DataStax Academy credentials do not immediately work on DataStax Downloads site

Summary

This article discusses a situation where DataStax Academy (DSA) credentials do not work when authenticating on the DataStax Downloads site.

Symptoms

When a user registers for a new account at DataStax Academy, in some situations attempts to authenticate with the new credentials on the Downloads site returns HTTP error 401 ("Unauthorized").

Similarly, a user with a pre-existing account whose password is reset via the DataStax Academy will also fail to authenticate with the new password on the Downloads site.

Cause

The DataStax Downloads site (http://downloads.datastax.com/enterprise) has been unified with DataStax Academy such that it uses a single-sign on (SSO) system. When users register for a new Academy account, the account credentials do not get persisted to the SSO cache when the account has not been verified so SSO authentication on the Downloads site fails.

Similarly, users who reset their password at the Academy fails to authenticate with the new password on the Downloads site.

Solution

In order to persist the new credentials, users need to perform the following:

Step 1 - For new registrations, verify the account email by following the instructions in the automated registration email.

Step 2 - Logon to DataStax Academy with the new credentials.

Step 3 - For an account in which the password was reset, it may be necessary to logout of the session on DataStax Academy then log back in.

After following these steps, it should be possible to authenticate with the new credentials on the DataStax Downloads site. It should also be possible to download files using curl. For example:

$ curl --user erick%40notmail.com:PowerTheRightNow -L \
    https://downloads.datastax.com/enterprise/dse-6.0.0-bin.tar.gz

NOTE - It may be necessary to HTTP encode special characters in the email or password. For example, replace @ with %40. For more information, see Installing DataStax Enterprise 6.0 using the binary tarball.