cannot log in: cookies are blocked or not supported by your browser.

I am in the process of installing a new copy of WordPress (we use to publish an annual report) on our development server and after the easy set up, after running install.php, I try to log in and get the

ERROR: Cookies are blocked or not supported by your browser. You must enable cookies to use WordPress.

message. Then, out of curiosity, I got to last year’s site and find out I cannot log in there either.

The production server, running 3.9.3 is running fine, no problem, I can log in there.

I have verified that the wordpress test cookie is created.

After entering the username and password, I see that the wordpress_logged_in cookie and cookies for two other locations, wp-admin and wp-content are created, however the wp-settings-1 and wp-settings-time-1 cookies are not. (comparing to my production, working, site).

I have compared the permissions between live and dev; identical.

I am also running pound and varnish…again it’s parallel to production, so there should be no surprises. I’ve reset varnish to clear the cache, etc.

I have looked at the database site url in the settings, etc.; it is correct.

So now I am stuck. My previously working instance broke and the new install also broke which seems to indicate a server configuration issue. I did notice that in my apache config, I had a space after the url, but I removed/fixed/restarted that to no avail. Again–matching it all to production which is working as v3.9.3.

The new install is here: https://wwwdev.cee1.org/ar15/