"Your session timed out while posting. Please go back and try again"

[Leto Atreides II]

I ran a search on this issue, but all previous threads I found appear to be under 2.0 and not 2.1. I looked up the fixes recommended there, and they didn't seem to apply here. So I'm getting this error message "Your session timed out while posting. Please go back and try again" when I try logging into my forum. Any idea what could be causing this?

http://www.wp14.org/

Forum is SMF 2.1.4
Database is MySQL
PHP is 7.4

[Leto Atreides II]

Whatever's going on, it seems quite messed up.

On Firefox:

412 Error

Your request got filtered out due to possible security issues.

One or more things in your request were suspicious (defective request header, invalid cookies, bad parameters)

If you think you did nothing wrong:

    try again with a different browser
    avoid any evil characters inside the request url

If you are the owner of the website, you can consider revising the rules of the mod_security module or turning it off from your Web Hosting Control Panel.

On Chrome:



The page wasn't broken on Firefox, but gave me the 412 error after I attempted to log in. I also get an error message if I attempt to log in via Chrome.

[Doug Heffernan]

The page wasn't broken on Firefox, but gave me the 412 error after I attempted to log in. I also get an error message if I attempt to log in via Chrome.

Any changes made recently to the forum? What error message are you getting?

Alternatively, can you run the repair_settings.php? tool and see ifall the paths and urls are poitining to the right locations?

[Sesquipedalian]

Apache's mod_security module is known to cause all sorts of weird problems for SMF, and SMF doesn't need mod_security's protection anyway.

You should disable mod_security in your Apache configuration.

See https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Mod_security_-_Having_problems_with_mod_security

[Leto Atreides II]

Also, clicking on the "log in" button at the top of the page invariably results in this:



... on both browsers.

Apache's mod_security module is known to cause all sorts of weird problems for SMF, and SMF doesn't need mod_security's protection anyway.

You should disable mod_security in your Apache configuration.

See https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Mod_security_-_Having_problems_with_mod_security

Alright, I've just turned that off. Attempting to log in still results in the "Your session timed out while posting. Please go back and try again" message. (This is on the Firefox browser so far.)

[Leto Atreides II]

Alternatively, can you run the repair_settings.php? tool and see ifall the paths and urls are poitining to the right locations?

This appears to be fixing the problem. But it's like the third time I've had to use this tool. What keeps resetting my paths and urls???

[Leto Atreides II]

Also, I notice in repair_settings that my "cache settings" are set to "off", but "on" is recommended. I'm a wee bit leery about jumping in to change them.

[Doug Heffernan]

This appears to be fixing the problem. But it's like the third time I've had to use this tool. What keeps resetting my paths and urls???

What changes have you done to the forum before that happened?

[Kindred]

You need to check with your host, since smf will not "reset" the settings -- but if the host is restoring some backups or using a cache like varnish,  it is their problem to fix