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Narendra_26827's avatar
Narendra_26827
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May 08, 2012

Cookie Persistence Issue

Hi ,

 

 

We are using Cookie persistence, with cookie method as Insert, with expiration of 1 day.

 

 

Currently from our client browsers we see cookie with value of one of the pool members. On opening a new tab, we see the cookie is getting a different value(pool member). Is this expected?

 

 

Our expectation is the cookie should persist across tabs and for a browser. But in this case it is not happening.

 

 

Do let us know if there is additional configuration which we need to do to get this working.

 

 

Code snippet:

 

================

 

b profile persist xyz_cookie { defaults from cookie mode cookie timeout 180 cookie mode insert cookie name "X-Y-Z" cookie expiration 1d 00:00:00 }

 

 

Thanks.

 

  • What browser are you using? Under normal conditions, tabs should share cookies, but it depends on the browser and on how the tabs are being launched from certain browsers.
  • Thanks for reply, I am using google chrome on ubuntu linux. But as i check with F5 support they told that for every tab in a browser it acts as a new session for bigip and it will have new cookie value generated.

     

     

    Can we get some stickiness based on client browser level. We thought simple http cookie insert profile will do but i don't think it is working as expected.

     

     

    Thanks.
  • That's interesting; if you are launching the tabs like normal in Chrome, then both session and persistent cookies should be shared across the tabs. Nearly every browser works this way -- it pretty much has to since popup and new window launches are pervasively used on the web.

     

     

    Either your tab is being launched in "Incognito mode" -- meaning it has no attachment to other tabs' settings, or your installation of Chrome may be corrupted. For the first item to be true, you'd have to be launching from Tools -> New Incognito window or with Ctrl+Shift+N.

     

     

    If you're not doing this, it's possible your cookie storage is corrupt. This may sound weird, but it's possible for Chrome to get into a state where its cookie storage is no longer readable and it'll behave as if it has no cookie storage at all. Check first at chrome://settings/cookies and try a "Remove all". If you get no error, try the tab scenario again. If you get an error, you may need to reinstall Chrome or locate the cookies database in ~/.config/Chrome/Default and delete it manually.

     

     

    Is Chrome the only browser affected by this? How does Firefox behave?
  • We have seen this issue in firefox too. So i don't see it as a browser specific issue.

     

     

    Thanks.
  • I am almost certain that Firefox (and all other major browsers) shares cookies across tabs. In fact there are a number of posts on other forums asking for how to configure Firefox to not share them:

     

     

    https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/791853

     

    http://www.nektra.com/products/cookiepie-tab-firefox-extension

     

     

    I think it would be interesting to capture a browser trace of the failure to see what's happening. I expect the issue is not that the browser uses separate cookie stores per tab or window.

     

     

    Aaron
  • Aaron: Think this might be due to a Keepalive persistence failure (sol7964)? Sounds like it might be.

     

     

    http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/7000/900/sol7964.html
  • One more thing to add here is that with every tab we have separate wc domain like

     

     

    for tab1 - 1.xyz.com

     

    for tab2 - 2.xyz.com

     

    for tab3 - 3.xyz.com

     

     

    1,2,3 are appended in the domain url based on the tabs we open in the browser

     

     

    So i think based on the domain url value the cookie value differ across multiple tabs. Is there anyway we can differ this behavior and have some sticky session based on per browser (per device) (any no. of tabs).

     

     

    Thanks.
  • Ah! That makes it clearer.

     

     

    By default, BigIP persistence cookies are domainless, meaning the browser will only present them to the domain they came from. You can change this behavior, though.

     

     

    See here: https://devcentral.f5.com/Community/GroupDetails/tabid/1082223/asg/50/aft/7214/showtab/groupforums/Default.aspx

     

     

    You can set a domain of ".xyz.com" and it should present the same persistence cookie from all three tabs.