Login failing, "likely due to an expired session."

marksibly

Hi,

I'm trying to setup a nodebb proxy in node.js, based on this code:

Node.js - NodeBB Documentation

Documentation portal for NodeBB Forum Software

(docs.nodebb.org)

And it's sort of working, I can mostly browse the forum (looks great!) except it's failing when I try to login with the following error:

Login Unsuccessful

We were unable to log you in, likely due to an expired session. Please try again

I have changed "url" in config.json to: "https://skirmish-dev.net/forum", which is were I am browsing the forum from.

Weirdly, if I change it to "http://localhost:4567/forum", login starts working, even though there are some 'bad' urls in the returned page.

I have made sure to ./nodebb build after changing anything in config.json.

Here's my initProxy function, based on the above but modified a little to let the rest of the site run:

function initProxy(app) {
	const proxyRules = new HttpProxyRules({
		rules: {
			'.*/forum': 'http://localhost:4567/forum', // Rule (2) forums
			'.*/forum/*': 'http://localhost:4567/forum', 
			'/forum/*': 'http://localhost:4567/forum',
			'./forum/*': 'http://localhost:4567/forum',
			'/forum': 'http://localhost:4567/forum' 
		}
	});

	const proxy = httpProxy.createProxy();

	app.use(function(req,res,next){
		try{
			if (req.url.substr(0, 18).indexOf("socket.io")>-1){
				console.log("SOCKET.IO", req.url)
				return proxy.web(req, res, { target: 'wss://localhost:4567', ws: true }, function(e) { 
				console.log('PROXY ERR',e)
				});
			} else {
				var target = proxyRules.match(req);
				if (target) {
					console.log("TARGET", target)
					return proxy.web(req, res, {target: target}, function(e) { 
						console.log('PROXY ERR',e)
					});
				} else {
					next();
				}
			}
		} catch(e){
			res.sendStatus(500);
		}
	});
	app.use(bodyParser.json());
	app.use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }));
}

Anyone have any idea what's up?

Bye,
Mark

marksibly

OK, clearing browser site data causes the login error dialog to go away, but I get a page that just says 'forbidden' instead.

I tried running ./nodebb dev and the log ends with: "invalid csrf token" so I suspect it's really the same problem.

Pretty much out of ideas at this point...

phenomlab

@marksibly potentially a long shot, but try this

Invalid CSRF on dev install

I wanted to create a DEV instance of sudonix, so went ahead and registered sudonix.dev, installed NodeBB, then recovered the database. All good - apart from ...

Sudonix | A one-stop-shop for all your technology questions (sudonix.org)

marksibly

@marksibly potentially a long shot, but try this

Thanks, but adding cookieDomain to the DB config didn't seem to do anything.

One weird thing suggested in that thread does appear to mostly work though, ie: using http:// instead of https:// in the config url, even though my site is definitely an https site. Even localhost:// 'works'...anything as long as it's wrong apparently!

Only mostly though, because absolute URLs in the nodebb pages fail with 'Blocked loading mixed active content', I assume because the browser ends up trying to load http from an https page?

But most URLs in nodebb pages are domain relative, eg: "/forum/login" etc so the site pretty much works - it's missing an emoji or too I think. You can at least log in and out which is a massive improvement!

I may or may not consider 'patching' the proxy responses, eg: replacing "http://skirmish-dev.net/" with "https://skirmish-dev.net" etc, which sounds like a hot mess solution but I can't think what else to do.

Bye,
Mark

marksibly

OK, I've finally found a solution that seems to fix all the problems I've been having!

Nodebb has an nconf setting called 'secure' that is true for https urls, false otherwise. This only seems to be used by cookie related code.

But in my case at least, setting this to true was causing cookies to somehow fail, so I simply forced it to false regardless of url and viola, I could use my real https url without any problems.

You can do this easily by modifying src/prestart.js (approx line 100), eg:

//		nconf.set('secure', urlObject.protocol === 'https:');
		nconf.set('secure', false);

This fixes the problem in both v2.x and v3.6.5 branches.

Not sure if this means there's a bug somewhere, perhaps my cookieDomain is incorrect although I can find no docs on what it should be set to.

A nice bonus is that this has allowed me to reduce my proxying code to one line:

		app.use("/forum", createProxyMiddleware({target: "http://localhost:4567"}));

(Using the http-proxy-middleware module).

Bye,
Mark

PitaJ

Using node as a proxy like this isn't recommended. We should probably remove it from the docs.

marksibly

I think I've found the silver bullet here: you need to set the 'xfwd' option when creating the proxy. With this option enabled, I no longer have to hack the cookie secure flag as above and everything (v.3.6.5) appears to be working perfectly. I'm using http-proxy-middleware, but it should work with any http proxy AFAICT as 'xfwd' is actually part of the base http-proxy module which everything else seems to be built upon.

So to proxy using the http-proxy module:

const proxy = httpProxy.createProxyServer();
app.use("/forum", (req, res) => {
	proxy.web(req, res, {target:"http://localhost:4567/forum", xfwd: true});
});

...and to proxy using the http-proxy-middleware module:

app.use("/forum", createProxyMiddleware({target: "http://localhost:4567", xfwd: true}));

Bye!
Mark

julian

Such hacks should not be required. What's your config.json url value?

yasas

@marksibly
I encountered the same issue. InternalLink

Sorted it by adding proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; in the nginx conf file

julian

The three common refrains in this situation are:

Check config.json

Unset cookieDomain

Set x-forwarded-proto

marksibly

Sorted it by adding proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; in the nginx conf file

Problem is, I'm just using 'raw' node.js, so there is no nginx (or apache etc) conf file.

But your above post did inspire me to find out what the equivalent was for node proxys so thanks!

Bye,
Mark

marksibly

Check config.json
Unset cookieDomain
Set x-forwarded-proto

Yep, agreed, that would cover all the problems I encountered I think.

IMO, the node.js proxy docs need to be updated. At the very least, they need to mention the {xfwd: true} option, but they could also be streamlined to a much simpler example as above.

Bye,
Mark

julian

@marksibly thank you for the comments, you're right, they can be updated.

The problem is I am not familiar with it enough as I am more familiar with nginx and will always reach for it.

Are you able to make the appropriate changes in our docs?

GitHub - NodeBB/docs: NodeBB Documentation via MkDocs

NodeBB Documentation via MkDocs. Contribute to NodeBB/docs development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

marksibly

Are you able to make the appropriate changes in our docs?

Yes, can do, I should have something ready to go soon-ish.

[edit]
https://github.com/NodeBB/docs/pull/89
[/edit]