96896 - News reprompts for user name/pwd on reconnect rather than using values from the password manager

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 36816

(MailNews Core :: Networking: NNTP, defect)

Description

[Dean Elhard]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.3+)
Gecko/20010823
BuildID:    2001082303

It seems that mail/news does not go back to the password manager for the
username/password when re-establishing a timed out session, but instead
prompts the user  for them

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

1.  open the folder for a NNTP server which:
          a) requires user authentication
          b) has a user name and password already stored in the password manager
2.  select a group to bring up the list of articles.
3.  wait long enough for the NNTP connection to time out
4.  select an article to display or a different group on the same server

Actual Results:  mail/news pops up the dialogs asking for the username and
password, even though the values are already stored in the password manager ,
(and were used for the initial access to the server)

Expected Results:  The connection should be re-established whithout prompting me
for information it already has.

Comment 1

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

I'm not seeing this with build 2001-08-28-03 using internal auth newsgroup:
news://poisonivy.mcom.com/xrated.  On Windows 2000, when I force my network
connection to drop using ipconfig/release, and then doing an ipconfig/renew, I
see other strange things (like cache issues with the postings, but I'll file
that seperately).  Can you telnet to your server (for me, I do telnet
poisonivy.mcom.com 119) and tell me what kind of server this is?  Thanks.

Comment 2

[Dean Elhard]

The response from the server on connect is:

200 enews1.newsguy.com NNRP server INN 1.90.02 15-May-01 ready (posting ok).

I have been assuming that it is a timeout of the connection which causes the
problem.  I haven't tried watching the tcp status to confirm that, but it does
seem to be very reliable that if I leave mailnews up in a newsgroup while I work
on something else and then come back to it again, it prompts for username and
password which it shouldn't.

I will try doing a bit of experimentation with mozilla and netstat to see if it
does correspond to the connection being dropped.

Comment 3

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

Confirming, even though I can't reproduce this in-house, I've seen numerous bugs
reported against password not being remembered (or, the simple re-prompting)

Comment 4

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

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 98029 ***

Comment 5

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

Not a dup of that bug.  Re-opening...

Comment 6

[Cyril Elkaim]

If you are interested the linux version to the latest CVS has the same problem.
I'm entering this with a home built executable dated 2001121917

Comment 7

[Bob Snyder]

I'm seeing it on 0.9.8 Win32 as well...  Comcast is now providing access to
Usenet for it's fairly sizable population of (former @Home) cable modem users
via GigaNews, so there may be more people running in to this.

Hitting the NNTP port I get:

200 News.GigaNews.Com (Typhoon v1.2.3)

Comment 8

[hugo van woerkom]

I was granted access to news.cis.dfn.de which requires userid and password. What
I see
is that I get repeatedly asked for userid + password. I don't know if it is when the
server times out. I don't know how I can tell. In any case if you check "make
pwm remember" or whatever that checkbox says you will get repeated entries in
the pwm db, and you can see them when you "manage passwords". I hope to hear
about it when this is not the same bug.

Comment 9

[Andrew Hagen]

Related to bug 46118?

Comment 10

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

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

Comment 11

[Gayatri Rimola]

Marked nsbeta1- per MailNews Triage.

Comment 12

[Stephen P. Morse]

*** Bug 132160 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Andrew Daugherity]

Not sure whether I should comment here or on 34506 or 36816, but I have a
similar problem that makes USENET reading a major PITA with mozilla.  Despite
having told it to save the username and password to my news server, it randomly
"forgets" them (after a NNTP timeout?) and/or says authentication rejected.  I
noticed that the password manager has multiple entries --
news://[e-mail]:119/#password,
news://[e-mail]:119/#username, and these two entries for a couple
of different groups that I've had to re-authenticate to after a timeout or
something (I subscribe to more than these groups BTW).  

The problem is my username is NOT awd42_007 (that's what's in front of the '@'
in the email I use with news), but passwd manager sure thinks it is for some reason.

Telnet to news.verizon.net on port 119 shows:
200 This connection cequired username/password authentication. (Twister v2.0.5.1)

Comment 14

[Greg K.]

*** Bug 171620 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[John Unruh]

*** Bug 177175 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

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

*** Bug 149609 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Daniel Wang]

*** Bug 181048 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 182733 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Ric Perrott]

This has been known for over a year, what's the ETA for a fix? It's rather annoying.

