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HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name is always null

I know this question has been asked before but each question has a different scenario to what I have or I am missing the obvious.
So I have implemented SSO architecture, so the user click on log in and redirected to identity server and log in there and get redirected back to the application.
in one of my application I want to use the HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name in my membershipprovider, but it is always empty. so I found out that I need create a cookie and set it up properly to get the HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.Name form wherever I want.
My code look like this:
After the user is redirected from the Identity server to a login control:
if (!System.Web.HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated)
{
FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1,
HttpContext.Current.Session["username"].ToString(),
DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(30), true, String.Empty,
FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath);
string encryptedCookie = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket);
HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName,
encryptedCookie);
cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(30);
Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage("/my-profile", true);
}
My web config file looks like this:
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms domain="http://localhost:8081" name="yourAuthCookie" loginUrl="login.aspx"
protection="All" path="/" />
</authentication>
<authorization>
<allow users="?" />
</authorization>
after the user is redirected to the my profile page the System.Web.HttpContext.Current.User.Identity.IsAuthenticated is true and the AuthinticationType = Cookies. but the Name is empty.
I am using asp.net webforms.
UPDATE: I have tried to set the HttpContext.Current.User it is set properly but when the page load or redirected it goes back to null empty.
if (ticket != null && !ticket.Expired)
{
var roles = ticket.UserData.Split(',');
System.Web.HttpContext.Current.User = new System.Security.Principal.GenericPrincipal(new FormsIdentity(ticket), roles);
}
any help will be much appreciated.

Your domain is wrong - in your app.config; <forms domain="http://localhost:8081" ... /> in this context domain has a meaning of domain into which the cookie is set. You can read more about domain of cookies here.
Domain is something like www.google.com or .google.com etc - it doesn't contain protocol prefix, it doesn't contain port and it makes no sense to use it for local hosts - so drop that attribute from your web.config for good.
Also (and this has nothing to do with your issue, it's just a friendly suggestion) - you don't have to construct forms auth ticket when all you care about is username. You can use just FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie instead.

Access Cookie into sub domains

I want to host multiple sites under one domain. But currently I am working on localhost, so I added these 2 lines to my etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 something.com
127.0.0.1 orders.something.com
There are 2 applications hosted in IIS. One can be browsed using: orders.something.com/OrdersSSO and other can be browsed using something.com/SSOSample/.
I created authentication cookie using this code in something.com/SSOSample/:
FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1,
"abc",
DateTime.Now,
DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(30), // value of time out property
true, // Value of IsPersistent property
String.Empty,
FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath);
string encryptedTicket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket);
HttpCookie authCookie = new HttpCookie(
FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName,
encryptedTicket);
Response.Cookies.Add(authCookie);
So I am logged in this application. However when I browse orders.something.com/OrdersSSO I don't get my authentication cookie.
This is my forms section in web.config:
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl="~/Account/Login.aspx" enableCrossAppRedirects="true" timeout="2880" domain=".something.com" />
</authentication>
What am I missing?

Looks like your cookie doamin has not been correctly set.
Try something like this :
authCookie.Domain = ".something.com"
Note the "." in front of the domain name, that's what makes it work for any subdomain of something.com.

Redirect to page after Forms Authentication Timeout

In my asp.net web application, I'm using asp.net forms authentication with following configuration.
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms name=".ASPNETAUTH" loginUrl="Login.aspx" protection="None" timeout="20" />
</authentication>
After form authentication time out, I would like to redirect to a different page. For example to 'SessionTimedOut.aspx' page.
I've found other questions on here, here is one, Forms Authentication Timeout vs Session Timeout
The answer given makes sense but the first line of code has me confused.
var cookie = Retrieve AuthenticationCookie();
if (cookie == null) return;
FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = null;
try {
ticket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(cookie.Value);
} catch (Exceptoin decryptError) {
// Handle properly
}
if (ticket == null) return; // Not authorised
if (ticket.Expiration > DateTime.Now) {
Response.Redirect("SessionExpiredPage.aspx"); // Or do other stuff here
}
Now there is a
FormsAuthentication.GetAuthCookie()
which takes a username and bool to persist the cookie, but this is for creating an auth cookie not getting it. So, what would the var cookie, first line of code look like.
At the moment, I am using " in web config and then when user logins in settings a session and then on every post back in a page init in my base page am checking if that session is null, if so, redirecting to a session timed out page. This is not really what I want.
May have found out how to get cookie,
HttpCookie cookie = Context.Request.Cookies[FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName];
FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(cookie.Value);
This doesn't work because when the authentication ticket expires, the cookie goes away and the the cookie var is null. Any other way to get this working? I would still like on post back check if authentication has expired and then take appropriate action. Any thoughts from anyone????

The thing to remember is that even though your session times out on the server end, the client end will not process anything until it's next request. At that time it will discover that it's session has expired and attempt to restart the session. A Response.Redirect or even Server.Redirect call won't help with this.
What you need to do is to synchronize your server timeout with your client timeout, and have some client script in place to redirect the user to a "Timed Out" type page. I've written up an article with some sample code on how to do that here.

Q: So, what would the var cookie, first line of code look like.?
var cookie = HttpContext.Current.Request.Cookies[FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName]

Why isn't .ASPAUX cookie being validated by FormsAuthentication?

