[horde] "Login failed because your username or password was entered incorrectly."

[Roberto Maurizzi]

2009/8/17 Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>

> Quoting "Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>:
>
>   i hope this is the right forum for this.  i just "dist-upgraded" a
>> debian sarge (3.1) server to etch (4.0), and people who used to be able
>> to use a horde client to connect to this system are suddenly getting
>> the above diagnostic.
>>
>
Well, opening a bug to the package maintainer could be more useful for the
future :-)

  i'm googling on that error message to i've got a fair bit to read,
>> but if anyone has any strokes of genius as to why that upgrade would
>> cause that problem, i would be ever so grateful.
>>
>
>  after more testing, i have more information.  the system i'm working with
> is one i "inherited" on which to do the debian upgrade described above.  i
> was *told* that horde user authentication was being done simply against the
> linux system auth files (/etc/shadow), but i'm not convinced.  and i'm
> enough of a beginner at horde to not be able to verify that.
>

If I recall correctly, Debian packages for Horde have *very* limited support
for configuration. You should check in /etc/horde/horde3/ how are yours
configuration files.
The main one is conf.php: it controls a lot of things, including
authentication.
My guess is that the update has replaced your old files with new ones, since
updating them automatically is at best really complex.
You can try to read how that file works from Horde's wiki and mailing list
posts (and also from the file itself).


>
>  /tmp/horde.log shows every attempt to log in with a combination of regular
> user account and password generates:
>
> Aug 17 15:09:16 HORDE [error] [horde] FAILED LOGIN for rpjday
> [192.168.169.1] to Horde [on line 102 of
> "/var/www/<corpname>/horde/login.php"]
>
>  that part of the login.php file is:
>
>  if ($auth->authenticate(Util::getPost('horde_user'),
>                            array('password' =>
> Util::getPost('horde_pass')))) {
>        $entry = sprintf('Login success for %s [%s] to Horde',
>                         Auth::getAuth(), $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
>
> ... big snip ...
>    } else {
>        $entry = sprintf('FAILED LOGIN for %s [%s] to Horde',
>                         Util::getFormData('horde_user'),
> $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
>        Horde::logMessage($entry, __FILE__, __LINE__, PEAR_LOG_ERR);
>
> and that last line is line 102, so it's clear that authentication is
> failing.
>

It seems to try to authenticate with some kind of server, maybe the IMAP
server. You should check that one to see if it's (still) ok after the
upgrade too.


>  also, i browsed to the horde/test.php page, and got a bunch of:
>
> Notice: Undefined index: fileroot in /var/www/<corpname>/horde/lib/Test.php
> on line 583
>

That's due to a problem in /etc/horde/horde3/registry.php
In that file you find:

$this->applications['horde'] = array(
    'fileroot' => '/usr/share/horde3/lib' . '/..',
    // To respect Debian FHS policy, config/ is in /etc/ directory
    // Then _detect_webroot() is unusable in Debian
    // 'webroot' => _detect_webroot(),
    'webroot' => '/horde3',
    'initial_page' => 'login.php',
    'name' => _("Horde"),
    'status' => 'active',
    'templates' => '/usr/share/horde3/lib' . '/../templates',
    'provides' => 'horde',
);


> that doesn't look good but, again, i'm not sure what to make of it or how
> to fix it.  horde was working fine until the sarge -> etch upgrade.  with
> what little i know, i have to guess that horde is *not* authenticating
> against the system password file, otherwise it would just work.
>
>  thoughts?
>

I suggest you to avoid Debian's Horde packages and go with the 'original'
versions from horde.org... I tried for a while, but if the packages are not
well done and maintained (and they aren't, or at least weren't until a year
ago) they can't work and an upgrade will disable your installation.

That said, I really hope you'll be able to solve your problem.


Ciao,
  Roberto