Magento Admin – Asking Users to Enable Cookies

admincookie

Magento 1.9 CE running on LAMP stack.

Users land on site initially and they are getting Magento's "please enable use of cookies" page. They refresh and it is gone. I confirmed this behavior for Chrome and Safari.

Some are saying this is the solution to prevent it: Go to System –> Configuration –> General –> Web –> Session Cookie Management –> Cookie Lifetime = 5400

However my cookie lifetime was already set much higher than that and if you refresh even once the cookie is gone – changing cookie lifetime is not the fix.

I know how to turn it off: Go to System –> Configuration –> General –> Web –> Browser Capabilities Detection –> Redirect to CMS-page if cookies are disabled = No

But I'm most interested in what is actually causing it.

Best Answer

Check if time (date and timezone as well) are set correctly on your server.
Check if Base URL of your installation is set correctly at System > Configuration > Web
Check if your sessions can be saved on filesystem or in DB. Open app/etc/local.xml file and look for <sessions> section, it is either set to files or db. Make sure that files can be written under var/session or in database and there is enough disk space or inodes.
If you use any third-party caching extension (turpentine or FPC or cache extensions that utilize varnish etc.), try disabling these extensions. To completely disable extension edit its XML config in app/etc/modules/Extension.xml and change <active> tag to false.

Related Solutions

Show Used Cookies on Magento Website

Use FireBug plugin to see all request information or print the $_COOKIES auto global variable as suggested in comments.

Magento – Enable Cookies to continue

You are seeing the enable-cookies CMS page, which is shown if the event controller_action_nocookies is triggered. This happens in Mage_Core_Controller_Varien_Action if:

The configuration Web > Browser Capabilities Detection > Redirect to CMS-page if Cookies are Disabled is set to Yes, AND
No cookie has been sent back by the browser yet (i.e. $_COOKIE is empty) AND
The current controller action is in the $_cookieCheckActions property of the controller and there is no nocookie=1 parameter.

Logging in and creating an account are controller actions, that require a cookie check, as you can see in Mage_Customer_AccountController:

/**
 * Action list where need check enabled cookie
 *
 * @var array
 */
protected $_cookieCheckActions = array('loginPost', 'createpost');

You could disable the cookie check configuration (see (1)), but this won't solve the problem because without a session cookie you won't be able to log in anyway.

The problem lies in Magentos cookie management configuration. Please check it at Web > Session Cookie Management. It should look similar to this:

"Cookie Lifetime": a sufficiently big value in seconds
"Cookie Path": the path to your Magento installation relative to the document root (usually /)
"Cookie Domain": the domain of your Magento installation, including www subdomain if used.
"Use HTTP Only" can be set to "Yes" as long as you don't need to access cookies with JavaScript. I usually set it to "No" to be able to run Selenium tests.
"Cookie Restriction Mode" should be "No", except if you are legally required to have your users allow cookies with a button click (like in France)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Show Used Cookies on Magento Website

Magento – Enable Cookies to continue

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