3

Until recently I have been able to use the chat feature just fine, but now I can't log in to chat. It seems that this feature is now relying on a cookie or web store at stackauth.com.

As I'm blocking third-party cookies and have no intentions of doing otherwise it seems that I can't use chat any more.

Why has this change happened? And could it be undone?

Temporary fix:
If you need to chat NOW, both balpha and the only part of the help page that I didn't read have a solution:

Go to https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/chat-stackexchange-login (or the same URL on any Stack Exchange site where you're logged in) and click the button.

Improve this question
4
  • 2
    Your problem aside: How does SO's new auto-login feature work? might be a nice read. And if you're using Safari, then note there's is no easy way to delete the HTML5 Local Storage.
    – Arjan
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 12:10
  • Note that stackauth.com itself is not meant to be visited directly. So, just to be sure: its very basic layout does not indicate a problem.
    – Arjan
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 14:46
  • @Arjan, Ivo Wetzel claimed he saw some 404's, that is what my edit reflects.
    – aaaaaaaaaaaa
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 15:13
  • (I know, just wanted to make sure the layout doesn't qualify as "broken". But: there's an annoying CamelCase FireFox on that page. That qualifies as broken! ;-))
    – Arjan
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 15:30

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
7

Not sure why you think this is new; it has always been this way.

For https://chat.stackoverflow.com and http://chat.meta.stackoverflow.com, it's enough to be logged in to the parent site (because of the shared domain, chat has access to the parent cookie); for https://chat.stackexchange.com, login relies on the global authentication.

As the help page says, we have a workaround for people with broken browsers: Go to https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/chat-stackexchange-login (or the same URL on any Stack Exchange site where you're logged in) and click the button.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    No luck with chat.stackowerflow.com either, but the fix-link worked, thanks! Now I'm just going to be a bitch and ask why, when there is a working solution, it isn't automated? As for the new thing, maybe I had an old cookie which expired?
    – aaaaaaaaaaaa
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 11:35
7

http://stackauth.com/ is used for network wide authentication on the Stack Exchange network. So if you don't whitelist that you won't be able to log in.

Improve this answer
7
  • Well, I just need to beat the Chrome developers repeatedly in the head with something heavy until they decide to give me a working whitelist feature. I might as well try to move a mountain.
    – aaaaaaaaaaaa
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 0:29
  • 2
    @eBusiness You can follow the feature request in my comments on the answer here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/101803/…
    – user154510
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 1:20
  • @Matthew Read, star for that. I wonder if Mozilla got their act together since last time I checked?
    – aaaaaaaaaaaa
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 11:50
  • There must be a bug. Firefox fails to log in to the chat starting this morning. Chrome (which I have no third party cookies blocked) can't login either. UPDATE: Allowed third party cookies in FX, still not able to log in.
    – Ivo Wetzel
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 13:36
  • @Ivo Wetzel, you are sure of this? No pages on the stack network show a little cookie with a red cross figure in the upper right corner in Chrome? If you are positive I'll reclassify this as a bug.
    – aaaaaaaaaaaa
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 13:43
  • @eBusiness Getting 404's see my answer
    – Ivo Wetzel
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 13:56
  • @Ivo Wetzel, you can't just pull out silently, what happened and what happen'd?
    – aaaaaaaaaaaa
    Commented Aug 28, 2011 at 18:15

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .