Home redirects to login after upgrade to 2.8.4

My site has been unreliable since the upgrade to 2.8.4.

Visitors to my home page can not reach it reliably without logging in. I started this discussion with Topic 301288:

ww.wp.xz.cn/support/topic/301288

when the problem first appeared as a “401 Unauthorized” error. Now visitors are always redirected to the Login page. The problem disappears if the user logs in.

The problem does not interfere with visits to other pages. The other pages come up fine. The only problem is with the home page.

The problem doesn’t seem to change when I enable/disable SSL and/or OpenID authentication. I also use the Gallery2 plugin, if that’s relevant. The problem remains if I remove the plugins.

I also upgraded to an up to date theme, since I had been using a very old one.

I checked the url rewrite code in my .htaccess file and it contains the right text for rewriting references to “.”

I also tried installing various permalink rewrite or disable scripts in my plugin directory, but these did not work, either.

This is especially annoying because I have a second web site that has upgraded without problems. The only obvious difference between the two is that the working one has a different theme.