46118 - New Profile: Asked for authentication every time when reading the posted articles from NEW news account.

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 36816

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, defect, P2)

Description

[Karen Huang]

Used 07-21-08-M17 commercial build

Asked for authentication every time when reading the posted articles from
non-secure/password protected news.

1) Adding a non-secure news account from account settings
2) Subscribed a password protected newsgroup
3) Tried to ready those posted articles from the theread pane.
4) Actual results: The password dialog display for everytime (not only two
times) when reading this posted newsgroups articles

Expected Results: Shouldn't display everytime when reading the posted articles
from non-secure/password protected news.

Addtional Info: I added news server "poisonivy.mcom.com" from the account
setting and subscribed "xrated" newsgroup.

Comment 1

[Karen Huang]

Ccing Scott since Seth is in sabbatical. Nominate for nsbeta3.

Comment 2

[Karen Huang]

I am thinking this should be in beta2 because:
1) This bug is not only occurring on the non-secure/password protected news. If 
you are creating this news/newsgroups from the NEW PROFILE, it will be occurring 
on the secure news server as well. 
2) It's really inconvenient for the users for asking the authentication every 
time when reading the posted articles from NEW news account which 
needs authentication

Adding regression & nsbeta2 on the keywords. 
Hope Scott can reassign to a appropriate developer since Seth is in sabbatical.

Comment 3

[Karen Huang]

This is not only occurring on Linux, problem is also occurring on WinNT. 
I didn't test on Mac yet, but assume it's on all the platforms. Change the 
platform to All

Comment 4

[Scott MacGregor]

Karen, are you sure this used to work in seamonkey?

PDT: I would recommend a beta2- for this bug. I wouldn't pull a beta off the
wire for this. It's a pain but you can still read your news articles. I don't
think it meets the beta2 criteria of "would you pull it off the wire". There
isn't any data loss or a crash or anything like that. 

Comment 5

[Karen Huang]

For non-secure part (e.g. news:poisonivy.mcom.com, newsgroup: xrated), it only 
display two times before. I remembered there is existing bug there. So that's 
why I put the regression on the keywords here.
For secure part (e.g. snews:secnews.mcom.com, newsgroup: netscape.champions)
since this is just working for the new profile recently, so I will agree with 
you ....

Comment 6

[leger]

please relnote2 this - vishy

Comment 7

[selmer (gone)]

Adding mail4 triage nomination keyword.

Comment 8

[lchiang]

- per mail triage

Comment 9

[Scott MacGregor]

I think we are basically saying you can't use snews if we don't fix this bug.
I'm sure it's a trivial fix. At least give it a mail6 =)

clearing for re-nomination....

Comment 10

[laurel]

Karen mentioned yesterday that the behavior has changed in that it doesn't ask
for authentication on reading each message, only that it asks for authentication
twice in a session... 

Comment 11

[Karen Huang]

I take it back, this problem is still occurring on today's 08-04-05-M17 
commercial build and it's only occuring on New profile's non-secure/password 
protected new server. Problem is not occurring on migrated non-secure/password 
protected new server.

Comment 12

[Karen Huang]

By using today's 08-04-05-M17 commercial build 
Problem is also occurring on New profile Secure News. Actually I have mentioned 
on my 2000-07-25 15:55 comments:
>If you are creating this news/newsgroups from the NEW PROFILE, it will be 
occurring on the secure news server as well. 
Adding "New Profile" in front of the summary to specify this problem for New 
Profile: secure news & non-secure password protected news.

Comment 13

[Karen Huang]

Since It's really inconvenient for asking the authentication every 
time when reading the posted articles from NEW news account which 
needs authentication. 
Are you sure that the target milestone is still "Future"?

Comment 14

[Scott MacGregor]

I already removed the beta3 minus for reconsideration. I'll move back the
milestone too.

Comment 15

[lchiang]

+ per mail triage
Reading so many bug reports in such a short time can make someone go crazy :-)

Comment 16

[Karen Huang]

Yes. It is....:-)

Comment 17

[David :Bienvenu]

I think with the nntp connection cache, you should only get asked for a password
once per session. This is in m18, not m17/PR2. Please let me know if that is not
the case.

Comment 18

[David :Bienvenu]

Karen, if you check if this is still happening (with m18!), and it's not, then I
think we can remove the nsbeta3+.

Comment 19

[Karen Huang]

Yes. It seems that it's working fine now.
Right now, it's asking for authentication only one time when reading the posted 
articles from NEW news account. Removing nsbeta3+ based on my verification.
But, it hasn't been fixed - I am wondering to know why it didn't work for beta2 
and now it's working?

Comment 20

[Karen Huang]

I was using 08-10-09-M18 commercial build.

Comment 21

[David :Bienvenu]

It's because of the nntp connection cache - since now we leave connections open,
once you've logged on, you're not required to log on again, until the connection
is closed. Connections time out after a certain time of not using them(I've
forgot what that time is - I think it's a few minutes ~ 3). Connections will
also be closed if you press stop while a connection is running. So this bug is
not fixed, but it's not nearly so important. The fix is to remember the password
for a server/newsgroup and not prompt the user for it, but again, it's not so
important now.

Comment 22

[scottputterman]

mail triage marking nsbeta3- based on new information.

Comment 23

[scottputterman]

Sorry for the extra mail. Removing mail4 keyword.

