Distributed authentication doesn't work

Yes, you are correct, this indeed was the problem.

However, I was getting this error before I changed my account creation settings:
"Sorry. Unrecognized username or password. Have you forgotten your password?"
Seems like that's a terribly wrong error message to be sending in this case.

Quite honestly, this is not quite how I expected DA to work, but I guess I read it wrong. I wanted to use DA in a trusted way... I want to approve everyone, but if they've been allowed in and kept alive on another Drupal site, let them skip the approval process. As it is, it's all or nothing -- let everyone in without approval, or force approval (and also, in this case, block Drupal IDs). So I think it's fair to say that DA is sort of broken right now.

(checking issues)

Ah, yes... what do you know...

I've been having this problem too: I am able to log in to Drupal with IDs from my own site, but cannot log in to my site with a Drupal ID. After extensively staring at the code of user.module, I managed to work out what's causing the problem. I too have it set up so that admin approval is required for new user accounts. The following single line of code in user_authenticate() is breaking the DA system:

if (variable_get('user_register', 1) == 1) {

If you have a look at user_configure_settings() (also in user.module), you'll see that user_register can have three different values (the numbers aren't explicitly in the code, but since all arrays are zero-based in PHP, you can work it out by counting):

• 0: only site admins can create new accounts.
• 1: visitors can create accounts without approval.
• 2: visitors can create accounts, but need admin approval.

So the problem line of code is basically saying: unless your site's user_register variable is set to 1, I refuse to work. Well, bugger that! All you have to do to fix the problem is comment out that line - and the end brace for the if statement further down - as follows:

  // Try each external authentication source in series. Register user if
  // successful.
  else if (!$user->uid && $server) {
    foreach (module_list() as $module) {
      if (module_hook($module, 'auth')) {
        if (module_invoke($module, 'auth', $name, $pass, $server)) {
          //if (variable_get('user_register', 1) == 1) {
            $account = user_load(array('name' => "$name@$server"));
            if (!$account->uid) { // Register this new user.
              $user = user_save('', array('name' => "$name@$server", 'pass' => user_password(), 'init' => "$name@$server", 'status' => 1, "authname_$module" => "$name@$server", 'roles' => array(_user_authenticated_id())));
              watchdog('user', t('New external user: %user using module %module.', array('%user' => "<em>$name@$server</em>", '%module' => "<em>$module</em>")), l(t('edit'), 'user/'. $user->uid .'/edit'));
              break;
            }
          //}
        }
      }
    }
  }

Or just delete those lines if you want (better to leave some record of your hacks though, IMO - makes life slightly easier when the time comes to upgrade). I've tested this hack, and it fixes the problem beautifully - no side effects that I've noticed either, as yet.

Hope this helps!

Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh