Hi Malte,
Sorry, I still think I'm missing something. To clarify, you are wanting to create a developer site (mysite.ws) from a production site (mysite.com). The new system is not creating any cookies (maybe because browsers see the mysite.ws trying to create cookies for mysite.com?).
One can move openacs instances from one domain to another, by copying the openacs files and a db dump file over to the new server.
Check for any hard-wired urls in the files. I would use:
grep -R "mysite.com" /var/lib/aolserver/mysite.ws
repeat the same with the ip number.. just in case.
and also replace all instances of mysite.com with mysite.ws (and the mysite.com's ip number with the mysite.ws' one) in the db dump file *before* uploading to the new server.
This way you don't have to deal with finding and changing all the cases in the host node map, parameters and other data.
Regarding no cookies.. have you tried using telnet to see how mysite.ws is trying to set the cookie?
