
Ask HN: Why can't I login to HN via Firefox? - SeanDav
I can login via Chrome or IE, just not Firefox. This behaviour started very recently - a matter of a few hours ago.<p>Also, for future reference, what is the best way to ask about this sort of problem?
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ISL
Just had to re-login to HN for the first time in weeks on Chromium. Android
required a refresh (something about a user id conflict). Something must have
changed on the backend.

~~~
Djehngo
Regarding the browser logout I had the same happen here, I was actually
concerned I had been shadow-banned or something when I realised I had been
automatically logged out.

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mindcrime
Same here. Brief moment of panic when I couldn't get logged in and immediately
started mentally going through my recent comments say "OMG, I didn't say
anything _that_ controversial did I?!!??" Luckily, that does not appear to be
the case.

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pg
We've had a bunch of reports of problems logging in. We're investigating.

~~~
kogir
I changed header parsing last night to make header name processing case
insensitive.

Due to an oversight, the first cookie sent was being dropped. As long as your
session cookie wasn't first in the cookie header, everything worked fine,
which is why I didn't notice (despite testing in Safari, FF, and Chrome). This
is also why clearing cookies sometimes worked - it shuffled the order in some
browsers.

Sorry everyone.

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SiVal
No problem, thanks for posting the details instead of just "try it now." It's
just a matter of time before I would have done something similar. I appreciate
the opportunity to learn from someone ELSE's mistakes for a change---one of
the benefits of HN.

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jgrahamc
I can't speak officially for anyone at YC, but I happen to know that they have
been experimenting with nginx 1.4 with SPDY support and there was an
incompatibility with the Arc web server and specifically with cookie handling.

An intelligent guess says this has something to do with what you are seeing.

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powertower
Does not look like it's enabled right now -
<http://spdycheck.org/#news.ycombinator.com>

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kogir
Check again now ;)

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RobAley
I deleted the HN cookies, then it allowed me in again.

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azakai
Works here too, thanks for the tip!

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powertower
Clearing browser cookies in IE9 does not work for me. After login it just puts
me back to home page and I still see the login link on the right.

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dochtman
Yeah, WTF. I noticed it this morning on my work computer (Firefox Aurora on
Windows 7). Logging in here from Chrome to upvote.

Logging in seems to work; I don't get an error. But the session doesn't stick,
after the redirect I don't get my custom navigation bar color.

P.S. Removing news.ycombinator.com cookies didn't help.

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rjbond3rd
> P.S. Removing news.ycombinator.com cookies didn't help.

Same here. FF 20 on Linux.

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dhugiaskmak
It didn't work for me at first, so thinking that I had somehow failed to clear
the cookies I tried it again and was able to log in.

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ColinWright
Try using "Private Browsing" - it sounds like you have the same problem I
have, reported here:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5649704>

No one seems to be taking it seriously.

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algorias
I'm having the same issue, and also wondering what the official support
channel for HN is.

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ColinWright

      Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to
      ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain
      about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please
      send it to info@ycombinator.com. 
    

\-- <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
dfc
...and yet you posted this: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5649704>

~~~
ColinWright
Indeed - at the time no one else had reported problems, and it was a
taster/teaser to see if it was just me, or a system-wide problem. I wasn't
asking for support, or reporting a problem to HN, just seeing if it was a
local SNAFU.

~~~
niggler
"at the time no one else had reported problems"

How do you know others didn't do the right thing (by emailing
info@ycombinator.com) ? AFAICT emails sent to the address aren't publicly
available.

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ColinWright
You're right, I didn't know that he hadn't already had a flood of hundreds of
emails. However, it was about 4 in the morning in California, so I figured
even if he had hundreds of emails, I wouldn't find out quickly. More, I
figured that most of the other times something goes wrong at least _someone_
posts to HN asking, and no one had done so.

