Symfony 2 "Your session has timed out or you have disabled cookies"

Question

One of three things caused this and I am not sure which of the 3 it was. So I will mention all 3 in the hope it will help others save time.

Initially I changed database user credentials within parameters.yml This wasn't working as the user in question couldn't log in from localhost. That said, I used the site to test the connection, which might have upset the cookie.

I had some cache folder permissions issues due to a missing image. So I had to clear the cache and adjust some permissions as you do every time.

Finally, I changed the paths for security.yml

        form_login:
            login_path:  /login
            check_path:  /login_check
        logout:
            path:   /logout

to:

        form_login:
            login_path:  /account/login
            check_path:  /account/login_check
        logout:
            path:   /account/logout

Along with the appropriate changes in routing.yml

The result was that my already logged in user not longer passed security credentials and if I tried to login in via a different user/browser, I was always faced with: "Your session has timed out or you have disabled cookies"

Many many hours were spent following red herrings, checking security, login handling, redis etc.

Answer below.

Answer 1

I ultimately found the answer here: Symfony authentication - can't get past login page in production (The answer by pleerock)

But wanted to link the error message in my subject line with this solution below:

security:
    firewalls:
        main:
            form_login:
                require_previous_session: false

This fixed the issue for browsers which hadn't been logged in prior to the problem.

For my browser which had already been logged in, I had to manually delete the session cookie to get things working again.