Changed base URL in Magento 1.7 and can't log in now

Question

I changed my base URL from a local IP address to a hostname. Magento loads everything fine but when I attempt to login to the admin section the page refreshes without an error. If I type in the wrong password then the page refreshes and displays invalid credentials message.

Answer 1

It looks like this is the classic cookie error. Remove all the cookies from the previous domain or try to login with another browser/incognito mode. Also remember to change the cookie path in your DB. Check this link to achieve that.

Answer 2

I've been pulling my hair on this one a bunch of times for different reasons (Admin login loop after changing BASE URL / SECURE URL settings)

This allows me to log in everytime, fix whatever I did wrong, clear all cache, sessions, etc & undo the changes:

go to app/code/core/Mage/Core/Model/Session/Abstract/Varien.php and comment out those 3 lines (in 1.7 it's from line 89 to 91)

    $cookieParams = array(
        'lifetime' => $cookie->getLifetime(),
        'path'     => $cookie->getPath()
//      'domain'   => $cookie->getConfigDomain(),
//      'secure'   => $cookie->isSecure(),
//      'httponly' => $cookie->getHttponly()
    );

Answer 3

Check if the cache isn't in /tmp/magento instead of [magento root]/var/cache/ Check the permissions, user and group of [magento base dir]/cache folder. If this is it, fix it and clear cache from dir var/cache.

Answer 4

Log into your database with a Mysql Client (I recommend Mysql Workbench), and issue this query:

select * from core_config_data where path like '%base_url%';

You will get 2 rows for that query (a secure (for https:// access ideally) and insecure URL), what is the value of value column ?