I was hoping to find out if the problem was unique to me, and I suspected it
wasn't. I was half hoping to head off the usual flood of posts that something
was wrong and let there be just the one place, and I was certainly not
expecting this reaction. I am bewildered at the hostility, and going away to
try to understand it. I feel a bit like I've been kicked.

~~~
niggler
"I am bewildered at the hostility, and going away to try to understand it. I
feel a bit like I've been kicked."

IF there's any hostility, it's directed at people and acts that are seen as
inconsistent: You point to the rule that says "Please don't post on HN to ask
or tell us something ... If you want to say something to us, please send it to
info@ycombinator.com. " after you made a post telling them that the site is
having issues.

"More, I figured that most of the other times something goes wrong at least
someone posts to HN asking, and no one had done so."

That's not an excuse for you to do something which, as you pointed out,
violates a rule.

"I was half hoping to head off the usual flood of posts that something was
wrong and let there be just the one place,"

Incidentally there is one place that did head off the usual flood of posts:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650171> Are you complaining that it
wasn't your post that was the one place?

~~~
ColinWright
Look. It was four in the morning in California, so I posted a question here in
essence to see if anyone else was also having problems. Doing so isn't against
any rule, it's against a guideline. I assessed the situation, and decided that
at the time a posting was more appropriate than an email.

Subsequently someone asked if there was a support line, and I answered the
question. I don't see that as inconsistent, I think it was the most prudent
thing to do.

    
    
        Incidentally there is one place that did head off the usual
        flood of posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650171
        Are you complaining that it wasn't your post that was the one
        place?
    

What? I posted three hours before that. No one noticed, probably because it
was 4am in California. A later posting got the attention. So what? I have no
idea how you can see that as me complaining - I even posted cross-links so
people could go to the one that had got the attention!

This avails us of nothing. You seem to have issues with actions that I see as
having been perfectly logical _and_ reasonable. You don't accept my version of
what happened, and genuinely can't see why you think they were inconsistent.

Screw it. It's the weekend, there's a holiday Monday, and I'm walking away.

~~~
SeanDav
In defence of ColinWright, it was partly due to his quick comment, upvote and
crosslink that got this story onto the front page. Otherwise it might have
floundered and never reached the front page, which would possibly have meant a
whole flood of posts asking the same question, until one gained traction.

Having said that, I too found the logic of pointing out an email address for
support, while posting a submission, somewhat contradictory - but certainly
nothing to get aggressive about.

~~~
graedus
I don't think dfc's first reply or niggler's first reply contain any
aggression or hostility whatsoever. As you said, pasting the guideline having
done the opposite hours earlier was contradictory, so that was pointed out.

I should say it doesn't help that the first part of his explanation was that
if he had followed the guideline -- using email instead of posting -- he
wouldn't have gotten an answer as quickly as he would like. This immediately
implies that exceptions are to be made as soon as the recommended action
infringes on personal convenience, which would of course make the guideline
meaningless.

~~~
ColinWright
To my reading the guidelines didn't apply given what I knew at the time. As
far as I knew the problem might have been purely local, in which case I didn't
want to hassle YC/PG with what would amount to a support issue. I thought it
prudent to try to discover if it was wider than just my situation. So I
posted.

If you honestly can't see the difference between posting to tell YC/PG about a
problem, or to ask them a question, as opposed to posting to ask if other
people are having the same problem, then I'm at a loss.

~~~
graedus
I can understand that distinction, although I'd argue that pasting the
guideline without comment to another user in the context of this particular
issue implied that your stance was that this issue was one where the guideline
applied. You might argue that his or her question was general but I think it's
clear from the context that he or she was asking: "what channel should I use
when something _like this_ happens?"

Anyway, not a big deal and no hostility intended - have a good weekend.

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pasbesoin
Me too. Firefox 20.0.1 on Win XP, at the moment.

By comparison, login works fine in Chrome 26.0.1410.64 .

P.S. Deleting cookies in Firefox did not help.

P.P.S. Firefox Private Browsing window also does not work for me. Chrome
continues to work fine (multiple logins, each time using an Incognito window).

