Login

Welcome to the ECS/SMS websites

Please enter your username and password to continue. Username Password Realm ecs.vuw.ac.nz staff.vuw.ac.nz student.vuw.ac.nz HTTPS only *

Forgot your password?

Log in using OpenID

By logging in to our website you will be able to access protected resources and some areas of the website will be personalised.

The webserver requires you to authenticate because:

This page requires authentication

Help

There are several reasons that you may be unable to log in:

Selecting the wrong Realm

If you are using an ECS account to log in then the "Realm" should be set to ecs.vuw.ac.nz .

If however you are using a VUW STAFF or STUDENT account (as used elsewhere in the University) "Realm" should be set to staff.vuw.ac.nz or student.vuw.ac.nz as appropriate.

Forgotten password

If you have forgotten your password, please visit the "Forgot your password" page to find out how to have it reset.

You haven't performed "Account Registration"

Prior to first use, students in the School need to follow our registration process so that they can use an ECS account. This is different from the SCS account that you may use elsewhere in the University.

To register, please go to one of the computer labs in the School, or you can register online.

Cookie problems

Our website follows industry best-practice and uses an encrypted session cookie to authenticate your requests to our server. This cookie is not written to your hard disk.

If your browser blocks cookies, then your login may succeed but subsequent requests to our webserver may be denied. Please allow your browser to accept session cookies. If necessary you can add ecs.wgtn.ac.nz to the list of trusted sites in your browser options.

IP Address mismatch

Our webserver checks your IP address when validating your login and subsequent accesses. If your ISP or business runs a proxy server, you could potentially connect from two or more IP addresses in a given session.

To find out your connecting IP address, you can compare the address you connect via HTTPS to the address you connect via HTTP. If the addresses differ, selecting the "HTTPS only" option may help you log in and access the site, as you will always be connecting to the HTTPS version of the website.

Kerberos authentication

A supporting web browser can log you in automatically using Kerberos if you are within the ECS environment. Currently common browsers such as Konqueror, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer have support for Kerberos.

To tell your browser to prefer Kerberos over password authentication, you can set a cookie: Prefer Kerberos authentication; Prefer password authentication.

Even if your browser has Kerberos support, it may fail to log you in automatically. This may be because you have not logged in within the last 10 hours, and your Kerberos ticket has expired. Typing "kinit" at your shell prompt every morning will give you a fresh ticket.

Popup authentication boxes

If you are using Internet Explorer, you may be hitting an IE bug that pops up an authentication dialog if Kerberos authentication fails. To avoid this happening again, you can set a cookie to use password authentication in preference to Kerberos.

Requesting help

As usual, if you have trouble logging in you can contact the ECS Tech Staff by email, giving as much information as possible: bugs@ecs.vuw.ac.nz.