[LON-CAPA-users] connection issue re library server

[Ray Batchelor]

Hi Hong Kie, Jim, Todd & Lars,

No, I have not had any resolution for my remote instructor, but he can connect 
OK from home.... just not from his workplace.
I will ask him about his ISP, operating systems and firewalls from both those 
locations. It is interesting that he can connect from work to our access 
servers but not to our library server (which is much slower and struggling on 
one cpu at the moment).  I was kind-of hoping that this issue would go away 
when we finally upgrade our library server, but, if some of you folks are 
having the same trouble anyway, I become less hopeful.

Possibly (but not necessarily) related, is the fact that students here, who 
have had a similar kind of problem, can get around it.  Our local 
authentication (I believe) depends on cookies from our institutional CKID 
server and so people who are already authenticated (e.g. by logging onto the 
my.sfu.ca  portal) go straight into loncapa without needing the login screen.

I have had a few students who have found that this route works for them, 
whereas using the login screen fails, in a fashion similar to what Jim has 
described.

Some time back, Stuart posted an explanation of how pestware, that is often 
associated with peer-to-peer software, diverts browsers using error codes 
that loncapa relies on.  
I often have to tell student to clean up their computers or use a different 
one.

Some of these login problems seem to go away if they switch from using IE to 
using Mozilla.


That's about all I can add to this discussion at the moment.

Cheers,
Ray

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