501361 - NTLM authentication fails with Oracle APEX

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Networking, defect, P5)

Description

[tara.l.skabo]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0

This is a problem we've been working on for almost a year now.  We are having problems using the applications (with Firefox) we build using Oracle's Application Express (APEX) with NTLM authentication.  We can navigate to the first page of an application and click on links or buttons that do not involve a Submit action, but once we try to click a button to submit a form we get a 501 Method Not Implemented error (and we do have javascript enabled).

There are 3 possible culprits (bear with me here)...APEX, NTLM, Firefox.  We've posted to numerous APEX forums for help yet we seem to be one of a handful of people who are having this issue yet no one has responded with a solution.  All applications that we build using APEX using NTLM work in Internet Explorer.  With the lack of response from the APEX community and the fact that we don't have any problems with Internet Explorer, we think this problem is related to Firefox and NTLM.  I've outlined the steps we've taken below to narrow down the problem.  I don't necessarily think there's a bug in Firefox, but for some reason we can't get NTLM to work using Firefox.  I'm hoping with the information I give you, you will be able to point out where the problem is.  

1) We set up a development environment and copied the dads.conf and httpd.conf files from the production environment to the development environment (making the necessary modifications to the files).  We found the APEX applications work in Firefox without using any authentication and before we joined the development environment to the domain.

2) The APEX applications work in Firefox without using any authentication after we joined the development environment to the domain, yet we received the popup asking for a username/password. Once we modified the about:config file and added the URL to the network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris and network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris preferences we stopped receiving the popup window. At one time we thought the Group Policy was causing the problem but after joining the development environment to the domain and the Group Policy was applied, this ruled that out as being the culprit.

3) We then implemented NTLM using the instructions we found on the following website -> http://www.greenit.li/website/content/OracleApplicationExpressProofOfConceptNTLM.doc
which is what we currently use in our production environment and works when using Internet Explorer. Once NTLM was implemented the APEX applications stopped working in Firefox. We commented out the NTLM references in the dads.conf file and the APEX applications started working again in Firefox. 

4) We thought our mod_ntlm.so file was corrupted so we downloaded another copy, added the NTLM references back into the dads.conf file, and the APEX applications still didn't work using Firefox.

I will attach the LiveHTTPHeader results, the about:buildconfig results, and the log file using HTTP Logging/Debugging (need to find where to attach those files tho).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open APEX application
2. Click on a button or tab that performs a javascript submit action
3. 
Actual Results:  
received a 501 Method Not Implemented page

Expected Results:  
after clicking a button to submit a form, submit the form and redirect to a 'Thank you for participating.' page.

We are on our company's intranet and no proxies are involved.  I've searched for similar bugs but did not find anything that returned the same results.  If you need any additional information please let me know!

Comment 1

[tara.l.skabo]

Attachment: liveHTTPHeader results

Comment 2

[tara.l.skabo]

Attachment: about:buildconfig results

Comment 3

[tara.l.skabo]

Attachment: Logging/Debugging log file

Comment 4

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

There is bug 468334,bug 496234, bug 423758

Comment 5

[Alex]

This topic definately needs some attention payed by someone from the Mozilla engineering team!

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=318253, created 30.11.2005, Status: New
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366562, created 10.01.2007, Status: Unconfirmed
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=501361, created 30.06.2009, Status: Unconfirmed
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486508, created 02.04.2009, Status: Unconfirmed

In my opinion, the Mozilla team did a really good job in all the way, Firefox developed – but here is a glitch and that thing is really obvious – if Firefox is used in a business environment together with NTLM authentication.

Comment 6

[RNicoletto]

To me this looks like a DUPE of bug 318253.

Comment 7

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Can someone confirm this is still an open issue with Fx 3.6?

Comment 8

[tara.l.skabo]

Hi Jim,
We are still having a problem using NTLM with Firefox.  If you have a solution please let me know!!!  :)
Thank you

Comment 9

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

He wants to know if it works again in Firefox3.6 (beta) or not.

Comment 10

[tara.l.skabo]

YES, we are still having problems, even with 3.6 (beta).  We get the same error messages too.

Comment 11

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Bulk change to priority: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1399258