Sudden error in S9y backend: no more admin functions (v.1.21

[hgoor]

Hi,

After a lot of trouble trying to upgrade my S9y install to 1.4.1, I had to revert back to a backup of 1.2.1.

Also, my provider upgraded from Apache 1.x to 2.x overnight.

Suddenly I get the following error in the backe-end (admin) module:

No route to host
Notice: No route to host in /home/vandegoo/public_html/bundled-libs/PEAR.php on line 848
No route to host

I use the Bulletproof template and now I only get the right side of the menu and none of the real "admin" options.

Does anyone have an idea what could be the problem??

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I assume this is caused due to your provider having blocked network connections to hosts, and possibly because you use the RSS admin backend plugin. This one is the only I can think of that tries to open a foreign network connection.

Either your provider must remove the firewalling, or you must manually delete that RSS admin plugin to "unlock" the admin panel again.

HTH,
Garvin

[hgoor]

Hi!

I assume this is caused due to your provider having blocked network connections to hosts, and possibly because you use the RSS admin backend plugin. This one is the only I can think of that tries to open a foreign network connection.

Either your provider must remove the firewalling, or you must manually delete that RSS admin plugin to "unlock" the admin panel again.

HTH,
Garvin

Funny. First I messed up my blog now they are messing with stuff.. Grrr....

Btw: the page that is left, shows RSS feeds (I have installed the backend-rss feed plugin so I see feeds from me and other blogs when I log-in)...

[judebert]

I'll bet you've got more than one feed in the backend. At least some of the feeds are working -- you're allowed to connect to them, and they provide some kind of data -- but one of them fails. So you get the RSS output that works, but nothing afterwards.

Seems to me we should move the plugin output *after* the other admin functions are called, if that's possible.

[hgoor]

I'll bet you've got more than one feed in the backend. At least some of the feeds are working -- you're allowed to connect to them, and they provide some kind of data -- but one of them fails. So you get the RSS output that works, but nothing afterwards.

Seems to me we should move the plugin output *after* the other admin functions are called, if that's possible.

That's the thing: all RSS feeds seem to be working...

Can I solve this by renaming/moving a dir or something temporarily?

EDIT: darn! I just see what the whole message is:

S9y latest blogs <--------- this is the RSS feed it tries to get!!!

No route to host
Notice: No route to host in /home/vandegoo/public_html/bundled-libs/PEAR.php on line 848
No route to host

[judebert]

You can move the serendipity_event_backendrss/ directory outside the plugins/ directory, and it'll no longer attempt to read any feeds.

Does your edit mean that you do have multiple feeds, and it's not retrieving the S9Y latest blogs feed, causing the rest of the backend to fail hard?

Besides a firewall, I can imagine this being a misconfiguration somewhere. I don't know what happens when you enter a bad domain, but I can imagine getting a 'no route to host'. I'd check the serendipity_config database table, find the S9Y latest blogs feed, and try to access it from Firefox. If you can't find the host, you know that the feed is down and we need to fix the plugin to handle that problem. If the feed is up, you know your webserver is blocking access with a firewall (and maybe we should fix the plugin for that, too).

Either way, you can remove the entry from serendipity_config so the plugin doesn't try to retrieve it and mess things up.

[hgoor]

Does your edit mean that you do have multiple feeds, and it's not retrieving the S9Y latest blogs feed, causing the rest of the backend to fail hard?

Exactly!

I have other (external) feeds there and they work, but I also retrieve 2 local feeds (comments and my own posts....

Weird that the whole interface just crumbles and only shows the feeds and no admin options anymore?

EDIT: I think I know what the problem is: http://blog.s9y.org/ is down???

[hgoor]

You can move the serendipity_event_backendrss/ directory outside the plugins/ directory, and it'll no longer attempt to read any feeds.

That COMPLETELY solved the problem.

Now, this is S9y 1.2.1 (older version) but I totally would catgeorize this as a MAJOR flaw as the fact that just one feed could not be retrieved just kills the complete backend, is not very nice behaviour...

Now: is this a flaw of S9y or the plugin?

I have bugged my ISP for this problem and now it turns out it has nothing to do with them......

[judebert]

Completely agree about severity of the error. I'm checking the plugin right now.

