Webapp's login works on one server but not on another

Question

I have a strange problem with a project I have been working on to implement some extra features. I've ran it on my development machine and on our local test server. Now when I deployed the EAR-package on the clients test server, strange things happen. The app itself starts off just fine but when trying to log into it, it never succeeds. The password is most certainly correct. Messages I get into server.log are following:

2011-12-21 11:46:17,202 DEBUG [com.foo.impl.AuthenticationServiceImpl] Authentication event AuthenticationFailureBadCredentialsEvent: admin; details: org.acegisecurity.ui.WebAuthenticationDetails@1c07a: RemoteIpAddress: xx.xx.xx.xx; SessionId: 4022FD9349C4BC35553DD7D96134FDE8
2011-12-21 11:46:17,202 INFO  [com.foo.impl.AuthenticationServiceImpl] Authentication event AuthenticationFailureBadCredentialsEvent: admin; details: org.acegisecurity.ui.WebAuthenticationDetails@1c07a: RemoteIpAddress: xx.xx.xx.xx; SessionId: 4022FD9349C4BC35553DD7D96134FDE8; exception: Bad credentials
2011-12-21 11:46:17,203 DEBUG [com.foo.web.server.AuthenticationFilter] Updated SecurityContextHolder to contain null Authentication
2011-12-21 11:46:17,203 DEBUG [com.foo.web.server.AuthenticationFilter] Authentication request failed: org.acegisecurity.BadCredentialsException: Bad credentials

I removed the new package and put back the old EAR that had been there for years and the login doesn't work there either. I'm quite sure it was working before I got there.

We use JBoss 4.0.5-GA application server on all machines and the project uses acegi-security-1.0.3 for authentication.

To be sure I didn't mess up anything I copied the whole JBoss folder to my pc and compared it to the one which is on our local server. The differences where in log files and postgres-ds.xml. Database connection works on both servers because I can see from that opening the front page caches most of the classificator values that come from the database.

I can't get my hands on what is causing it. Maybe somebody has had a similar experience and can suggest something?

Regards, Raido

Answer 1

It turned out somebody other than me had also messed around in that test server. What he or she presumably did is restoring an old backup which had a wrong version of Postgre's configuration. Result? The app was attached to the wrong database, which caused the problem that passwords didn't match but most of the other data was identical to what was in the correct database.

Strangely, the configuration file's last modification date was back in 2007, so the most understandable explanation has to be backup restoring..

Answer 2

I am not expert in acegi, but Updated SecurityContextHolder to contain null Authentication" alarming some configuartion might be wrong.

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