Montego is getting random 403 errors - refreshing fixes it

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Okay gang. Montego is a hosting client of mine :clap:

. He has been beating me up for the better part of a month now boxing

and I am finally out of ideas. He believes I have broken his site, somehow, although it appears to only be broken in IE, not Firefox, which to me means it ain't me - it's him Smack

So, here's a chance for you to try to help the both of us. The jist of the problem is that sporadically, but often enough to cause a serious hemorrhoid :moon:

, IE returns a 403 You are not authorized page. F5 (refreshing) the page several time fixes it. None of my other clients are experiencing it. Guardian2003 has experienced it at Montego's site also.

Although I have injected humor in the post, it is a real problem for Montego. We'd like to hear your thoughts on this anomaly. No offense to anyone but we need to ask that real solutions are offered and not just guessing, like refresh cookies, reboot, offer a blood sacrifice Wink

Theme Guru Joined: Nov 01, 2003 Posts: 1006

which version of IE is he using currently and what is his site url?

also, service pack 1 or 2?

Also, has he tried removing (keeping a copy) his .htaccess file? I know people in the past who have has his issue due to that cause. It is certainly worth experimenting with.

Has he done a traceroute to his domain when this happens?

My other suggestion without knowing more(questions up there) is has he tried shutting down all of his firewall/spyware systems, rebooting, then visiting?

registered · Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 10:06 pm

jaded wrote:

which version of IE is he using currently and what is his site url?

also, service pack 1 or 2?

Also, has he tried removing (keeping a copy) his .htaccess file? I know people in the past who have has his issue due to that cause. It is certainly worth experimenting with.

My other suggestion without knowing more(questions up there) is has he tried shutting down all of his firewall/spyware systems, rebooting, then visiting?

Jaded, can't speak for Guardian, but I am using IE 6.0 SP2 on Windows XP SP2 on two separate computers. One my home PC the other my work laptop. I have hit the issue from my home network, whether wired or not, from my verizen wireless card and at my work network. I do believe Guardian is using IE as well, but not sure the version.

Raven and I have tried different themes too, to no avail and removing cookies (and my laptop is rebooted often). It is highly intermittent, however, I think it goes in "spurts". I'll a bunch in a row for 10 - 15 minutes and then nothing for a hours or days. However, I do have to work for a living Sad

so am not on it 24 hours a day.

Given the different connection scenarios with different computers, I am less inclined to think firewall, but good suggestion nonetheless. I'll rename my GoogleTap directory and take out much of that in the .htaccess to try and whittle it down to the bare-bones.

Thanks to ALL for helping us out and especially Raven for baring his soul!

ROTFL

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 10:18 pm

WEll, in my experience this is normally connected to a few things only.

You have already gotten over the little ones cookies, malware, cache, etc.

The big ones are normally

403 when viewing with IE6

You can try this

Code:




1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. 


2. Click Performance and Maintenance. 


3. Click Administrative Tools. 


4. Double-click Local Security Policy. 


5. Expand Local Policies. 


6. Click Security Options. 


7. In the Policy list, double-click System cryptography: Use FIPS compliant algorithms for encryption, hashing, and signing. 


8. Click Disabled, and then click OK. 


9. Restart your computer.

Second it can be the .htaccess file. Try what you said or rename it for a day or so and see it you have any issues with 403.

Third, the following 3rd party software have been known to be a bother for people causing the 403 error

Code:




1. Ad Removal programs 


2. Web Accelerators 


3.Download Assistants 


4.curity software such as "At Guard" or "NetZip" 


5.ntivirus Software

I would turn them all off for a bit and test the site.

I would also run the traceroute on your domain the next time that this happens and post the results.

I would try these in some order of least intrussive to most. Please let us know how you make out.

Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 11:58 pm

Montego PM'd me a while ago regarding this, so I immediately set about clicking links.
I am using IE6 SP2
As it was proposed it might be a theme issue, I change my account theme to DeepBlue.
Accessing the site main page both via index.php and index.html more often than not gives me a white page with the single word 'Forbidden' in the top left corner of the page.
I also note that on my machine the theme is pretty screwed - left block column too wide - the google search and link to me blocks pushing out, right block column pushing out to the right beyond the header file width limit - download block seems to be too wide.

On trying to send a PM from the site,, 2 out 3 attempts failed when I hit the send button - standard 403 error message.

I will try again with Firefox quite soon.

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:16 am

Hmm, I have not been able to reproduce any error mesages using Firefox although I am still seeing block width problems.
I have tried both of the loaded themes.

This would seem to indicate that the problem is definitely browser related, I am just sorry that I cannot offer an explanation as to this rather bizzare behaviour.

I am definitely curious as to what script/ file is coded to issue the single word 'Forbidden' as this might provide a valuable clue.

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 8:24 am

jaded and Guardian,

Appeciate the assistance. I will try all that you are suggesting. Just want to let you know that I will be out of town today and unable to work on this so it may be a day or two before I can respond.

Regarding the block issues with DeepBlue theme are really related to three blocks in particular: GoogleSearch, Please Link to Me and Admin login. The only reason I have two themes is that I keep DeepBlue around as the base nuke theme for issue resolution (such as this one). It is not intended to be used normally. You will not see these issues with FiSubNuke (?). I prefer to control the look-and-feel of my site and I also don't like having to maintain multiple themes. Just a personal admin thing. The Admin Login block is from NSN and some of the module names are too long for the DeepBlue them to handle. Downloads I cannot comment on as I got that here from Raven... Laughing

I keep up on the Windows updates at home and at work religiously, so maybe Guardian and I are in the same "boat" and there is some recent update that has caused this. I'll look into those settings Jaded. By the way, where did you find this list? Very helpful info.

Regards,
montego

Posted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 8:29 am

jaded, I have tried looking at the security policies and the one you mentioned is already disabled on my home PC. So, that is not it. I will try the other things when I get back in town. Thanks!

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 11:05 am

Have just revisited the site and can only get the odd 403 which for some strange reason seems more prevalent on the deepblue theme using IE.

Site also seems significantly faster at the time of testing 17:05 GMT.

Sells PC To Pay For Divorce Joined: Posts: 5661

well i get absolutely nothing...
all shows,firefox or IE...no errors,no 404,no blank pages,no messed header or whatever..all is in place...

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 6:12 pm

Raven, you must have blessed the server with Holy Water because I have not gotten bit by the 403 error all day today and the site is screamin' fast!

I'll keep at it each day.

P.S. Given how things were running this morning, I have NOT touched anything but my robots.txt file (was possibly hosing myself of Google page rank!). Thats all. No other changes. Again, must be the Holy Water... ROTFL

P.P.S. Thanks again to Guardian and Hitwalker for helping me test!!!! (Sorry, missed that one in the original post. I was too excited about the speed and forgot my manners.)

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 9:33 pm

Well, looks like you need to bless the server again. My site is slower again and I was getting so many 403 errors that I gave up working on my content (Work Board). So strange...

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:00 am

Ok. Lastest update. AND, this one is a very promising one...

I had the following directives in my .htaccess file:

Code:







<FilesMatch "\.(inc|tpl|h|ihtml|sql|ini|conf|class|bin|spd)$">


   deny from all


</FilesMatch>





<Limit GET PUT POST>


  Order Allow,Deny


  Allow from all


</Limit>

I commented out both of these and I have not seen the issue arise since. It has been about 3 o 4 days since I did this. I will leave it like this for a week and then add back in the first set of directives as I suspect it really is the "Limit" statement that could be causing the issue. I have not had time to read up on what it does, but by process of elimination, I am convinced it is somehow related.

Thanks everyone for the "assist" on this! Raven will be glad to have me off his back on this one... Laughing

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 10:06 am

*bump*

So ... what happened montego?

I've been getting spurious and becoming frustrating 403 errors too. On two of my older domains one is nuke 6.9 the other is 7.8, but strangely not on other domains, RavenNuke v 2. The 403 happens when I click a Submit. I just keep clicking and after a few clicks the data gets submitted as if nothing was wrong in the first place. If that doesn't work I go do something else for a few minutes and then go back to click submit again and it works. And yes, a refresh works, mostly.

Although I don't have a clue if this is related, but my error log is also racking up errors about Zend versions. (I might need to find that missing host again... )

Have a happy nuking day.

Wink

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 9:38 pm

CodyG, fortunately, it has not hit me as often as before since doing the above, but, unfortunately, I am still getting them and only with IE. I have never had it happen with FF and it does not seem to be theme related either. I had tried DeepBlue for awhile too and it still produced the error. I am about to start upgrading to RNv2.02 (or may wait until 2.1) and am glad to hear you have not had issues with that.

Strangely enough too, it only started happening after PHP was upgraded to 4.4.1. Raven cannot see how that would have anything to do with it, the coincidence is a little "uncanny". Now, though, when you couple that with only impacted by IE, maybe we have all been bit by one mindless MS patch of IE or XP?

Who's to know. Since it is happening less frequently now, I am just going to "bear it" until I can find the time to move to RN.

If you can think of anything else to try, please do not hesitate to keep this thread going. I'd rather find the root cause than settle for even occassional issues.

Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 10:48 pm

CodyG, Ok, I finally "bit the bullet" and upgraded from 7.5 to RavenNuke76 2.0.2! Dance-Y

However, I uncomment back out of my .htaccess file the statements I posted above. All of a sudden, 403 errors again. So, what I am testing right now is only removing the following:

<Limit GET PUT POST>
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
</Limit>

I am going to keep the following for awhile to see what it does:

<FilesMatch "\.(inc|tpl|h|ihtml|sql|ini|conf|class|bin|spd)$">
deny from all
</FilesMatch>

Hope this helps...

Regards, montego