Support

Mandatory information about my setup:

Have I read the related troubleshooter articles above before posting (which pages?)? Yes - Geographic blocking, Security Exceptions Log, Exceptions, Web Application Firewall
Have I searched the tickets before posting? Yes
Have I read the documentation before posting (which pages?)? Yes - see above
Joomla! version: 2.5
PHP version: (unknown)
MySQL version: (unknown)
Host: (optional, but it helps us help you)
Admin Tools version: 2.2

Description of my issue:

A client is unable to successfully log into the Password-protect Administrator window, and so therefore can't get to the administrator login, unless the Password-protect Administrator option is switched off. After walking through this many times on the phone, it became evident that the client wasn't doing anything wrong.

After much investigation, we stumbled across the fact that they have a rather odd IP address, and Admin Tools is declaring the clients' successful admin log in (when the admin password is off) as "coming from (unknown country), (unknown country)".

We have not encountered this problem with any other clients, and so this "unknown country" issue seems to be the most likely cause, from what we can fathom.

Do you have any ideas on how we can resolve this (or any changes our client has to make to their IP/router, etc) so that our client can log into the Password-protect Administrator window successfully?

Many thanks for any pointers!

Hi Nick,

Thanks so much for the lightening fast response!

Thanks also for explaining my confusion on the "unknown country" issue.

In response to your questions:

1. The problem is with the admin pw protection - the client enters the correct details (copied and pasted from what we sent over) into the first login window that pops up (the one before the admin login), and the window just keeps flashing up each time the login details are entered. We checked that CAPS LOCK was not on, and that the client was going to the correct link, which we also sent over. The Client doesn't seem to be getting blocked (from what we can see in the security log)
2. Yes, and yes.
3. No Geo-Blocking has not been setup in the WAF

Please let me know if there's any other information you might find useful? We have quite a few sites, and have never encountered anything like this before...

Hi Nick,

I finally got to the bottom of this, so thought I would post the solution that worked for my client just in case it's helpful to others.

You were totally right with the clue being a browser problem: the problem ended up being firefox and safari reacting differently to chrome.

With the administrator password protection switched on, chrome would log in fine, but firefox and safari would not.

FF: 10.0.1
Safari: 5.1.3
Chrome: 18.0.1025.142

And the cause? It turned out the be a "£" at the end of the administrator password protection username. Once I removed the £ from the end of the username, all worked fine and nothing else was changed.

Rather bizarre, but glad it's all resolved now :)

Thanks so much for your help!