[opencms-dev] Login process randomly requests exported workplace

[Kenny MacLeod]

Folks,

We're seeing some odd behaviour from an OpenCMS 5.0.1 installation at a
client site.  Very occasionally, whilst trying to log in using the standard
login prompt, the user will get a 404 error from the web server.   They are
logging in from the usual place (i.e. /opencms/opencms/system/login), but
after submitting their details, the 404 occurs.

The logs indicate that the browser is requesting a statically-exported copy
of the Workplace, e.g.

/export/system/workplace/action/index.html

The opencms.properties files defines the export prefix as:

url_prefix_export=/export

So it's clear that OpenCMS is incorrectly thinking that the workplace has
been exported.  However, this behaviour is fairly rare, and very transient,
and seems to random users at random times, but then clears up after a minute
or so.  This makes it very hard for us to diagnose, since we can't replicate
the problem.

So, my questions are:

1) Why is OpenCMS sending the browser to an exported URL, rather than to
/opencms/opencms/system/workplace?

2) Is the problem actually that we *should* be exporting the workplace?
This seems improbable, but I'm open to options.

3) Why would this behaviour be so random?  Could it cookie- or
browser-related?

The server setup is OpenCMS running inside JBoss 3.2.3 on Linux, with Apache
serving the exported content, and using mod_jk2 to send /opencms requests on
to JBoss.

We have a workaround in place in Apache which redirects any requests to
/export/system/workplace to /opencms/opencms/system/workplace, but this is a
nasty hack.  I'd much rather fix the problem, rather than the symptom.

Any help very much appreciated.

Regards,
Kenny