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Strange behavior with guest account login attempts

Strange behavior with guest account login attempts

by Larry Riddle -
Number of replies: 4

I am trying to allow guest access to a practice course that I created on our WeBWorK server. The course has 9 practice accounts created by importing the demoCourse.lst.

When I try to log in as a guest, I get a "Your authentication failed" message. But the Classlist Editor shows that one of the practice accounts is now active (checked from a different browser where logged in as admin). If I then try to log into a student account I created by entering the student's password and clicking the continue button rather than the guest button in the browser that just reported the guest authentication error, I get another authentication failed message for this student but now two practice accounts are shown as active. I can't log in as this student in this particular browser unless I close the tab and open WeBWorK back up in a new tab.

What would be causing this issue? Is there some configuration setting I need to adjust? Thanks for any help.


In reply to Larry Riddle

Re: Strange behavior with guest account login attempts

by Robert Mařík -
Is there some useful message in the log? There are logs in the course directory and also in the /var/log you can find apache log.
In reply to Robert Mařík

Re: Strange behavior with guest account login attempts

by Larry Riddle -
When first trying to log in as guest, the login log entry in the course directory shows
"LOGIN FAILED user not permitted to login user_id=practice2 login_type=guest credential_source=none"
Then while still on the same webpage, when trying to log in as an actual valid student account (jsmith), the login log entry shows
"LOGIN FAILED user not permitted to login user_id=practice6 login_type=guest credential_source=none"
So even though the Continue button was clicked for the student login attempt, it appears that WeBWorK may have treated this as if the Guest Login button was clicked again.

I can't find any apparent reason for why the login failed in the logs or in the apache access or error logs.
In reply to Larry Riddle

Re: Strange behavior with guest account login attempts

by Danny Glin -

I believe that the log entry "user not permitted to login" means that authentication was successful, but the user does not have permission to access the course.  The two things that come to mind are

  1. The user's status in the course is not "enrolled".  You can check this from the Classlist Editor.
  2. The permission level of the user is lower than the permission level required to log in to the course.  You can check this from the Course Configuration page.  It's the first entry in the Permissions tab.
In reply to Danny Glin

Re: Strange behavior with guest account login attempts

by Larry Riddle -
Thank you, Danny! It was item 2 that was the issue. The default for "allowed to login to the course" is student, so changing that to guest was the fix I needed.