Visigo FBA - STS and Machine config are configured correctly. Still won't authenticate user login

Question

I followed this blog: http://blogs.visigo.com/chriscoulson/configuring-forms-based-authentication-in-sharepoint-2013-part-1-creating-the-membership-database/

and I'm at the point where I can add users using the FBA pack, I can see them in the SQL database, but everytime I try to login with FBA I get "The server could not sign you in. Make sure your user name and password are correct, and then try again."

I can login with Windows Auth just fine. I read in another post that this meant my STS config wasn't configured correctly. Well I've looked that thing up and down numerous times, side to side with my machine.config and I don't notice anything unusual.

I added this to the sts.config but I think I would need help reading the logs if the answer lies there.

<serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="True" httpHelpPageEnabled="True"/> 

Much help is appreciated. (sharepoint 2013 btw)

SOLVED: A default provider was required for this particular setup to work. I was advised that this solution will prevent having multiple providers, but luckily we didn't need that.

<membership defaultProvider="FBAMembershipProvider"> <roleManager defaultProvider="FBARoleProvider">

Answer 1

If you can add users using the FBA Pack, but cannot login, it means that there is something wrong with your STS config.

If the membership provider config is identical between them, you'll want to make sure that the STS config is inheriting the connection string from the machine.config. You can check the connection strings for your web application and STS match in IIS.

Another possibility is that the STS app pool runs as a different user than your web application app pool, and that identity doesn't have access to the SQL Server database.