Login cookie problem finally solved?

I think I have sorted out the web site login problems. That said, it wouldn’t be the first time that I thought I had correctly followed the chicken sacrifice procedure, but it transpired that my pentagram drawing skills weren’t up to scratch.

I just browsed around in the forum and a few other sections before going to Hub to log in, and it did seem to work:

• Visit forum while logged out
• Try to start a new topic
• Get redirected to Hub to log in
• Now typing this message from the redirection back to forum (still signed in)

Anyone else want to risk their browser cookies’ life and limb to give it a try? :-)

As a reminder, if you find yourself logging into Hub but when you visit e.g. the forum you are suddenly logged out again, then the fix is:

• Close browser windows
• Clear out browser cookies for the ROOL site
• Visit https://www.riscosopen.org/ and click on “Log in” at the top right
• Log in, then browse the forum – never visit the forum pages before logging in.

Hopefully, this won’t be needed anymore.

Just logged in without problems, good job Andrew

Yes, seems to be fixed for me, too!

Looks like you may have correctly listed the names of all the great, great, grandparents in Latin as transcribed in chicken scratch – well done.

Previous experience says there’s a seven-day delay in certain faults (doom, gloom, woe…)

Looks good to me; Thank you Andrew!

All good here. Hasn’t worked for a long very long time on my usual browser. Usually resorted to another browser in Private Browsing and even then I had to do the right sequence of clicks to get it to work. Hopefully this’ll also see an uptick in the number of new users joining and asking questions about RISC OS.

Thanks – seems to work as before – using a Simple phone

Looks good! I followed the steps that usually make it fail for me, and it worked :)

Not sure, but I’ve just done something that would normally drop me back at a login prompt and here I am writing this. Thank you!

Success!

While testing visiting the git cheatsheet I did have it log me out the first time I went to the page, but on the second attempt I remained logged in. This might just be a one-time thing where it ran into a bad cookie from when things were broken; I’ll report back in a day or two once my session has expired and I need to log in again.

Another minor issue: While logged in, the bug tracker page initially thought I was logged out. After visiting a couple of other pages on the site it finally caught on.

Nice one.
Just logged on using Firefox, which I haven’t been able to do for a very long time. My previous workaround was to use Chromium instead.

Thank you, Andrew, it works for me now on two Android devices where previously I had to get an add-on to clear cookies.

Now if only we could find out why the Allocations system isn’t working…

OK with Netsurf, Firefox ES and Safari even after forgetting to kill the cookies. Now have to find another deity to offer sacrifice.

Yee-ha!

Looked at Recent Posts (it’s the first thing I do). Logged it. Came back here. Writing this. No need to fart around with cookies.

Your revised chicken bone shaking seems to have done the trick. When you levelled up, was there a “bing!” and coins falling out of the sky? :-)

When you levelled up, was there a “bing!” and coins falling out of the sky? :-)

There is very little chance of a useful answer in Bing

Is it me or is the setup more responsive?
Could be me, I’ve just finished an 8 hour session WFH digging through combined proxy/AV blocking and Firewall AV/URL blocking.
You’d think I’d run screaming from another computer screen.

Just managed to login from FireFox (on windows 10) without doing anything special like cache flusing, restart etc. Thanks for the fix.

Good to hear that this is working for so many people. Sorry it took so long!

While testing visiting the git cheatsheet I did have it log me out the first time I went to the page, but on the second attempt I remained logged in. This might just be a one-time thing where it ran into a bad cookie from when things were broken; I’ll report back in a day or two once my session has expired and I need to log in again.

It looks like this is a persistent issue.

1. Log in, then close your browser and wait a day or two for the session to expire
2. Starting on the forums, log in
3. On the “login successful” screen, navigate to Documents, then Developer Documentation, then Git cheatsheet
4. You’re now logged out!

Logging in a second time and repeating step 3 will leave you logged in.

Another minor issue: While logged in, the bug tracker page initially thought I was logged out. After visiting a couple of other pages on the site it finally caught on.

The bug tracker seems to be behaving itself today, so that might have just been a one-time thing.

I just ran into an issue, I’m afraid.

1. Start at https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/posts
2. Click on a topic, e.g. https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/15172
3. Click the ‘log in’ link at the bottom where the Reply box would be
4. Log in
5. At the ‘successfully logged in’ screen, press Back twice to get back to the topic
6. Reload the page

At this point, on my Mac under Safari, the Reply box appears and I’m still logged in. But on my work PC with Edge, I’m logged out again. I deleted all the ROOL cookies and tried it a couple of times, and it consistently logs me out when I follow these steps :(

Going ‘Back’ through a log in page normally logs me out of sites!
Example Using Windows and Firefox on ebay if I go to a page then in the same tab log in and then use the back button twice I’m logged out. Seems a logical action to me.
Or have I misunderstood you?

press Back twice to get back to the topic

“Back” hasn’t worked reliably since 1997.

Some sites have meltdowns if you use Back in unexpected ways (like, uh, wanting to go Back). I think some of it may be down to some browsers reloading state (and potentially stale cookies etc) from cache when going “back”, as opposed to refetching the content again.

Mom used to tell me that it was horribly broken with Amazon’s wishlist (I wouldn’t know, I use the app).

The weirdest one I’ve ever come across is sites that have intrusive advertising that basically hijacks the window for the advert. Hit Back and you’re back to Google or whatever, not the site you were intending to visit. I call this weird because the site owner has made a decision to get on board with advertisers so rapacious that they’ll happily trash the site that brought you to them, leading to viewer frustration and people not seeing much of the site at all.
[used to be a problem when I used the iPad; now I use Firefox on Android, I can stamp on all that nonsense]

Anyway. Back should be used as a matter of last resort.

call this weird because the site owner has made a decision to get on board with advertisers so rapacious that they’ll happily trash the site that brought you to them,

I presume you’ve been to sites that bleat about how the adverts are needed to fund their site?
You know, the ones that feature high in the search list results because of the sell-out rather than the content – well my opinion is that if the just quit the bleating and closed the site then better sources would be at the top.

I used to ignore the ads as a tolerable downside, until they started with obtrusive animations etc

“Back” hasn’t worked reliably since 1997.

Before this login issue came along in the first place a couple of years ago, Back worked fine on the ROOL site. Mind you, I didn’t have Edge at the time! So maybe it’s an Edge issue rather than a site one.

As you were :)

1. Start at https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/posts
2. Click on a topic, e.g. https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/11/topics/15172
3. Click the ‘log in’ link at the bottom where the Reply box would be
4. Log in
5. At the ‘successfully logged in’ screen, press Back twice to get back to the topic
6. Reload the page

Yes, that’s the approach I use on Firefox on Windows. In fact I did just that to reply to this. It generally seems to leave me logged in for a reasonable period of time. I’ve never checked to see how long this is though.

It generally seems to leave me logged in for a reasonable period of time.

Currently it seems to keep me logged in as long as the browser (Firefox) isn’t shut down. I normally use multiple tabs, and closing a tab on the forum doesn’t log me out. Closing all tabs and starting again does log me out. I stay logged in through computer hibernation too, but if that is overnight, I’m logged out in the morning. I don’t know whether that’s due to duration, or date change.