By mp-2 on

I've just tried installing both the 4.6.9 and 4.7.3 (at different times and with fresh databases) to no avail.

I keep getting the "Access Denied" message when I try to login after I create the first admin account. I check my database using phpmyadmin and find that the first account had been created (and has the uid of 1). I verify that the md5 of the password in the e-mail (when installing 4.7) also matches that of the password stored in the users table in the row with uid 1. The md5 password displayed on screen and e-mail (when installing 4.6) matches just the same field in a fresh install. I've tried logging in from firefox and IE.

When I try to login with an incorrect password, drupal correctly tells me that "Sorry. Unrecognized username or password". When I requested a new password, the md5 of the password sent in the e-mail matches the md5 hash in the "pass" field in users table.

I've changed the settings.php to reflect the correct db user/password/dbname. I've verified that my browser is correctly saving the phpsessionid cookie. I've also tried my url with www. and without it and tried both in the base_url in settings.php (along with folder name).

I tried searching on drupal and through google for my error message and found some people experiencing similar problems, however the fixes offered did not help me.

Maybe I'm missing something or interpreted the advice on those pages incorrectly. Please help me get this running, I feel like I'm almost there.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

Gary Feldman’s picture

Gary Feldman commented

This may be a dumb question, but what exactly are you entering for the username?

Gary Feldman

mp-2’s picture

mp-2 commented

so far I've tried 4 names, all consisting of only western alphanumeric lower case characters:

One is 3 letters long (my initials)
One is 6 characters long (my initials + "123")
One is 7 letters long "penguin"
One is 12 letters long

In each instance where I did a fresh install (ie rebuilt db from the sql files in database) I can verify using mysql that the users were created in the users table and the passwords match the md5 of the initial password sent to me in e-mail. If I enter the username and an incorrect password, the system correctly tells me "Sorry. Unrecognized username or password"

Those accounts also have uid of 1 and there was an entry with uid 0 (I read somewhere online about it). So I think this is not the issue.

No weird character encodings or anything, if that's what you're asking.

Don't worry about dumb questions, my guess is that I missed something of the sort and can't find the answer anywhere. I appreciate the assistance.

Gary Feldman’s picture

Gary Feldman commented

And you've checked that the usernames match up exactly, including capitalization and spaces?

I got into a misconfiguration problem with logintoboggan a while back, and had a similar problem. I wound up inserting print statements into the access checking functions until I found the problem. It's tedious, and not everyone can work that way, but I've always found it an effective approach.

Gary Feldman

mp-2’s picture

mp-2 commented

Fixed!

I knew I missed something pretty obvious. The "system requirements" page does mention PHP is needed as module if PHP options is to be set from .htaccess. After my unfruitful attempts with php.ini I started looking into why php.ini wouldn't work. It could probably still work, but I just haven't found a way, so I decided to play around with different settings on server.

My account wasn't configured on server to use mod_php on apache. It wasn't immediately clear that this was the case. I didn't know the implications either. I knew my host had options to switch between php4 and php5. I finally decided to start a support ticket to get this done not knowing whether it'd work. This only after playing with the php.ini and after many phpinfo() and echo/print on just about every file. In the process I read just about every include file.

I read somewhere during that running mod_php would run code with the same privileges as apache, plus each script when run has its own interpreter. CGI, particularly FastCGI allows host to better load balance (even on a network), saves on memory, and is more secure.

Drupal works now after my host manually effected the configuration changes on my account. All is good for now.

Thanks to everyone who took time read and reply with suggestions.

Gman’s picture

Gman commented

Are you using Firefox? There was an issue with a particular version of Firefox not reading the cookies correctly for a drupal-type login.

It has been corrected in latest version of Firefox.

mp-2’s picture

mp-2 commented

Yes, I'm using firefox v. 1.5.0.6 (which I think is the latest version) and I've also tried it in IE 6 on xp sp2.

I encounter the "access denied" on both browsers.

Azb’s picture

Azb commented

Hi,

I'm having the same issue. I noticed that I can login as 'admin' but as soon as I click on any link (once logged in as use 1) it redirects me to the 'Access denied' page and shows the login form once again. If I keep entering the username/psw I'm able to go from page to page.

Administration page (http://localhost:8080/?q=admin&time=1156430583) shows this:

user 08/24/2006 - 14:32 Session opened for admin. admin
warning access denied 08/24/2006 - 14:30 user/1/edit denied access. Anonymous view
user 08/24/2006 - 14:30 Session opened for admin. admin
warning access denied 08/24/2006 - 07:09 admin/block denied access. Anonymous view
user 08/24/2006 - 07:08 Session opened for admin. admin
warning access denied 08/24/2006 - 07:07 admin denied access. Anonymous view

Please let me know if you have any clue about this issue.

