As one might imagine, the base64 encoding was an untested last-minute change that I am not using in my production code because of the overhead.

Keeping the identity (say, just a username) in clear text also allows for some neat features, such as the ability to read it out via Javascript and update otherwise static HTML with a seemingly dynamic header. I'll save that for another post.

In line 189 (writing the cookie): you base64_encode() the $contents _after_ you've created the MD5 hash.

In line 166 (reading the cookie): you don't base64_decode() the $contents before performing the MD5 to compare against the checksum held in the cookie.

Line 166-167 should be:
if (md5(base64_decode($contents) . $now . $this->_secret) == $checksum) {
$this->_cached = $contents;
}

~ Cliff

And thank you for FirePHP/Wildfire, it's become an important part of my tool box.

Unfortunately the FirePHP fix was delayed a bit because I was unavailable for a while.

I am working with the Firebug team on a closer integration and a co-testing setup for Firebug 1.3 that will allow me to verify the integration between FirePHP and Firebug before new Firebug versions get released. There is also a unit-testing framework planned for 1.3 which should help a lot in preventing issues like this.

Also wanted to note that ZF1.6RC3 was not released just because of FirePHP/Wildfire. There were a dozen other critical fixes that had to make it into 1.6 but it all was great timing and the FirePHP integration did factor into the decision.

Appearently, booting works when the external power cord is unplugged, a lot of peolple said, it worked for them.

Addiionally, removing the "quiet" option in the boot menue also solves the issue, and to my mind this is the best workaround thus far. Simply remove the "quiet" option in /boot/grub/menu.lst, that seemed to work for everybody.