[OJS 3.4.0.5] Author is 'disconnected' when making a submission

Describe the issue or problem
One of our journals reported that an author kept getting an error message when submitting an article. When changing or adding details to the submission during the initial submission process, he would get a message box saying 'Disconnected - an error was encountered and we were unable to save your submission. You may have disconnected." or alternatively a red error message reading “You are not authorized to access the requested resource.” (see the images).

I have not seen these messages before, has anyone encountered them and figured out the cause?

Steps I took leading up to the issue
For example:

  1. Log in to the system
  2. Make a submission and try to add or edit details
  3. Get an error

What application are you using?
For example, OJS 3.4.05

Additional information


Hi @KayWP,

Have you checked your PHP error logs - that usually provides more clues when it comes to errors of this nature?

-Roger
PKP Team

This usually happens when we find this setting in config_inc.php:
session_check_ip = On

If this is the case, changing it to off solves it:
session_check_ip = Off

Thank you both! You’re right @rcgillis, checking the logs would have been a good first step that I forgot about.

I see that session_check_ip is indeed on in our config file @abadan , thank you for pointing that out. I understand from the documentation that this setting does the following:

; This check will invalidate a session if the user's IP address changes.
 ; Enabling this option provides some amount of additional security, but may
 ; cause problems for users behind a proxy farm (e.g., AOL).
 session_check_ip = On

Have you had any negative consequences of turning it off?