. E.g. Chrome and Windows 10.
Workaround after login was to set LimeSurvey to enforce https or http connection. What kind of browser and OS did you use to reproduce the login issue?

I tried pretty much every combination:

Win 7: Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi
Win 10: Chrome, Firefox, Vivaldi

Every time it results in the same behaviour.
Meanwhile I checked the user table in the database, which looks fine to me.

HeiN3r wrote: Updating the installation to the latest version (2.62.2+170203) also did not resolve the problem. The strange thing is that this problem occured all of a sudden. I was able to login just this morning and now, without any changes I am aware of, I cannot.

Yes, this is because this problem is not related to a LimeSurvey update, but to a windows update.

It's a SSL certification problem. You should access the login page with the correct protocol (http:// or https://), and then, in LimeSurvey global settings -> security, change the value of "Force HTTPS" to On or Off (depending if you're using HTTPS or not), but don't let it to "don't force".

Thanks for the suggestion. I agree that this doesn't seem like a limesurvey problem per se.

I can access the page only via http. I also changed the "ssl_emergency_override" to true, which should force limesurvey to use http only - and not https, right?

Anyway, these changes had no effect. Regardless of what I type in as credentials, I always get re-directed to the original site without further notice.

The console shows me warnings regarding using passwords on a unsecure site, but these are just warnings. They shouldn't block the authorization?

I am really lost here ...

HeiN3r wrote: Thanks for the suggestion. I agree that this doesn't seem like a limesurvey problem per se.

Yep, the problem appeared for a lot of people recently, but it's clearly not related to the LimeSurvey code itself. It's good to have another confirmation of it.


About your problem:

You're trying to access to your installation with SSL (https://) whereas you don't have SSL certification, so the browser show you a warning and don't let you login. So open a new fresh tab, and then access your admin url with http, not https.

I don't. I definitively use http. It is just the firebug console that shows me these warnings.
If I try to use https, the site won't even load.

It is just that the server gives me a redirect (302) every time I hit login - regardless of what I type in.

HeiN3r wrote: I don't. I definitively use http. It is just the firebug console that shows me these warnings.
If I try to use https, the site won't even load.

It is just that the server gives me a redirect (302) every time I hit login - regardless of what I type in.

Here the code:
(wrong link, see next post)

As you can see, the redirect happen when the protocol you're trying to access is different from the protocol you're using.

If you're using http:// to access your admin url, and set ssl_emergency_override to true (not "true" with quotes, nor 1, but true without quotes), then the problem is probably related to your server configuration.

sorry, here the code:
github.com/LimeSurvey/LimeSurvey/blob/ma...lper.php#L4086-L4114

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

Somehow, and I have absolutely no idea why, the problem just disappeared. I can login, as if nothing happened, except I didn't do anything but reading about the problem during the last 30 minutes.

The only explanation I can come up with is that my provider must have update php, the database or whatever and now it is working properly again. I think I have to contact them, in order to get some logs.

Anyways, thank for all the help!

I must confirm and make some test but :

Seems to happen to me sometimes but with different LimeSurvey installation on same domain. If i connected to limesurvey1.example.org and want to connect to limesurvey2.example.org (unsure if it's subdomain or subdirectory on same domain).

The solution is here : manual.limesurvey.org/Optional_settings#Session_settings set 'domain' (or path) to the complete fixed domain.

I resolve the case by emptying the SessionName value of the global settings table.