Unable log in to the django admin page with a valid username and password

I had this problem. The issue is that in production I set two variables to True that allowed me to connect to the site using https.

SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE and CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE should be set to False if you are developing on localhost http. Changing these two variables to False allowed me to sign into the admin site when developing locally.

Steps to debug:

• Make sure that your Database is synced
  • Double check that you have a django_session table
• Try to authenticate
  • Do you see a record being created in the django_session table?

IF NOT

• remove non-standard settings
  • AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = ('django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend',)
  • SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE = True
  • SESSION_SAVE_EVERY_REQUEST = True
  • SESSION_COOKIE_AGE = 86400 # sec
  • SESSION_COOKIE_DOMAIN = None
  • SESSION_COOKIE_NAME = 'DSESSIONID'
  • SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE = False
• Make sure that your Database is synced
  • Double check that you have a django_session table
• Try to authenticate
  • Do you see a record being created in the django_session table?

Let me know if this turns up any useful debug.

Sample settings file: https://github.com/fyaconiello/Django-Blank-Bare-Bones-CMS/blob/master/dbbbcms/settings.py

>>> from django.contrib.auth import authenticate
>>> u = authenticate(username="user", password="pass")
>>> u.is_staff = True
>>> u.is_superuser = True

Is there something else I'm missing?

u.is_active should be True

I don't believe the admin password is stored in the settings.py file. It's created when you first syncdb. I am thinking you either skipped creating the superuser or just made a typo. Try running in terminal at your projects root.:

python django-admin.py createsuperuser

That will allow you to retype your admin login. Also seen here https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/django-admin/