220923 - HP 4200 print appl;iance authentication repeats and repeats and...

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Core :: Networking: HTTP, defect)

Description

[mikevx]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20030925
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20030925

Working with an HP 4200 print appliance on a firewalled network (no URL you can
test with, sorry) and I get the following behavior:

I access the appliance by name.  Under IE and NS 4.7, the procedure is that I
get an authentication box where I enter an ID and password, once entered, access
is allowed and I can go browsing theough the appliance.

With recent Mozilla releases, including the one I am filing this report with,
the following behavior occurs:

I access the appliance, the first thing I get is the standard ID/Password box,
with the text 'Enter username and password for "" at appliance'
Where I am using applaince to represent the appliance name.
I enter my local applaince ID and password, and I get another box with the
following text "Enter username and password for "hp print server appliance" at
appliance'
Once I get this I get some graphics on screen, then I get another box prompting
with empty quotes, then I get another with the "hp print server applaince"
reference, and this goes on forever, essentially.  If there is a pattern to the
"" vs "hp print server appliance" I haven't figured it out.  After lots of
rounds I start getting page elements popping up.  It appears to be
authenticating every page element, and telling password manager to remember does
not help the process.  I have not had the patience or the finger strength to go
all the way through until everything gets displayed, as there dozens of screen
elements and it takes several password rounds for each one to pop up.  I am
willing to run tests if needed.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enter appliance network name in location bar.
2. Enter ID and password in box that appears.
3. Repeat 2 until fingers stop working.

Actual Results:  
As I indicated, eventually page elements start appearing, but it requires sevral
passes of ID/Password at the two differently prompted boxes for each element. 
Stress on my fingers gets me before I can get the whole page to appear.

Expected Results:  
Once the ID and password were entered at the first prompt, Mozilla should have
rendered a screen containing a menu of options (graphic/javascript buttons) to
the left and an image of the server device over some configuration information
for the device in the center of the screen.

Another person here is getting the same thing using Mozilla on the same type of
system "out of the archive" with none of the fine-tuning I have done to my copy.
 I have tested this with and without a proxy in place, there is no difference in
the behavior.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Is the page just alternating between "" and "hp print server appliance"?  If so,
it looks like the server is sending different things with different auth realms
and thus the latest cached credentials we have are always for the wrong auth
realm....

Comment 2

[mikevx]

In response to [e-mail]:

The changes are a bit of a mix, sometimes it alternates, other times it does
runs of repeats of one or the other, with a definite bias toward "hp print
server appliance" runs.

In testing this to answer the question, I finally got enough loops in to get it
to let me actually process things.  This still generated a mix of the messages
whenever changing screens.

Comment 3

[mikevx]

Another update as I work with things.  After some fiddling, I have worked out
that, while it takes dozens or more authorizations to get to anything, once I
have passed a particular 'place' in the session, I am not asked to re-authorize
that point again.  It just took some realizing because of the number of things
that have to be authorized.

So, as long as I leave Mozilla running, I can use the print appliance freely
once I get past the first round of authorizations, being prompted only for bits
I haven't accessed since the last Mozilla re-start.  Needless to say I am not
ginog to re-start Mozilla without a very good reason or if someone wants me to
test something relating to this problem.

Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.