webfaction day2: the auto-logout problem and why ====================================
Many coincidence lead to the "auto-logout (lost session)" problem. Here is a how-to which you shall not follow. :-) Problem: Even the web2py welcome app on webfaction tends to ask me to re-login often, due to something is wrong with the session. How to reproduce the problem: 1. Follow the official "latest stable source" install script [1] to setup web2py as normal. 2. Setup an http site for normal use, and an httpS site for admin. And as usual, both sites map "/" as URL path to the same web2py instance. 3. Due to lack of domain resource at the beginning, I setup both sites with the same only domain I have, MY_ACCOUNT.webfactional.com. (This is coincidence 1. I should better use different domain names, such as www.top_level_domain.com for normal site, and admin.top_level_domain.com for the admin site.) (And, later I know that I can use the ip string as a second domain, to avoid all later problem.) 4. Visit http://MY_ACCOUNT.webfactional.com/welcome/default/index , register a new web2py welcome account, then login, you will see a "Welcome your_first_name" at the upper-right corner. 5. Use SAME browser, open a new tab, to visit https://MY_ACCOUNT.webfactional.com/appadmin/index, page shows up fine. (This is coincidence 2. If I use another browser to open a new window hence a new session, I should be fine.) 6. At this moment, the session file is somehow replaced, so when you use your same browser to visit http://MY_ACCOUNT.webfactional.com/welcome/default/index , you will notice you have been automatically logout. Now you see, two coincidence together lead to the auto-logout problem. No wonder few webfaction-web2py users met same problem. But it did cost me several hours to trace down the culprit. What a day2 lesson in my webfactoin life. :-/ Sincerely, Iceberg, 2010-Jul-30, 22:22(PM), Fri [1] http://wiki.webfaction.com/wiki/Web2py-LatestSource
