[Solved] Unable to login to forum on Firefox

[rab0171610]

I was not able to log in to the updated forum on Firefox. If I attempt to use any of the features on the log in page in Firefox (i.e.
"I forgot my password", "Resend Activation Email" or after entering credentials and hitting the "Login" button) It displays an error:

Code: Select all

The submitted form was invalid. Try submitting again.

I was able to use Google Chrome to log in and was prompted to change my password.
I have deleted the cache in Firefox and highlighted Gentoo Forums in the history and hit "Forget about this site". It prompts me to confirm that it will delete the history and cached files for this site.
I restarted the browser and the computer. However, I am still getting the error message when trying to submit any form data.
Thank you.

[Chiitoo]

Unsure if those actions on Firefox would not already do this, but can you find a cookie set for forums.gentoo.org in it still?

If yes, please delete it and try again.

[rab0171610]

Thanks, I did notice that button in Firefox and used it but it did not seem to have any effect. Thanks anyway.

[Chiitoo]

It does seem to work for me with Firefox here.

Did you also try a clean, new profile already?

I remember seeing that exact message during testing, where I had changed quite a bit of things up and had an old cookie around still... but I suppose this is something different then, unfortunately.

[Chiitoo]

Oh and I forgot there is a button in the footer of the forums as well, which you could try if not yet tried.

[rab0171610]

What finally worked:
There are two icons in the address bar to the left of the site address on Firefox. The first is Enhanced Protections icon which looks like a shield. The second is Security icon which looks like a lock. When hovering over this icon it says "Verfied By:Let's Encrypt". When clicking on that lock symbol, there is an option at the bottom that says "Clear Cookies and Site Data". When clicking on that a pop-up says, "Removing Cookies and Site data may log you out of websites. Are you sure you want to remove cookies and site data for gentoo.org?". There is the option for Cancel or Remove. After clicking Remove and confirming, then restarting the browser I was then able to log in.
I am assuming that I had cookies that were not cleared by the other methods, including the prompt to delete cookies on forum site itself.
I detailed this in case anyone else has similar issues moving forward.
(Thank you for swift responses Chiitoo!)

[Chiitoo]

Good to know, and good to see that was it!

[logrusx]

I didn't have any problems like that on Librewolf neither on Firefox for Android. I'm assuming you have used some of those privacy enhancements for Firefox which has impacted what the forum software expects to be working. There was a set of patches that would change all kinds of settings on Firefox to make it more private which broke a tone of functionality. Did you use one of those?

Best Regards,
Georgi

[sam_]

It's possible that maybe OP got unlucky while we were fixing configuration and had a cookie with a bad domain/base (for the temp site)? But I am not familiar with what some patches might do, so Georgi could be right as well.

[Banana]

I suspect cookie (or client data in general from this domain) lifetime.

A more "better" way would be to reduce those lifetimes from any data which the client can store and the server provides to store (cookie, localstorage, cache-ttl, cert-ttl etc). Like reduce them in the days/weeks leading up the a change. Maybe down to minutes.

After the change, wait some time, you can increase those times again.

This will not fix it from everyone (since you can not control everything a user does), but for the most it will.

Anyway, thx to all who responded quickly and tried to solve this problem.

[rab0171610]

It seems the issue was the cache. I restored and deleted my profile several times to confirm the solution.
What ended up resolving the issue was clearing the cache (Temporary cached files and pages).
Clearing cookies alone, as I stated in my solution earlier, didn't actually work.
After deleting the cache, I was then able to log in correctly.
There are no patches or privacy enhancements.

Side note: While I was still not able to log in, i.e. before clearing the cache and restarting the browser, the "delete cookies" at the bottom of the forum did not work correctly. After clicking on the "delete cookies' a spinner would appear and disappear, giving the impression that something had happened. I was still not able to log in and continued to see the same "form was invalid" error. After clearing the cache, the forums "delete cookies" button worked correctly, in that afterwards, it redirected the page to the log in screen, where I was able to finally log in.