Comment 24

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Do we need to relnote this, or can we claim it's working as designed? ;-)

The blurb:
It seems unclear to me whether this bug requires either of a "developer" or 
"user" release note for Netscape 6 RTM. If anyone feels it does, can they please 
draft one and then nominate with the relnote-user or relnote-devel strings in 
the Status Whiteboard.

Thanks :-)

Gerv

Comment 25

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

Mass moving all NEWS bugs from esther to myself.

Comment 26

[David :Bienvenu]

adding mail3 keyword

Comment 27

[David :Bienvenu]

changing priorities

Comment 28

[scottputterman]

marking nsbeta1+ and moving to mozilla0.8

Comment 29

[scottputterman]

reassigning to naving.

Comment 30

[scottputterman]

moving to mozilla0.9

Comment 31

[scottputterman]

marking nsbeta1- and moving to future milestone.

Comment 32

[Skewer]

I'm still seeing this. News asks for my username and password every time I open
a subscribed newsgroup for the first time, post to a newsgroup for the first
time, or download the newsgroups. This should NOT be happening because every
time I've told password manager to save the username and password. I think this
is VERY important for nsbeta1 and should be renominated. Furthermore, I think
this should also be marked nsCatFood. When I tell news to save my password, I
mean it! This is highly visible and would cause Netscape a great deal of
embarrassment if it slipped into a public release.

Comment 33

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 95001 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 34

[Navin Gupta]

over to seth, component owner. 

Comment 35

[Henrik Gemal]

This is working for me in 20011021

Comment 36

[Henrik Gemal]

could the reporter (Karen Huang) please test this one since it's now working for me.

Comment 37

[Josh Levine]

I have this problem intermittantly with a password protected NNTP server. 
Mozilla forgets the username and password in between groups, sometimes even
between messages, and almost always between sessions (even if I saved them in
the password manager; this might be related to bug #101193 because the password
manager also shows the wrong username - it shows the username portion of my
e-mail address rather than the username I login to the NNTP server with).

The problems I am experiencing with the newsreader appear to occur more
frequently in 0.9.8 then in 0.9.7...I am actually experiencing pretty much all
of the problems #98033 is tracking...

Let me know if there's anything you need me to do to help fix this.

Comment 38

[Andrew Hagen]

*** Bug 116493 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 39

[Neil Becker]

sorry for complaining, but can someone please bump up the milestone on this one
and its kin?  it's been around since 2000, there's a lot of votes for fixing it.
 Thera are plenty of comments about this news authentication bug, but no test
cases/patches/talk of fixing etc.  

I was hoping someone with more experience with the project could step up to the
plate and fix it, or maybe post some hints on how I or someone else could fix
it.  I'm still familiarizing myself with the code, but I know almost nothing
about news authentication or the password manager.  it's a pretty annoying bug,
seeing as my username and password for my news server is relatively long and
complex.

Comment 40

[James M Mastros]

I'm still seeing this, with an unencrypted, but username-and-password-requiring,
news server (giganews.com).  Strangely, it seems to be fairly random.  It almost
never requires it right away.  Sometimes, after I get a username required
message, I can do somthing else, on the same account, and not get a message and
have it go through correctly.  Also, I just noticed somthing else very strange:
I opened the password manager, and I've got the following related-seeming entries:

(Vertical-bar denoting column sepperator between "site" and "username".)
news://[e-mail]:119/#password | james
news://[e-mail]:119/#username | james
news://[e-mail]:119/alt...#password | james
news://[e-mail]:119/alt...#username | james
smtp://[e-mail]/ | <>
imap://[e-mail]/ | theorb

Now, the strange parts about that are several and varied.  First off, what's
with the #password and #username entries, rather then one entry.  Second of off,
what's "james" doing there at all?  That's not my username on any of those (on
news.pa.comcast.giganews.com, it's cc#####.  That's not even the mozilla
profile's name (which is default).  It /is/ the windows account's name, and the
first part of the realname.  Thirdly, why is the info repeated for one, and only
one, of my subscribed newsgroups?  Fourthly, what's with the <>?  That should be
theorb.  (Probably unrelated, and mail works well, in both directions, just
including for completeness.)

It appears that news uses the password manager in a completly different, and
buggy, way from the rest of the mozilla universe.

(BTW, this is with 1.2b.  There's probably a proper way to indicate that to
bugzilla, but I've no clue what it is.)

Comment 41

[[e-mail] (gone - use [e-mail] instead)]

James, the issue with the password/username storage you've mentioned is covered
in bug 108376...

Comment 42

[Andy Gerweck]

This bug makes news useless for anyone with a normal ISP (e.g., pacbell).  The
timeouts tend to be fairly short, meaning that username and password must be
entered before reading _every_single_article_.  There are also problems when two
connections are needed: creating the second connection requires another entry of
password. :-(

Comment 43

[David Burband]

I'm not sure this bug "cause" is worded correctly, forgive me if I'm being
presumptious.

This happens reagardless if it's a new account - the key is a *password*
protected news server. The fact that the password is requested numerous times,
during ONE session, makes news basically unusable for password protected sites
in my view.

I'm surprised this hasn't been escalated in priority as this is almost a 3year
old issue and still marked new. What's with that?

Comment 44

[Andrew Hagen]

Dupe.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 36816 ***

Comment 45

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Verified dup