Basic Problem

I have created a Drupal 7 website on a local ubuntu server 10.04. I just moved it to my new Linode Ubuntu server also running 10.04. Everything looks good when viewing as anonymous, but I can't login. I just get a page refresh.

Speculation

I think there is something really simple with my hosts file or with permissions preventing me from loggin in. I used everything in the documentation to set things up.

Important Facts

I do not have public DNS pointing at the server. I am trying browse and login using the servers ip address. Alternatively I tried changed my local computer host file to point to the domain that I would like to use. This was all in the excellent Linode instructions.

I saw a similar post about a WP site. It mentioned a database entry that made the installation loop to a domain url that wasn't there. website_example.abc/login.php. I have never had trouble moving a Drupal website this way though.

The public directory is my superuser account public folder. I chowned them at one point to www-data to see if that was the problem. It changed nothing.

I see nothing in the mysql log or the apache2 logs that I can discern.

Questions

Could be the way cookies are setup?
Could it be default Apache settings?
Could it be .htaccess issues.

More info

I followed the directions in the following places really closely. The only thing that I added extra was APC.
http://library.linode.com/hosting-website
http://library.linode.com/securing-your-server

Sounds like this is set http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/develo ... e_domain/7 try removing the $_cookie_domain variable from your settings file.

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Thank you for the input. The $cookie_domain variable was already commented out in the settings.php file. I tried removing the comment and setting it manually to the domain that I had added to my computer's host file. I also tried changing it to the ip adress of my linode. I am not even sure if you can use a ip address. In any case that did not work, so I changed it back to the original commented out version.

I also changed the linode Ubuntu server virtual host file to be the original domain that I used to build the site locally. Then I changed my local computer host file to point to the server using that domain. This did not work.

Then I tried starting from scratch. I was able to install a new Drupal 7 instance on the linode and login. This leads me to believe that the server settings are fine. I double checked the permission and ownership of the built website. That looked fine.

The difference between the two installations is that I do not get a session cookie for the migrated site. I can watch this through the firefox cookie manager list. I am baffled. The next place I look will be the database.

At this point the domain and IP would be helpful for diagnosis.

_________________
Paid support
How to ask for help
1. Give details of your problem
2. Post any errors
3. Post relevant logs.
4. Don't hide details i.e. your domain, it just makes things harder
5. Be polite or you'll be eaten by a grue

Basic mistake. I had to enable mod_rewrite
I'm still not sure why the new installation everything worked fine. I feel like I should investigate further.

sudo a2enmod rewrite