Hi all - I had this problem once before with a previous installation, and thought it was fixed, but I'm seeing it again and not sure its related.   

I have Galaxy running with a Proxy server on apache to get /galaxy instead of using port 8080.  I've disabled load balancing and running everything in one process.   I've set up the admin user using:

admin_users = myemail@mydomain.edu

then restarted Galaxy.  I was already logged in, refreshed the page, and didn't see the Admin page, so I logged out.  I tried to log back in but get redirected to the main galaxy page and I'm still not logged in.   I checked the galaxy logs and see the following:

serving on 0.0.0.0:8080 view at http://127.0.0.1:8080

galaxy.web.framework DEBUG 2012-01-03 16:18:29,994 Error: this request returned None from get_history(): http://bic/galaxy/

10.24.51.101 - - [03/Jan/2012:16:18:29 -0400] "GET /galaxy/ HTTP/1.1" 200 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_2) AppleWebKit/534.52.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.2 Safari/534.52.7"

10.24.51.101 - - [03/Jan/2012:16:18:30 -0400] "GET /galaxy/root/tool_menu HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://bic/galaxy/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_2) AppleWebKit/534.52.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.2 Safari/534.52.7"

10.24.51.101 - - [03/Jan/2012:16:18:30 -0400] "GET /galaxy/history HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://bic/galaxy/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_2) AppleWebKit/534.52.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.2 Safari/534.52.7"

galaxy.web.framework DEBUG 2012-01-03 16:18:30,594 Error: this request returned None from get_history(): http://bic/galaxy/root/user_get_usage

10.24.51.101 - - [03/Jan/2012:16:18:30 -0400] "POST /galaxy/root/user_get_usage HTTP/1.1" 500 - "http://bic/galaxy/history" "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_2) AppleWebKit/534.52.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.2 Safari/534.52.7"

Error - <type 'exceptions.AssertionError'>: Could not determine anonymous user's history.

URL: http://bic/galaxy/root/user_get_usage

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/eggs/Paste-1.6-py2.6.egg/paste/exceptions/errormiddleware.py', line 143 in __call__

  app_iter = self.application(environ, start_response)

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/eggs/Paste-1.6-py2.6.egg/paste/recursive.py', line 80 in __call__

  return self.application(environ, start_response)

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/eggs/Paste-1.6-py2.6.egg/paste/httpexceptions.py', line 632 in __call__

  return self.application(environ, start_response)

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/lib/galaxy/web/framework/base.py', line 160 in __call__

  body = method( trans, **kwargs )

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/lib/galaxy/web/framework/__init__.py', line 67 in decorator

  return simplejson.dumps( func( self, trans, *args, **kwargs ) )

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/lib/galaxy/web/controllers/root.py', line 203 in user_get_usage

  return self.__user_get_usage( trans )

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/lib/galaxy/web/controllers/root.py', line 206 in __user_get_usage

  usage = trans.app.quota_agent.get_usage( trans )

File '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/lib/galaxy/quota/__init__.py', line 29 in get_usage

  assert history, "Could not determine anonymous user's history."

AssertionError: Could not determine anonymous user's history.

CGI Variables

-------------

  CONTENT_LENGTH: '-1'

  HTTP_ACCEPT: 'application/json, text/javascript, */*; q=0.01'

  HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING: 'gzip, deflate'

  HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE: 'en-us'

  HTTP_CONNECTION: 'Keep-Alive'

  HTTP_COOKIE: 'galaxysession=c6ca0ddb55be603a60ab36dc18d043e05577a892e93c9dadb26d3a1556c8c957dfed888be5af1bfd; galaxysession=c6ca0ddb55be603a1703b65966de4e010d7a3dd39f711df6d65d3ab9d5876cfd9280ce1808870f14'

  HTTP_HOST: 'bic'

  HTTP_ORIGIN: 'http://bic'

  HTTP_REFERER: 'http://bic/galaxy/history'

  HTTP_USER_AGENT: 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_2) AppleWebKit/534.52.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.2 Safari/534.52.7'

  HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH: 'XMLHttpRequest'

  PATH_INFO: '/root/user_get_usage'

  REMOTE_ADDR: '10.24.51.101'

  REQUEST_METHOD: 'POST'

  SCRIPT_NAME: '/galaxy'

  SERVER_NAME: 'bic.cag.chop.edu'

  SERVER_PORT: '8080'

  SERVER_PROTOCOL: 'HTTP/1.1'

Configuration

-------------

  __file__: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/universe_wsgi.ini'

  admin_users: 'golharr@gmail.com'

  apache_xsendfile: 'True'

  cookie_path: '/galaxy'

  database_connection: 'postgres:///galaxy'

  database_engine_option_server_side_cursors: 'True'

  database_engine_option_strategy: 'threadlocal'

  debug: 'False'

  default_cluster_job_runner: 'pbs:///'

  enable_pages: 'True'

  here: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist'

  new_file_path: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/database/tmp'

  nglims_config_file: 'tool-data/nglims.yaml'

  set_metadata_externally: 'True'

  start_job_runners: 'pbs'

  static_cache_time: '360'

  static_dir: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/static/'

  static_enabled: 'True'

  static_favicon_dir: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/static/favicon.ico'

  static_images_dir: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/static/images'

  static_scripts_dir: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/static/scripts/'

  static_style_dir: '/home/galaxy/galaxy-dist/static/june_2007_style/blue'

  use_interactive: 'False'

  use_nglims: 'False'

WSGI Variables

--------------

  application: <paste.recursive.RecursiveMiddleware object at 0x1ae5cf10>

  paste.cookies: (<SimpleCookie: galaxysession='c6ca0ddb55be603a1703b65966de4e010d7a3dd39f711df6d65d3ab9d5876cfd9280ce1808870f14'>, 'galaxysession=c6ca0ddb55be603a60ab36dc18d043e05577a892e93c9dadb26d3a1556c8c957dfed888be5af1bfd; galaxysession=c6ca0ddb55be603a1703b65966de4e010d7a3dd39f711df6d65d3ab9d5876cfd9280ce1808870f14')

  paste.expected_exceptions: [<class 'paste.httpexceptions.HTTPException'>]

  paste.httpexceptions: <paste.httpexceptions.HTTPExceptionHandler object at 0x1ae5cd50>

  paste.httpserver.thread_pool: <paste.httpserver.ThreadPool object at 0x16b60990>

  paste.recursive.forward: <paste.recursive.Forwarder from /galaxy>

  paste.recursive.include: <paste.recursive.Includer from /galaxy>

  paste.recursive.include_app_iter: <paste.recursive.IncluderAppIter from /galaxy>

  paste.recursive.script_name: '/galaxy'

  paste.throw_errors: True

  webob._parsed_post_vars: (MultiDict([]), <FakeCGIBody at 1b856fd0 viewing MultiDict([])>)

  webob._parsed_query_vars: (MultiDict([]), '')

  wsgi process: 'Multithreaded'

------------------------------------------------------------

First, I'm not sure that's normal.  It doesn't seem to be related, because it happens even if I bring up a new Galaxy page.  

I can't log in as a user as well. There is no error in the galaxy log file so I'm not sure how to track this one down.