Hello All,
If it's possible it would be a great help if a number of people having this problem could do a quick test to help us determine what cause(s) it (I've seen similar problems that have been traced to firewall software, 3rd party modules, ISP setups etc, and I think that it's confusing the picture and making our investigation more difficult).
The problem of logging out is caused when Dotnetnuke think's you've moved between portal's, so it deletes your authorisation cookie and then recreates a new one. This is an accurate behaviour due to the portal virtualisation (though it may be addressed in another way in the future when portal groups functionality is added). It's possible to see the request that causes this, and this information would be invaluable to us.
To see this request, install a HTTP proxy such as fiddler . Start the fiddler application (either via it's program entry or in Internet explorer via tools->fiddler). Look at File->capture traffic and ensure that it's checked. Now browse to your problematic site, log in and then do whatever in your case it is that logs you out. Now stop the capture (pressing F12 will do this in fiddler). To determine which exact request causes the issue, take a look for a request in the "HTTP Sessions" pane that has the login contained in it (e.g. http://localhost/Home/tabid/36/ctl/Login/Default.aspx ). If you click on it, the right hand side will then give the details for that request. Select the 'session inspector' tab, and expand out 'state'. This will display the cookies that have been sent. A succesful login will show 5-8 cookies (depending on DNN version), the key ones to look for are portalaliasid and portalroles. If this request doesn't show it, move down a few more until you locate the correct request.
If you then select the last line for your site in the "HTTP Sessions" pane, you'll see that the the cookies have been reduced to a much smaller amount (typically 2), and that the 2 key portal cookies are gone. If you can then go back up the list you'll be able to see the first request where this is the case, and the one above it is the request that caused the issues. If people can post the following information it would be great (letters in italics are my examples)
Version of DNN problem in: 3.2.0
Issue in portal type (parent/child/both) & url - parent, http://localhost/dotnetnuke
Version of framework running: 2.0
Final succesful HTTP request (i.e. last with the 2 portal cookies) http://localhost/Home/tabid/36/ctl/Profile/UserID/1/Default.aspx
First HTTP request missing the cookies
http://localhost/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
DNN function being used
editing superusers profile
Many thanks,
Cathal