Thanks!

mp-2’s picture

mp-2 commented

I think you have a different issue from mine.

I can't even login as my first user account. It just tells me access denied. Whereas you can move about as long as you enter the username and password time and again, I'm stuck at the "Access Denied. You are not authorized to access this page."

mp-2’s picture

mp-2 commented

When I login using the valid first user account with correct password, even though I get the "Access Denied" page, I see this in the "watchdog" table through phpmyadmin

Session opened for <em>*myusername*</em>.

where *myusername* is the username of the first account with no asterisk or special symbols. Then the next entry is

<em>admin</em> denied access.

I also check the "sessions" table and there is an entry that matches the session id stored in a cookie PHPSESSID. In this case both the "sid" field in the "sessions" table matches the string "a175eac078d6df31d0d71001257d8ece" stored in the PHPSESSID named cookie.

I hope this helps clarify the problem.

mp-2’s picture

mp-2 commented

I also check the "sessions" table and there is an entry that matches the session id stored in a cookie PHPSESSID. In this case both the "sid" field in the "sessions" table matches the string "a175eac078d6df31d0d71001257d8ece" stored in the PHPSESSID named cookie.

I just reinstalled 4.7.3. Started with fresh database (ie dropped and recreated). Set the settings.php file with the db info and the base_url info. Register the first user (which shows up on phpmyadmin when browsing the "users" table). But I still get the same "Access Denied" error when I try to login. This time, however, no entry is added to the "sessions" table in the database, however a cookie was added on my browser with PHPSESSID. The quote above was written while I was meddling with 4.6.9 in the hopes of getting it to work and then running update to get it to 4.7.3.

I think I've just about exhausted the resources on google and drupal site (at least the ones that are relevant to this version). I'm going to try to look into php.ini settings. Any help is appreciated.

Gman’s picture

Gman commented

Sounds like a cookie setting problem. I encountered this once when I was messing with my php settings. I set the cookie domain to be different than that of my site. It messed everything up.

Try using the settings.php file and set the cookie domain to be your main domain:

ini_set('session.cookie_domain', '.example.com');

Just a thought.

paazio’s picture

paazio commented

I had the same problem with this access thinky.

I searched all around, yet founding no answer.

Eventually I noticed that my personal php.ini has
session.hash_function 1
Which stands for SHA1 hash function, where as Drupal assumes
session.hash_function 0
which stands for MD5 hash function.

After I changed that, everything worked as a charm.

Perhaps there could be an option for this in the later releases...

WillieBHines’s picture

WillieBHines commented

Same problem here.
drupal 4.7.3,
php 4.4.4,
MySQL 5,
fresh install, no extra modules.
The user is successfully created, but the log in is always rejected. It's as if my password doesn't match. In fact this is the message I get:

I tried running both the MySQL 4.0 and MySQL 4.1 scripts.

Sorry. Unrecognized username or password. Have you forgotten your password?

I'm emailing my ISP to see if it's the MD4 vs. other-encryption that was mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

WillieBHines’s picture

WillieBHines commented

1) Make sure you're entering an email address, NOT a password, into the second blank when creating that first user (or any user).
2) Verify that your web server can send email -- more specifically that your php scripts can send mail.

I was both entering a password instead of an email address into the reg form, and then also was working on a server which was firewalled away from being able to send email. When I commented out the user.module's lines that try to send mail (I added a 'return true' at line 405, right before it actually tries to send email), I'm able to get to the profile page.

So my current guess is that the user module is not handling a "false" from user_mail() as helpfully as it could. I'll verify and re-post after my server enables mail.

hfc_dolph’s picture

hfc_dolph commented

[quote]2) Verify that your web server can send email -- more specifically that your php scripts can send mail.[/quote]

I finally made it to launch drupal and I made the first account and never received the email with the password.
What exactly should I do to make drupal send me the email?

Please help by writing exactly what to do.

thanks

Gman’s picture

Gman commented

Ah WillieBHines, this sounds like when I had a cookie setting problem. Have you set up a cookie domain in your PHP settings, and does it match the domain you are using?

Try adding a php initialization setting in you settings.php file. I don't have drupal on this system right now, so I forgot the syntax, but the setting is something like cookie.domain = '.example.com'.

Gman

dahi_lassi’s picture

dahi_lassi commented

I have just installed drupal-4.7.3. on winXp system with the below config

apache_2.0.59
PHP Version 5.1.6
mysql-5.0.24

The db connection is working properly

*******
I don't have any ISP server .
Still is it possible that I can retreive the password provided by the mail in
any other way.
********
when I create a new user the user is being created in user table of Mysql db.

I tried by inserting md5(examplepasswd) in the password of user table of Mysql db.

I am not able to login in this way.

please help in solving this issue.

Thanks
Dahi Lassi