SA-17468

Summary

System is showing up a blank screen, after the system is left idle for sometime. The http request and http response is going in a loop, as revealed using fiddler. From SMA, user found that the requestor session is not passivated.

Error Messages

No error messages displayed, blank white screen.

Steps to Reproduce

This is reproducible with PRPC 7.1.8 using PRExternal authentication Only.

Start fiddler
Log into PRPC using end user portal.
In SMA stop requestor.
In the end user portal click anywhere on the screen.
You will see a white screen and fiddler you will see the same request repeating.

Root Cause

This problem is reproducible only when using PRExternal style authentication and there is some sort of load balancing issue in place. PRExternal has been depreciated in since PRPC 5.4 and should not be used in PRPC 7.1.X. 

When a PRPC system receives a Pega-RULES cookie that it can't match to a requestor, passivated or other, the engine level calls the activity pzHandleUnknownSession. This returns HTML, pzUnknowSessionAlert, that tries to redirect to the user to the login page but with PRExternal style authentication this keeps looping and looping, the request keeps returning the same HTML. 

Resolution

Same as SA-16874.

PRExternal style authentication is depreciated. Upgrade to PRCustom and then a load balancing issue occurs the user will properly be directed to a PRPC login screen.

Note: This does not resolve the load balancing issue that must be happening to get this problem when using PRExternal authentication.