Constantly required to reauthenticate

[tim-myth]

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have installed the latest version of Storage Explorer.
• [x] I have checked existing resources, including the troubleshooting guide and the release notes.
• [x] I have searched for similar issues.

Storage Explorer Version

1.36.2

Regression From

<1.36

Architecture

x64

Storage Explorer Build Number

20241029.2

Platform

Windows

OS Version

Windows 10

Bug Description

Constantly need to reauthenticate between nearly every operation. Frequently I am asked to reauthenticate while reauthenticating. Occasionally I get errors about permissions until I reset Authentication in Storage Explorer. I should probably add that the account I use for Azure is different than the account I use to sign in to my local machine.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Use storage explorer to perform various operations: view queues, view tables, clone tables, etc.
2. In less than 5 minutes you will be asked to reauthenticate.

Actual Experience

While using storage explorer to perform various functions such as viewing message queues, viewing table storage, modifying entity properties in table storage, etc. the banner prompting me to reauthenticate will appear and the resource will not load. The banner appears seemingly at random. Sometimes it won't appear for 5 minutes, and sometimes it will appear while I am in the process of reauthenticating.

Expected Experience

I hope to authenticate and remain authenticated like older versions of storage explorer. I would accept needing to authenticate once or twice a day. I do not expect to authenticate many times an hour.

Additional Context

Task 8271 looks related, but that issue was supposedly fixed in version 1.36.2.

[TomasMalecek]

Looks related to what I am experiencing. I have access to multiple directories and only the first one seems to be authenticated in a stable way. I have multiple pinned storage accounts from another one, and they cause the "One or more accounts requires authentication." bar to appear and have the "broken/unavailable" icon next to them. When I click one of them, a "Quick Access Error" dialog appears:

Load Storage Account Error: {
  "name": null,
  "message": "{\"message\":\"Could not find a WAM account for the selected user. Error: Status: AccountNotFound\\r\\nContext: Account with id 'deadbeef-deaf-beef-dead-12345678beef' not found\\r\\nTag: 0x1f553780\",\"lastError\":{}}"
}

When I switch to another section (e.g. "ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT") and back, the Quick Access fold reloads and a different set of its items gets the "broken/unavailable" icon.

During the first run after the upgrade to version 1.36.2, I needed to re-authenticate. I did so, the "Sign In" dialog caused a tab to be opened in my browser, it required no further action as I was already authenticated in the browser, and my primary tenant in Azure Storage Explorer became authenticated. When I click the "Reauthenticate now..." link in the "ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT" section for the other tenants, the "Sign In" dialog appeared and soon closed automatically without any further browser windows.

Now, even after the app was restarted, the primary tenant is authenticated, but the authentication of the other two tenants I have access to seems to be very volatile. When I click their "Reauthenticate now..." link, the behavior is still the same -- the "Sign In" dialog briefly appears, no extra browser window is opened and the authentication seems to succeed, only to vanish soon again. The spurious unavailability of Quick Access items is still there, too.

[TomasMalecek]

Accessing the storage account using a connection string seems to be a workaround for my case.

[TomasMalecek]

Switching from Default Web Browser to Authentication Broker in Settings > Application > Sign-In > Sign In With and re-authenticating also seems to work. Looks like only the old browser-based method is broken -- but it sadly stays active for anyone upgrading from an earlier version as stated in the release notes.

[craxal]

@TomasMalecek That's odd, because we've had other users reporting that Authentication Broker was broken, and they had to switch back to Web Browser. We know for a fact there are issues with the Authentication Broker method, and we are working on getting a fix.

@tim-myth @TomasMalecek I might suggest the following (see troubleshooting guide for more details):

1. Make sure something other than Authentication Broker is set.
2. Reset authentication (Help > Reset) and select Authentication only.
3. Relaunch Storage Explorer and sign in again.

Does that unblock anything?

[TomasMalecek]

@craxal, the Authentication Broker seems to work OK on my Windows 10. I did not save the account to be available for all apps, just for Azure Storage Explorer, if that makes any difference.