This week we have a post about custom login form troubleshooting. As always, we present the reported issue, what we found during troubleshooting, and how the problem was remedied.
| Issue | Custom Login Form Error: “Your credentials are not valid for .” |
| Symptoms | A customer recently migrated their login pages to a content management platform. They also elected to update the login pages in order to facilitate automated deployments. During their testing, users were unable to login using the new updated login pages. Users attempting to login received the following message: |
| Troubleshooting | The customer provided the web agent log and it had recorded the following entries:[CSmResourceManager.cpp:267][WARNING][sm-AgentFramework-00480] HLA: Missing resource data. [CSmLowLevelAgent.cpp:557][ERROR][sm-AgentFramework-00520] LLA: SiteMinder Agent Api function failed - 'Sm_AgentApi_IsProtectedEx' returned '-1'.Additionally, the customer provided a HAR (HTTP Archive) file from the Chrome Developer Tools console. We were able to verify that the username, password, and target were being posted to the login.fcc as required. |
| Condition | The customer is using a deliberate login flow. SiteMinder usually intercepts requests for protected resources and forces users to login (we refer to this as a passive login flow), but deliberate logins are initiated by inputting credentials into a login page that is accessible without requesting a resource. |
| Cause | The custom login page was not prepending “-SM-” to the target that was being posted to the fcc. Incorrect: <input type=hidden name=target value="https://www.acmecorp.com/scheduling/undergrads”>Correct: <input type=hidden name=target value="-SM-https://www.acmecorp.com/scheduling/undergrads”> |
| Remedy | We had the customer update the custom login page to prepend “-SM-” to the target. After the change, users were able to login without any issue. |
As always, we hope that you have found this information useful. If you need IAM assistance, reach out to SIS today and we would be happy to assist you. And subscribe to our newsletter to be notified about the posting of future articles and other SIS news.
