Back button issue

[Lee, Dong]

Hi,

We have observed an uptick in reports from users receiving the following error message. They report not clicking the back button, and some also report this being their first login attempt of the day.

Error Message to Users:
You may be seeing this page because you used the Back button while browsing a secure web site or application. Alternatively, you may have mistakenly bookmarked the web login form instead of the actual web site you wanted to bookmark or used a link created by somebody else who made the same mistake.
Left unchecked, this can cause errors on some browsers or result in you returning to the web site you tried to leave, so this page is presented instead.

Log Entry:
ERROR [net.shibboleth.idp.authn.ExternalAuthenticationException:91] - x.x.x.x - net.shibboleth.idp.authn.ExternalAuthenticationException: Error retrieving flow conversation
        at net.shibboleth.idp.authn.ExternalAuthentication.getProfileRequestContext(ExternalAuthentication.java:227)
Caused by: org.springframework.webflow.execution.repository.NoSuchFlowExecutionException: No flow execution could be found with key 'e1s2' -- perhaps this executing flow has ended or expired? This could happen if your users are relying on browser history (typically via the back button) that references ended flows.
        at org.springframework.webflow.execution.repository.support.AbstractFlowExecutionRepository.getConversation(AbstractFlowExecutionRepository.java:172)
Caused by: org.springframework.webflow.conversation.NoSuchConversationException: No conversation could be found with id '1' -- perhaps this conversation has ended?
        at org.springframework.webflow.conversation.impl.ConversationContainer.getConversation(ConversationContainer.java:126)

Here are some questions:

  1.  Is the error message associated with the error in the log?
  2.  What do I need to look at, or where should I look, on the IDP servers? We have three servers behind a load balancer in Azure.
  3.  When working with users, we recommend clearing all browser cookies and caches. However, this does not resolve the issue.

To be honest, I'm not sure what questions I should ask. If I find something in the response that matches our situation, I will post more specific follow up questions.

Thank you,
Dong Lee

Identity Management & System Integration
Center for Information Technology Services
University of Maryland, Baltimore
410-706-3027
dlee at umaryland.edu<mailto:dlee at umaryland.edu>


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