Topic: Digest Authentication with Opera

[itproxy]

I'm totally baffled that an area of my website that has been protected with digest authentication cannot be viewed using Opera (9 or 10), while it works perfectly with IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome.
The request dialog for username and password appears, but, when these are entered, with Opera 9 the process just hangs, while with Opera 10, a message appears to the effect that either wrong credentials have been entered, or the browser doesn't understand how to send the necessary credentials in the correct format. (A previous basic authentication setup worked fine with all five browsers.)
Anyone else any experience with this problem, please? Any ideas?
With thanks in advance.

[itproxy]

Opera Senior Developer Yngve N. Pettersen has sorted me out (via the Opera forum)!
I was expressing the 'AuthDigestDomain' as a filepath, and not a URI; using the latter it now works fine on all five major browsers.
Bit bizarre that it can work on four if the syntax is incorrect (and if it is, that Apache doesn't throw a wobbly when it starts)!
Howvere, I guess the issue is the differing fault-tolerances of the various browsers; sometimes you get away with sloppy coding, sometimes you don't!

[itproxy]

Again, I'm totally baffled. My 'digest authentication' setup has been working fine; it's suddenly stopped working, for no obvious reason, I haven't (as far as I know) made any changes to any settings at all, let alone ones that might be relevant.
The problem now is, that when one accesses the 'front page' for the protected area of the site, the login dialogue is not presented (with any of the five major browsers); you just get the '403 Forbidden You don't have permission to access etc' error page that would be the result of cancelling the login dialogue, or entering the wrong credentials.
The page is here: http://itproxy.org/mserver/choice.php
What's going on? Any ideas? With thanks.

[James Blond]

it would help a lot if you post your (auth) config for that location / directory.
Correct would be a 401 to ask the browser for the credentials and in case of wrong or none there should be the 403

[itproxy]

Hi James,
Thanks for taking on my 'case'. Apologies, too, for the lack of info; it wasn't so much a sensible request for help, was it, more a public groan of frustration! Why oh why ... !
However, immediately after posting, I realised that my claim that 'I haven't ... made any changes' wasn't true; I'm running my server on Win XP, and had done a Windows Update. So, I've put the backup server online (which is working fine) and I'm going to restore the main server's last known good configuration from a drive image, taken on 24 Nov after a major update. Will then roll forward bit by bit, checking as I go, until either it works perfectly, or fails at some point, pinpointing a possible cause. More anon.

[itproxy]

Well, server restored to state as at 24 Nov, then updated (with one exception) as before: now working OK. So, no further forward as to what caused the problem in the first place.
The one exception was not to upgrade to IE8 (from IE6); could this be relevant? The PC is only used as a server, and is normally unattended; IE6 is only used as the tool to update Windows on demand (don't want auto-update on if generally unattended), so upgrade to IE8 unnecessary.
May upgrade to IE8 at some point in the future, though, and see what happens; just had enough of tinkering for the time being!

[James Blond]

I wonder if that would be realy IE8. I have windows 2003 standard with IE8 and no problems with it.