Comment 20

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 185446 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 21

[Felix Miata]

*** Bug 185607 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 22

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

*** Bug 185427 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 23

[Beverly Howard]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.2.1) 
Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.2.1) 
Gecko/20021130

Have to disagree that this is a timeout issue, but rather an issue of password 
manager storing duplicate entries for the server (for sending responses, showing 
groups, subscribing) and entries for each group (on the assumption that all 
id/passwords will be the same for all groups?)

Added and used a single group with no issues for about two months, but when I 
attempted to add a second group on the same server with a different id/password, 
password manager began requiring full login for every action on the server.

Investigation showed that when a group is subscribed to with id and password, 
password manager creates four entries, two for the server, and two for the group 
with the same information.

Problem begins with the addition of another group as that process appears to add 
two entries for the new group with the new information and that it changes the 
previous server userid/password information.

Password manager does not allow any edit of this information, which might not 
even help if it were possible.

If "server" entries are deleted, multiple groups can be added and read, but 
response transmissions fail.

It's a royal pain, but response submissions can then be "edited as new" from the 
"Sent" folder, the new "Reply to" address removed and the re-send will 
(eventually) succeed.

Think that this could be solved by allowing the user to add a new "News Account" 
but when that is attempted, it is refused by Mozilla because the server already 
exists in the previous account.

Another clue is that as part of this process, hourglass appears in header window 
and remains until the reader is closed and re-launched.

Note also that there is a very similar problem reported in a "Keychain???" bug 
report... sorry, don't have the number here.

Beverly Howard

Comment 24

[mrosen]

I totally disagree. This happens on newsservers that require only *one*
user/password for all groups, and where definitely only one password is stored
in password manager (for the server itself, not for individual groups). This
also happens when password manager isn't involved at all, aka the password never
gets stored by mozilla. This also happens on pushed auth, aka when the
newsserver never actively requests user/password. All above said, this is
neither a problem related to stored passwords in any way, not is it a connection
issue. It's a plain issue that Mozilla, although it's never shutdown, doesn't
reuse once entered passwords for newsgroups during the same session, and even
seems to forget that a password was ever entered. For instance, on a server with
pushed auth activated, open groupA. Mozilla will aks for user/password. Works.
Wait 5 minutes. Now open GroupB on the same newsserver. Mozilla will again ask
for user/password. Wait again 5 minutes. Open GroupA again. Mozilla will *again*
ask for user/password (note I'm saying *pushed* auth, this user/pass request
*never* comes from the server, it's plain inside Mozilla only!!!). DO the same
above *without* waiting the 5 minutes between switching groups, and you'll only
have to enter the credentials once. It's some sort of internal timeout in
Mozilla that sort of invalidates the entered password for *different* groups on
the same Newsserver.  If you stay inside *one* group, you'll never have to
reenter the credentialy, no matter how long you're idle.
Additional Info: If you let password manager store a password *for the root* of
the newsserver, you'll still be unable to switch groups. However, if you go back
to the newsserver root between switching groups, it will work.

Comment 25

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

Folks, see also bug 36816, which, when fixed, would probably clear up this issue
once and for all.

Comment 26

[Beverly Howard]

Per my observations with the passwords, I went back and took the following steps 
and observations.

The following is for a news server that requires a different id/password for 
each section


Unsubscribed from all existing sections

Removed all stored passwords associated with removed sections

Subscribed to first section

Logged on and gave userid and password and checked save password

Password manager showed two entries (id/password) for the section, not the 
server

Read Messages

Responded to Messages

Checked password manager and no change (two entries for section)

Subscribed to second section

Logged on and saved passwords

Password manager showed two additional entries for the new section

Posted a message

Password manager now showed two additional entries FOR THE SERVER in addition to 
the four previous entries.

Access Denials and manual logon prompts begin here and make access to this 
specific server impractical

Comment 27

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 189721 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 28

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 186489 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 29

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 191284 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 30

[Greg K.]

Using FizzillaMach/2003021017, this now seems to work. I seem to recall trying
this less than a month ago and it still not working, so maybe it was fixed recently.

Comment 31

[Andrew Hagen]

Dupe.

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

Comment 32

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

Verified dup