Backing bean not holding values!

Question

I have created a simple login page for an app I am creating. I have used JSPX, and created a backing bean which is registered as a managed bean. Just for interests sake (to check that things work), i initialise the userName and password attributes - and I see these defualt values in the gui (OK), however when I entered a user name and password, the values are not updated, so my login code (bound to the action of a commandButton) cannot get the values and log me in.
my faces-config.xml has this snippet:
<managed-bean>
<managed-bean-name>LoginBean</managed-bean-name>
<managed-bean-class>userinterface.backing.LoginBean</managed-bean-class>
<managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>
</managed-bean>
my JSPX has definitions like this:
<h:inputText id="userName" value="#{LoginBean.userName}" required="true"/>
my backing bean has the attributes defined:
private String password = "testPass";
private String userName = "testUser";
i just dont understand what I am missing. From the documentation I have read, setting the value attribute by binding it the the backing beans attributes should be enough to update the values... but apparently not.
Also, when I press "login" the username and password fields are cleared... is this normal behviour?
I am sure my backing bean is correctly defined as the fields show with default values, and the command buttons worrk. Do I need to hook up the getters and setters in the JSPX page?
Thanks for any insight - this is fun technology to play with, but trying to get some simple things up and running can be frustrating!
/caj

Answer 1

I found the problem eventually - the structure in my jspx document was incorrect, as I had mananged to split my from into two forms, and the submit commandButton was only submitting the form that the button resided on. The edited information was on the other form, and was thus not sumbitted. Once I merged the form into one, the whole thing worked perfectly!!
I figured that I did something wrong - hope this mistake can help others.
/caj