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kevingadd
Nuking my HN cookies fixed it. Using FF Aurora.

~~~
sp332
This worked on my home desktop but not my workstation. I get a new set of
cookies when I try to log in, but I'm still not logged in. (Tried repeatedly.)

Edit: clearing cookies, then refreshing the page _before_ trying to log in
again, did work. (Thanks phaylon!)

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rurounijones
Cleared cookies on FF in linux - Worked

Cleared cookies on FF in windows - Did not work

Versions of Firefox were the same, Linux version has various dev related
extensions installed but I cannot figure out why this would change things.

[EDIT] Site just died for a few minutes with NGINX error pages. Probably HN
fixing it.

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T-hawk
No Opera fans in this thread yet so I'll contribute a report. Opera wasn't
logged in to HN when I started the browser this morning, but simply logging in
again worked, no cookie clear needed.

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SeanDav
Not working on Firefox. Tested and working on latest versions of Chrome, Opera
and IE8 for Windows XP.

Edit: Removing HN cookies (3 of them) made Firefox work again for me.

~~~
lucb1e
If you erase your cookies for news.ycombinator.com, does it work then? See the
menu: Tools; Preferences; Privacy; Remove individual cookies (or something
like that, I translated it).

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lorin_pa
I used a few different browsers and compared the raw responses.

I noticed when I used Firefox (20.0.1 linux), there was an additional redirect
to heapanalytics.com.

Using Firefox(20.0.1 linux ), I obtained a valid session. It was simply the
login status that was displayed incorrectly.

I deleted the cookie from heapanalytics.com, refreshed my Hacker News page and
the correct login state message displayed (user name followed by logout link).

Hope that helps.

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huhtenberg
Ack. Just go back in via IE, thanks for the hint.

 _However_ I could log back in on my other machine with Firefox after, but
only after getting a different external IP from the ISP.

My bet is that they are experimenting with some sort of anti-spam/sock-puppet
protection thing and it's misfiring.

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what_ever
I actually could never log in on Chrome and Chromium and today, suddenly, I
was already logged in! It used to work fine on Firefox (don't have it on
office machine, so can't check right now).

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cholko
I too have not been able to use my original id, I made this one and I can
logout / login with it but not my original, shivetya

firefox / safari in mountain lion, windows 7 at work was firefox

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lnanek2
Still annoyed HN doesn't allow logging in via Google any more, myself. The
login functionality just seems to get worse and worse every time they touch
it.

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RyanMcGreal
This is seriously oddpants, but I could not log into HN until clicking on this
link, at which point I was automatically logged in.

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EwanToo
Took a few times of clearing my cookies, then it eventually just worked, no
idea why though and I guess it'll stop working again.

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powertower
Chrome works fine for me.

But I can't login via IE9 (Vista SP2) either.

Though from the last browser stats share on here, my issue only potentially
affects 3 users.

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b0rsuk
Whenever I type in the correct password, I'm redirected but I'm still not
logged in.

Debian Linux 7.0 Iceweasel 10.0.12

I'm using Konqueror as a workaround.

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schumacher
No Problems with FF 20 on Win7 and OS X

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arethuza
_Really_ glad this wasn't just me.

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MattBearman
I too had to re-login for the first time in, well ever, today. I'm running
Chrome on OSX.

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ralphael
Working for me on FF 20.0.1 / Win 7, after the suggestions to delete HN
cookies.

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jrabone
Chrome on Windows 7 with ABP here - had to disable ABP to be able to log in.

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mknappen
No problem with Firefox 20.0

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darkxanthos
I was having trouble on Safari/Mac OS X but it's all better now. Thanks!

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tlrobinson
I had to clear my cookies a couple days ago on Chrome to log back in.

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emeraldd
Seems to be working for me in: FF 19

(Really need to rebuild that ...)

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bobwaycott
FF20 on Mac works fine for me.

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msamir
nightly 23 -> no problem

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youngerdryas
Glitches in Safari and IE10 as well.

