Major Problem

[Confuscius]

All of my Shop Window sites on one of my VPS's are now unable to return anything other than:

ShopWindow Client v1.0 status
WSDL access check: NO (The WSDL file cannot be loaded from [http://api.productserve.com/v1/ProductServeService?wsdl])
PHP check: OK
Template folder writable: YES
USER_ID set: YES
USER_PASS set: YES

Looks like months of work are going down the pan. My other VPSs are fine so all that I can think of is that some sort of IP blocking may have kicked in?

HELP!!!

Paul

[Bud]

I know this probably (almost certainly) isn't the answer but when I had this on my first site I removed the WSDL check and everything still operated fine.

Short term fix perhaps?

[Confuscius]

I had already tried that! My money is on creating too many server calls from one IP address but I hope that I am wrong!

Paul

UPDATE: Further investigation revealed that my server had an unknown glitch which led to the rather strange situation that all sites that did not make any external calls were working fine but those that made external calls were hanging for some reason - anyways my VPS providers have made some 'tweaks'!

[Adrian]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the update, glad to hear your up and running again :D .


Adrian
SW Integration & Technical Support.

Email: adrian.botelho@digitalwindow.com
www.digitalwindow.com

[Andy]

I'm having the same issue today. It was fine earlier and now it's not
ShopWindow Client v1.0 status

* WSDL access check: NO (The WSDL file cannot be loaded from [http://api.productserve.com/v1/ProductServeService?wsdl])
* PHP check: OK
* Template folder writable: YES
* USER_ID set: YES
* USER_PASS set: YES

[Confuscius]

Hi Andy

Call me at the shop ASAP!

Paul

[Confuscius]

Back to square one on this one and I am not pleased!

Anyways, I thought that I would add a content unit to a website and include it via both php and javascript. the javascript runs ok and the content unit widget displays.

BUT the php include gives me:

Warning: main(http://www.awin1.com/wshow.php?inc=1&s=999999) [function.main]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden in /home/XXXXXXX/public_html/templates/standard/footer.html on line 73

Now if I run the url used in the php include direct in the browser window then it displays OK, again suggesting that the issue is with the IP of my domain.

A 403 forbidden - so it seems my original guess was correct in that if you create too many requests from one IP then DigiWin bans you - how stupid is that?

Can't wait for the DigiWin response on this one.

Paul

[Confuscius]

Bump! Bump! Bump!

[Paul Inman]

Hi Paul.

There are no IP restrictions to API calls or Tracking links.

It's a bit confusing that you are getting a 403 error returned...

Can you try debugging this from your hosted VPS:

Check our IP for www.awin1.com (83.138.136.131) and api.productserve.com (62.216.237.31).
Are you using any proxies?
if you have shell acess trying running lynx or links on the URL to test connection.

Kind Regards,
Paul

[Confuscius]

Hi Paul

As you know I am not a techie so most of what you said is mumbo jumbo top me!

Anyways I do have root access etc and am not running any proxies to my knowledge. My apache logs are full of thousands of entries such as:

[Tue Nov 6 09:23:25 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/v1/ProductServeService
[Tue Nov 6 09:23:25 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/404.shtml
[Tue Nov 6 09:23:26 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/onca/xml
[Tue Nov 6 09:23:26 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/404.shtml
[Tue Nov 6 09:23:26 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/onca/xml
[Tue Nov 6 09:23:26 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/404.shtml
[Tue Nov 6 09:23:33 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/v1/ProductServeService
[Tue Nov 6 09:23:33 2007] [error] [client 78.129.131.23] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/404.shtml

The onca/xml relate to webservices calls to Amazon so it seems that I may have been wrong as I am having the same issue with Shop Window and Amazon!

I am very puzzled given the 403 response code. Off to 'Google' some things?

Paul

[Confuscius]

Hi Paul

My VPS provider has got me up and running again and it looks like the 403 was generated not by DigiWIn servers but by my own firewall! So it seems that the activity has triggered my firewall to block the outgoing requests! A bit fo a shoot yourself in the foot situation but I can foresee this issue cropping up again for other people.

Apparently, iptables are to blame (whatever they are!) but I still do not know the precise circumstances that trigger the firewall blocking - time to go and investigate further but if any of the technical minded would like to proffer a layman's explanation of what they think is happening then I would greatly appreciate it and hopefully this thread would then be a useful reference for others in the future.

Shop window is proving to be an interesting learning experience for me (and is earning some decent pocket money too!).

Thanks in advance.

Paul

[Confuscius]

I am still having problems and I believe that I am triggering some unknown firewall limit. I have my firewall disabled but it still hangs. If I stop the firewall (even though it is already stopped!) then this seems to flush the iptables and normal service is resumed. My problems have coincided with increased spider activity.

From the API guide on troubleshooting :

"For Firewall settings, make the necessary changes to allow a HTTP connection from your server to ours and vice versa."

What exactly odes this mean? Step by step explanation?

I just wish that I could get to the bottom of this issue, as to be quite honest, having to manually check to see if my sites are still running is becoming a bit of a pain and I may have to take the sites down which seems a bit of a waste. I believe that the issue that I have hit is not host specific but is related to API call volumes.

Can anyone advise me further.

Paul

PS It has been a steep learning curve on server firewalls so far!

[Andy]

I know this issue is old, but ive just this minute got it back.

So, I've been through a few files and found a duplicated include. Commenting it out "appeared" to have fixed the problem, but then putting it back in didn't bring the problem back (so other factors may have fixed it)

Anyhoo, it's not good to include the same file more than once, so in status.php, comment out:
require_once('global.inc.php');
like so:

#require_once('global.inc.php');

the reason being is it's called for at the top of index.php the line before status.php is called for.