I have a site that uses FormsAuthentication and yes, the name of the cookie is .ASPAUX :)
I can log in perfectly. The server creates a forms authentication ticket, packs it in a cookie, properly determines the expiration time (1 year ahead) and sends it to the client.
For some reason, after some time, even though the cookie is there yet (I can see it with FireCookies) HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated becomes false at the server. It's as if the cookie couldn't be validated.
The problem is: Why would that happen? How can I debug why the cookie suddenly becomes invalid without expiring?
EDIT
Here's the login method:
public static bool Login(int id)
{
try
{
string securityToken = UserHelper.AuthenticateUser(id);
DateTime expiryDate = DateTime.Now.AddYears(1);
FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(
1, id.ToString(), DateTime.Now, expiryDate, true,
securityToken, FormsAuthentication.FormsCookiePath);
string encryptedTicket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket);
HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, encryptedTicket);
cookie.Expires = expiryDate;
HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(cookie);
return true;
}
catch
{
return false;
}
}
And the web.config:
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl="~/Login.aspx" timeout="2880" slidingExpiration="true"/>
</authentication>

Set static machine keys in your web.config to make sure that the encryption key used in generating your ticket survives an application pool being recycled (or your website being restarted in the ASP.NET web server)?
Also see the Forms Authentication Tickets section of this MSDN library article

A few things I can think of to check:
Do you have multiple domains (including www.domain.com vs domain.com)?
If so, either set the domain in the cookie as domain.com or ensure you always use the same domain
Are you using HTTPS?
If so, make sure you're always accessing the cookie via HTTPS or making sure that Secure is set to false on the HttpCookie (otherwise it's only accessible on HTTPS requests)
Are you writing the cookie from a virtual directory?
If so, the "path" on the cookie might be set and it won't be accessible from outside the path.
Do you have multiple web servers?
If so, make sure your machine key is set to the same value (though that should be throwing an exception)

authCookie not secure in global.asax

I have a login problem.
First i am using SSL while logging.
When i log in, i am creating a cookie like this. when i check if it is secure the answer is yes.
FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1, // version
UserName.Text, // user name
DateTime.Now, // creation
DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(60),// Expiration
false, // Persistent
role); // User data
// Now encrypt the ticket.
string encryptedTicket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(authTicket);
// Create a cookie and add the encrypted ticket to the
// cookie as data.
HttpCookie authCookie =
new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName,
encryptedTicket);
if (authCookie.Secure)
{
new GUIUtility().LogMessageToFile("The cookie is secure with SSL.");
// Add other required code here.
}
authCookie.Secure = FormsAuthentication.RequireSSL;
// Add the cookie to the outgoing cookies collection.
HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(authCookie);
// Redirect the user to the originally requested page
Response.Redirect(FormsAuthentication.GetRedirectUrl(UserName.Text,false));
then this is redirected to the global.asax page which has this code:
string cookieName = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName.ToString();
HttpCookie authCookie = Context.Request.Cookies[cookieName];
try
{
new GUIUtility().LogMessageToFile(cookieName + authCookie.Secure);
}
catch (Exception)
{
//
}
here i get the cookieName as ".ASPXAUTH" and authCookie.Secure value as False.
Why is this happening i want the authCookie.Secure value to be true here.
Any suggestions?? thanks
my web config has this:
<authentication mode="Forms">
<forms loginUrl="Login.aspx" defaultUrl="~/Default.aspx" slidingExpiration="true" timeout="120" path="/" requireSSL="true" protection="All">
</forms>
</authentication>
<httpCookies requireSSL="true"/>
<authorization>
<deny users="?"/>
<!--<allow users="*"/>-->
</authorization>

Restrict the Authentication Cookie-to-HTTPS Connections
Cookies support a "secure" property that determines whether or not browsers should send the cookie back to the server. With the secure property set, the cookie is sent by the browser only to a secure page that is requested using an HTTPS URL.
If you are using .NET Framework version 1.1, set the secure property by using requireSSL="true" on the element as follows:
<forms loginUrl="Secure\Login.aspx"
requireSSL="true" . . . />
If you are using .NET Framework version 1.0, set the secure property manually in the Application_EndRequest event handler in Global.asax using the following code:
protected void Application_EndRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
string authCookie = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName;
foreach (string sCookie in Response.Cookies)
{
if (sCookie.Equals(authCookie))
{
// Set the cookie to be secure. Browsers will send the cookie
// only to pages requested with https
Response.Cookies[sCookie].Secure = true;
}
}
}
so according to me the first option is not working in web config so im doing it manually
which is the second option in the code..
Please suggest.

Are you redirecting on log-in to a non-SSL resource? If this is the case, then the cookie you created in the first piece of code shouldn't be used, because it's a secure cookie and hence only applicable to SSL connections (i.e. you explicitly said it shouldn't be sent to non-SSL requests, that's what .Secure does), and hence a new cookie would be created. I would expect it to also not include the ticket value.
In this case, you're going to want to either:
Keep with SSL from the point of being logged in.
Live with the risk of session stealing (there are further means of mitigating this risk).
Use an authentication protocol like Digest or NTLM that allows for challenge-response and for you to more rapidly expire the log-in without the user being pestered (because the browser does the second log-in for you).