[judebert]

Okay, this may be a little beyond me. I need Garvin to confer.

The plugin simply uses the bundled Onyx RSS module. That, in turn, uses the bundled HTTP module and HTTP_Request. It was my understanding that both of these modules pass errors up, instead of allowing the running program to fail.

It may be possible to fix the whole thing by adding an @ in front of the $c->parse($rssuri), then adding a check to see if $c was set. If Garvin doesn't see a problem with that, I'll commit the change.

Of course, if you want to try it yourself (at line 161 of serendipity_event_backend.php) and tell me whether it works for you, please do!

[hgoor]

Okay, this may be a little beyond me. I need Garvin to confer.

The plugin simply uses the bundled Onyx RSS module. That, in turn, uses the bundled HTTP module and HTTP_Request. It was my understanding that both of these modules pass errors up, instead of allowing the running program to fail.

It may be possible to fix the whole thing by adding an @ in front of the $c->parse($rssuri), then adding a check to see if $c was set. If Garvin doesn't see a problem with that, I'll commit the change.

Of course, if you want to try it yourself (at line 161 of serendipity_event_backend.php) and tell me whether it works for you, please do!

Ok here's what happened/what I did:

first I moved the whole plugin-dir back to the plugins dir and logged in: sure enough no admin options, just the same errors.

Next I edited the line saying:

Code: Select all

$c->parse($rssuri);

And turned it into:

Code: Select all

@$c->parse($rssuri);

saved, logged in again: no result whatsoever...

Then I figured maybe:

Code: Select all

@ $c->parse($rssuri);

with an extra space might help...

Both did not work.

I moved the plugin to temp dir again, reloaded my admin interface and all was working again...

I'm not a programmer so I just tried the above, maybe I had to do something else as well, but this is what I did step bystep, with no result.

Btw: blog.s9y is still down and so is the feed (off course)...

[hgoor]

Hi!

I assume this is caused due to your provider having blocked network connections to hosts, and possibly because you use the RSS admin backend plugin. This one is the only I can think of that tries to open a foreign network connection.

Either your provider must remove the firewalling, or you must manually delete that RSS admin plugin to "unlock" the admin panel again.

HTH,
Garvin

The feed from http://blog.s9y.org/ is DOWN.

This cause a fatal error in the backend rss plugin: maybe a combination with the bulletproof theme? Result: no admin links whatsoever on the left.

Will post a screenshot to show...

EDIT:

Messed up:


After removing plugin:



So yeah you where right: removing the backend RSS plugin solved it...

But it's a crude solution of course

[hgoor]

Maybe this helps?

This is the version header:

Code: Select all

# $Id: serendipity_event_backendrss.php,v 1.7 2007/07/20 09:22:44 garvinhicking Exp $

[Don Chambers]

The feed from http://blog.s9y.org/ is DOWN.

This cause a fatal error in the backend rss plugin: maybe a combination with the bulletproof theme?

Confirmed - the s9y blog is down, but the backend problems cannot possibly be related to bulletproof IMHO (though, I have been wrong before).

I've been following your problems for several days, and I have to say that "I feel your pain". I think a lot of this started due to your browser (FF3?)and the upgrade process, and I hope you appreciate that many people are trying to help even though s9y does not appear to be at fault. I have already upgraded numerous sites to 1.4 and 1.4.1 and have yet to encounter any problems (fingers crossed).

I read a few of your entries, and I liked what I read. Keep up the great blogging. Despite what I try and do for s9y, I cannot seem to write anything on my own damn blog!!!

Hang in there! I'll let Judebert and Garvin continue to troubleshoot for you since both have forgotten more than I will ever know about such matters!

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

I need to check with jannis why the blog is down.

Sadly, PHP is VERY unforgiving when network stuff fails, there is often no way to catch those fatally network routing errors, because often PHP bails out due to timeout issues completely. I have no solution to that; detecting "down" sites is something thatI don't know how to do properly with PHP, or if it's even possible.

The only thing that could be done is to create a "fatal error" counter. Store a DB configuration value when the feed was last tried to be accessed, and reset that counter when the connection is made successfully. Then on the next run, the tool could detect a "non zero" counter and check it against the current timestamp. If it's older than, say 5 minutes, the plugin could be temporarily disabled for that site...?

Regards,
Garvin