[development] Reproducing 'login does not stick' error - what does an expert want me to do?

[Scott McLewin]

Good evening all.

I'm running the latest 4.7 code (cvs up as of tonight).  I have finally 
managed to reproduce a problem that several of my users have reported, 
and one that I see chatter on in the d.o forums.  It is the/a problem 
where you log in with a valid username/password, you appear in the list 
of users that are on-line, but the login does not 'take' and you are 
given an access denied screen when redirected to path user/##.

I have riddled session.inc with watchdog statements and am willing to 
install whatever code a core developer may want me to run to gather 
evidence.  This is running to the development version of my site, so I 
have a lot of leeway on what I can install.  I can authenticate and 
create new sessions just fine in FF 2.0.  IE7, running on the same 
physical box, will not complete the authentication. 

 From my watchdog logs I see that the session is being regenerated as 
part of processing the login form.  The new session id is written to the 
database, then sess_close() is called, then the page continues loading 
and creates a new session for an anonymous user.

 From reading the d.o forums I gather this problem may have continued 
into D5 RC 1, but it was not clear if it was fixed in the final version.

If one of you is looking for information on this problem, I think I'm in 
a position to provide it.

Scott