Sitesync: Users are not able to login after migrating a single site instance to a multisite one

This article describes an issue where after migrating a single site instance to a multisite one, users from the single site instance are not able to log in.

Jul 20, 2021
Knowledge

Title

URL Name

sitesync-users-not-able-to-login-after-migrating-a-single-site-instance

Article Number

000204119

Environment

Product: Sitefinity Version: 11.x, 12.x, 13.x OS: All supported OS versions Database: All supported Microsoft SQL Server versions

Question/Problem Description

A single site was recently merged into a multisite instance. Everything seemed to work fine, but now the user's passwords are not working.
Users not able to login on production.

Steps to Reproduce

Clarifying Information

When migrating a single site instance to a multisite one with the option to sync users enabled (for details refer to Notes section), in the target users are synced creating a new membership provider with the name of the migrated site.

Error Message

Incorrect credentials.

Defect Number

Enhancement Number

Cause

The validationKey is identical in the SecurityConfig.config file stored on the file system on both source and target. The cause of the issue is that there is another validation key stored in the SecurityConfig.config file kept in the database for this particular provider that is different on both environments.

<securityConfig xmlns:...
...
  <membershipProviders>
        <add title="..." applicationName="..."  validationKey="..." type="Telerik.Sitefinity.Security.Data.OpenAccessMembershipProvider, Telerik.Sitefinity" name="Migrated Site Users" />
  </membershipProviders>
</securityConfig>

Resolution

The password encoding process is consisted of three parameters - original password, salt and ValidationKey. All three should be equal in the source and target environment in order for the login process to be successful. The salt value is located in [sf_users] database table. The validationKey is located in the SecurityConfig.config file.

In order to resolve the issue update SQL queries need to be performed in the database so a backup of the database should be prepared and the suggested resolution should be tested locally first.

The following query can be used to get the SecurityConfig.config stored in the database:

SELECT CAST (DTA AS XML), *
FROM [sf_xml_config_items]
WHERE path LIKE 'SecurityConfig.config'

Change the value of the DTA column as needed in order for the validationKey parameter to be correct on the problematic environment. The following query can be used as reference:

UPDATE [sf_xml_config_items]
SET dta = '<securityConfig xmlns:...
  ...
</securityConfig>'
WHERE path LIKE 'SecurityConfig.config'

Performing this results in user passwords form the default provider will continue to be decrypted with the validationKey from the SecurityConfig.config file stored on the file system, while user passwords from the Migrated Site Users provider will be decrypted with the new validationKey updated in the SecurityConfig.config file stored in the database.

Workaround

Notes

Sitefinity documentation, Migrate a single site to multisite with SiteSync
https://www.progress.com/documentation/sitefinity-cms/migrate-a-single-site-to-a-multisite-instance
Progress Article(s):
SiteSync: How to sync users, roles and permissions for roles?

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Last Modified Date

10/18/2021 3:23 PM

Sitesync: Users are not able to login after migrating a single site instance to a multisite one

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