OTCSTicket throwing 401 Authentication Required error from RESTSharp code but works fine in postman

We have a windows service built in .net framework 4.7.1 and it running under local system account on my dev machine. On server we installed it under a service account.

We are trying to connect to OT CS and trying to upload files using REST API GET and POST Requests. We have a RESTSharp code which generates OTCSTicket and using that OTCSTicket we are trying to connect to the OT CS but it's throwing an error 401 Authentication Required for both the GET and POST requests.

When the same API call is made through Postman it works fine. We checked the network traffic using fiddler and not seeing any difference between Restsharp call from the code and the postman call except that postman is adding a "Postman token".

Following are the server error logs

08/12/2021 09:14:59 INFO Service error occurred

08/12/2021 09:14:59 INFO Error Code: MemberService.MemberTypeNotValid

08/12/2021 09:14:59 INFO Error Message: Member type not valid

The code works only when we hardcode the postman generated OTCSTicket on my local dev machine. But that same hardcoded ticket is not working on the test server which has Win server 2012 R2 installed. My local DEV machine has Win 10 Enterprise. OT CS is 16.2 Enterprise.

This is extremely urgent as we will miss production deadline and any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Florence2818

We tried to use HTTPClient and HTTPWebrequest which are in built with .net framework. But still getting the same error.

Appu Nair

in several posts @"Ferdinand Prantl" and many others have pointed out how other organizations run livelink ( content server ) with IWA for humans and REST for programs . 401 means IWA if you google IWA https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html
OT does not support that so you are on your own
Postman generated code is usually something we all use and re purpose and making it work in a program sometimes require some knowledge like the hidden Parameters etc of postman .
Is it not possible to run livelink anonymously at your place then the same userid and passwords can be used or even omitted ( I have no idea on that ) for your ‘services’ program

Ferdinand Prantl

MemberService.MemberTypeNotValid sounds like a SOAP service failure. Not a REST API. Strange.

A typical type mismatch is sending ID as string instead of integer. You can look for the request in the log to check its validity and guess what parameter caused the MemberTypeNotValid.

There might be more information in thread logs, what was the ticket and if it was rejected or what was actually the error making the request fail.

Typical problems with the ticket:

Encoded ticket. While LLCookie is URL encoded, the OTCSTicket must not be encoded.
Machine-specific ticket. If you want to use tickets generated on other machine, remove the client IP affinity from the LLCookie configuration. It is one of the ways how to support load balancers too.
IWA enabled on CS CGI URL and anonymous role not. See other thread for details.

I recommend you testing with pure .NET before you go back to a library, for example:

cswhoami.cs.txt

csupload.cs.txt

David R

I had a similar problem recently and resolved it by changing the settings in CS Admin => Configure Security Parameters, where I checked the "REST Authentication - Allow basic authentication with REST API" box. See below:

I hope this helps?

Ferdinand Prantl

Enabling the Basic Authentication in the CS administration has no effect on REST API requests using the OTCSTicket header for authentication. It enables the header Authorization with the type Basic and encoded credentials.

Basic Authentication is usually used in temporary or simple tools. No need to fetch a ticket at the beginning, just use the entered credentials. However, since OTDS was integrated to CS as the identity provider, credential-based authentication means a round-trip between CS and OTDS. Applications running for a long time or making many calls should use OTCSTicket for better performance.