[LON-CAPA-users] firewall on student computers

[Gerd Kortemeyer]

On Sep 1, 2004, at 12:20 PM, Felicia Berryman wrote:

>
> 1.) I can log in to the roles page on my own computer but when i slect 
> a course or main menu, i am taken back to the login page, if i login 
> again it takes me back to the roles page. i have been able to login 
> and use my courses on other computers so i figure that there must be a 
> setting wrong on only my computer.
>
> 2.) After submit my user name and password, i am then successfully 
> directed to a page where i am to select a course. When i click on a 
> course, however, i am sent directly to the log-in page again. In fact, 
> if i click on any link on the course-selection page, i am still sent 
> to the same log-in page. I cannot move beyond the course selection 
> page. I have enabled both javascript and cookies in my browser's 
> preferences.
>
> The first student who reported the problem was able to solve it and 
> sent me the following:
>
> I managed to resolve it. Turns out that the ZoneAlarm firewall I use 
> was causing the problem. After I turned the ZoneAlarm firewall off, 
> and the Windows firewall on LON-capa worked for me.
>
> I'll report this bugzilla, in the meantime I wanted to make other 
> instructors at other schools aware of this problem.

The student comment is very helpful.

If what I think is true, this will not happen at other schools:

* We have the kids go to http://msu.lon-capa.org/
* Further form submissions go against http://sN.lite.msu.edu/

So we are switching from "zone" lon-capa.org to "msu.edu" - now if that 
is what happens, the bug is actually at Microsoft, since we already 
switched zones at login time, not at the first subsequent form 
submission. All of this would be a new "feature" of Windows XP Service 
Pack 2, which only came out a week ago or so.

I have asked another student who has this problem to come to my office 
hour on Friday afternoon with her laptop. Hopefully I can explore all 
of the details.

We need more $@%#& Windows test computers.

- Gerd.