Failure linking an account with various OpenID providers

jmschanck

I tried linking my account with google, myopenid, and verisign PIP, and each time got the error: "Failed to authenticate with your Open Id provider." I've successfully used each of these openid accounts with other services, so I'm assuming it's a problem with zotero.org. Can anyone confirm this?

netbuoy

This has been and ongoing problem as you can see if you did a search on OpenID.....

BUT, it would be nice if someone responsible for the web site could provide an authoritative response as to the issue and potential resolution... there are now so many threads that it is becoming more and more unlikely that anyone will find an authoritative response if one exists.......

netbuoy

this http://framework.zend.com/issues/browse/ZF-6905 was the last action I saw on the matter, noting that while Zend was close to supporting OpenID 2.0, it still did not support that standard, and that was a year ago??? There are at least two other libraries that can be used to provide OpenID access, and there is no discussion as to why Zotero has not turned to one of the other Stacks. Paypal and VerisignLabs use OpenID 2.0 as do many others....

What IS disconcerting is that Stackoverflow, which I believe uses the Zend framework, DOES work with VerisignLabs OpenIDs....

jmschanck

I did some digging since writing that first post and discovered at least part of the problem. The URI being submitted for the final step of OpenID authentication is getting its query portion double url-encoded. I discussed this with fcheslack on IRC a couple days ago and he discovered the root of the problem and assured me that it will be fixed soon.

netbuoy

There are some discussions about bug tracking here and there in these forums, the upshot being that tracking of "bugs" seems a bit hazy. This issue has been around for a long time but is not tracked anywhere. The forum posts are all anecdotal and trigger no action nor response. Persons engaging in discussion do not clearly identify whether they are a dev or hold any other role with the project. I truly love the project, but administratively I think there might be some small room for improvement ;-)

netbuoy

And much thanks or following up :-)

adamsmith

The devs have said that they don't think regular bug tracking is feasible with the size of the Zotero team - it takes a lot of time to administer those bug reports.
Some of us users have trac access and can file bugs on trac and there are a pretty substantial number of tickets
https://www.zotero.org/trac/report
when I see something I usually do file a ticket, but since a good number of things that people report as bugs are either no bugs at all or very idiosyncratic, an open system would create more damage than it helps.

The only core devs for Zotero are
Dan Stillman
Simon
sean
fcheslack

netbuoy

Yes, Adam, I've read the discussion of this, and I have reviewed the trac listing for this bug, for which I did not find a ticket, though the bug (and it is clearly a bug) has been around for a long, long time. Moreover, it would appear that but for the personal interaction described above, the matter would still not have attracted anyone's attention. Is the world going to come to end over this, I hope not, lol. But I have worked in large and small IT situations and can't imagine trying to resolve issues if they are not all tracked. I suppose I may have missed it, but if you can find in the tracker, let me know where cause I could not find it, though there are what, 3 dozen posts on the matter over 4 years?

In any event, let's hope that that this will be resolved by fcheslack in the next few days and that all the various threads can be laid to rest!

dstillman

From the forum guidelines:

If you don't receive a response right away, give it time. If you're having a serious issue and think your post may have slipped through the cracks, post a polite follow-up to the same thread asking if anyone has had a chance to look into your issue.

It works pretty well. Posting your debugging info here would have been just as effective—we really do read every post. It's because you took the time to debug an issue that matters to you that it's getting fixed, which seems pretty much how an open-source project is supposed to work.

dstillman

Or, rather, because jmschanck did.

fcheslack

Hopefully fixed. Works for me with myopenid.

jmschanck

Works for me as well, thanks for fixing it guys.

netbuoy

Sorry to say that while it was working for me since last week, it now is balking. Is it still working for others (I am using verisignlabs)

netbuoy

Apparently if one removes all zotero cookies you can log in with OpenID, though it leaves the Verisignlabs page open, which is curious. As long as you don;t terminate the FF session the OpenID will work fine. CLose FF and one has to go back in and delete cookies.