Smoothwall NTLM popups in firefox

[RMGS]

Hi All,

We keep having the same issue about once a month with the NTLM authentication on our smoothwall box.

The symptoms are below

 

. Nothing we are aware of is changed or updated to cause this, the issue just starts happening.

. When a NTLM authenticated user in firefox is browsing the net, they get an authentication box stating "The proxy moz-proxy://.......:8080 is requesting a username and password. The site says: "moz-proxy://.....:8080"

. The box does not accept valid credentials, but cancelling the box does allow you to continue to browse.

. The box appears on every page change

. most, but not all sites are affected. (edexel, mymaths, bbc bitesize and google main page are fine)

. It does not affect internet explorer

. Users are appearing fine in the smoothwall control panel

. The custom blocked page stops functioning, we just get page cannot be displayed.(in all browsers)

. I have restarted as many auth based services i can

 

The only fix i have is a full restart of the smoothwall box, that resolves it for the short term

 

I have spoken to smoothwall several times and due to the slow response from the smoothwall techs, we usually end up restarting the box before they get to us.

If they do get to us when the problem happens, i was told it was a firefox issue and not to use firefox!, how can it be when its fine most of the time and restarting smoothwall box fixes it!

[john]

Firefox latest version per chance? If so I have noticed with another squid based proxy (not smoothwall) that it does this randomly and its only just started occurring in the latest version of Firefox yet was fine in the old one so suspect Mozilla have been playing once again like they also did with Plugins.

[RMGS]

im afraid not, were testing it in version 13 and 21. we did occur it once back in the day on version 5 too.

[Wubbalubbadub]

Ever found a fix for this?

 

I am getting this with IE 10...

[RMGS]

We never experienced this issue with IE. The firefox issue has never been resolved, Smoothwall just told us not to use firefox as most of their customers only use IE.

[Garacesh]

Ever found a fix for this?

 

I am getting this with IE 10...

 

We got this occasionally with IE9 and we're still getting it now that we've rolled out IE10 (which we hoped would fix it)

However, for us, putting valid domain credentials in does allow them to continue browsing (whereas cancelling it is hit-or-miss, sometimes it works, other times it just keeps bringing up the prompt again until eventually landing you at an NTLM Proxy Authentication Failure page)

 

It's just a simple Username/Password combo that requests credentials, I don't have a screenshot to hand but it's just Proxy IP, blank username box, blank password box.

This also happens on Chrome but very very rarely. Then again, I'm the only one here that uses Chrome (staff and pupils are forced onto IE) so maybe that's just skewing the figures.

[RMGS]

are you using NTLM or Kerberos authentication? might be worth setting up a different auth policy with the opposite, running on a different port on some of the stations and see which ones are more reliable

[twin--turbo]

in I.E. you need to add the Smoothwall to trusted sites. Probably the same in FireFox.

[Garacesh]

We're using NTLM at the moment, but we've tried Kerberos before and we still get the same popups.

 

Certificates from Smoothwall are set to be trusted on both smoothwall.local and smoothwall.domain.local

[twin--turbo]

We're using NTLM at the moment, but we've tried Kerberos before and we still get the same popups.

 

Certificates from Smoothwall are set to be trusted on both smoothwall.local and smoothwall.domain.local

 

Tried IP as well for good meassure? May not make a difference...

[RMGS]

Are both the working users and non working users appearing in the user activity list? does it effect everyone or just a few users?

when we have the issue in firefox the users are still appearing as authenticated in the user activity list and it either affected no one or all users (never just a few).

when the problem occurs and you restart the authentication control service does this resolve the issue? does the user list repopulate?