WordPress.org

1. Luhmann
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   I have a serious problem. I can access these support forums (although without the CSS loading), but I can't access the root page: wordpress.org. It always gives me an error message:

   Precondition Failed

   The precondition on the request for the URL / evaluated to false.

   Only WordPress.org and about 5 other web sites give me this error message. Interestingly, if I use a proxy I can access the site just fine. But it is driving me crazy. Anyone have any idea what is going on? I couldn't find anything on google or in these forums after searching.

2. Luhmann
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Hmm. It also seems like the RSS feed for this thread is broken - it redirects to the list of the last 35 updated posts, not this topic.

3. Mark (podz)
   Support Maven
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Who is your isp ? It could be a caching issue at their end.

4. emt036
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   What browser are you using? I could have something to do with Bad Behavior: http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/

5. Kafkaesqui
   Moderator
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Technical explanation:
   http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E412.html

   My experience with the 412 error on wordpress.org
   http://guff.szub.net/2005/02/14/the-technical-dealies/

   A mention of the subject that may help in the short run:
   http://wordpress.org/support/topic/25570

   As for rss feeds on individual forum posts, this has been broken for a bit.

6. Luhmann
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   My ISP is TimeWarner. They suggested a virus or spywhere. But I'm using MacOS X and there aren't any of those that I know of which affect OS X.

   I alternate between Safari and Firefox. The problem affects all browsers and all three computers on my network. (Although using a free transparent Proxy server works around the problem.)

   Looks like the Bad-Behavior plugin might be at fault. It doesn't just affect WordPress.org however, there are about 8 sites I use which are affected. I don't know how to verify if they are all using this plugin.

   http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/
   http://dev.wp-themes.org/wiki/GetHosted
   http://wordpress.org/
   http://www.vanderwal.net/about.php
   http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/
   http://www.speirs.org/flickrexport
   http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr/

   I have a linksys router. I haven't tried going in directly to the Cable modem, but even if that works, it seems easier to use a proxy.

   If it is indeed the Bad-Behavior plugin, then I would like to know what is triggering it. It may be that it isn't properly written to handle OS X browsers? I tried changing how my computer identifies itself, but that didn't help either.

   More information on Bad-Behavior and 412 errors here:

   http://www.ioerror.us/software/bad-behavior/412-precondition-failed/

7. error
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Luhmann, I think one of the sites listed above uses Bad Behavior, the remainder either haven't started yet or aren't blogs, forums, wikis or other CMS software.

   The short 412 error you are seeing is an error returned by TextDrive-hosted sites. It has nothing to do with Bad Behavior, which although it also uses the 412 error, is far more verbose. You would know if you saw a Bad Behavior error message. Among other things it goes on for more than a page, and also gives you a contact email address.

   TextDrive uses a somewhat different method of blocking spammers, which relies mostly on User-Agent. This is probably why you were able to get through using a proxy server, as many of them change the User-Agent. If there's anything funny in your User-Agent, try setting it back to the default. If you still can't get through, contact TextDrive.

   I would recommend against using open proxy servers for your regular browsing, though, as many sites will prevent you from posting, or ban you outright, if you access them via an open proxy, because nearly all spam comes from open proxies. I've got a project in progress dealing with the open proxy problem where you can find some more info.

8. Luhmann
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Thanks for figuring out the common denomenator!

9. Luhmann
   Member
   Posted 7 years ago #

   Hey, and what do you know. Suddenly the problem is fixed! But only on WordPress.org - and the CSS issues on these forums. The rest of the sites still aren't working.

10. Luhmann
    Member
    Posted 7 years ago #

    I wish whomever fixed the issue on WordPress.org would let me know what they changed - then I could tell the other sites what to do!

11. Luhmann
    Member
    Posted 7 years ago #

    TextDrive had blocked my IP for some activity from February. (Since I have a dynamic IP it was probably not my activity.) They were very quick about unblocking me after I wrote them and now I can access all the affected sites. Thanks again for helping me locate the source of the problems!

12. mrbbking
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    This just happened to me on my own WordPress 1.5.whatever site, when I tried to post an article. Whittling it down, it turns out that the problem was the word "Perl" in the post. Remove that, and it's all OK. Put an empty HTML comment after the 'P', and it's OK.

    You PHP folks got something against Perl?

    (kidding...)(but still ... wierd.)

13. zdislaw
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    I started getting this error today for the first time, and I've been using WordPress for a couple of years. I FTP'd in, browsed to the plugins directory, and renamed the "bad-behavior" dir. I am now able to admin and view my blog. Too bad, I'd not had any comment spam for the few weeks since installing it. I guess it decided to lock me out too. Not so helpful in inna big picture.

14. tqn69
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    This happened to me, too. Sadly, I had to deactivate Bad Behavior. I still use SpamKarma2, and have added Referrer Bouncer, and WordPress HashCash as anti-spam solutions. Bad Behavior still works nicely for my brother's blog, which is a subdomain of my site. I wonder why my blog is blocked. Perhaps one of the many plugins I use? I don't know. I don't have time to do the troubleshooting.

15. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    I am getting 412 errors in 2 separate situations:

    1. someone has tried to add the rss feed for one of my categories to his blog aggregator & is getting a "412 precondition failed" error.

    2. when I try to use Google Remove URL to remove an old, out of date post permalink that I used to use at my old Typepad blog, I get this error:

    "We can't determine if that page is truly outdated because the server returned the following unusual status code: 412"

    I can't tell if this error is due to the fact that both my old blog & current one use domain forwarding; or some other reason.

    I plan to call Bluehost in the AM & find out if it's due to their mod_security settings. Anyone having similar problems w. Bluehost or Bad Behavior?

16. James
    Happiness Engineer
    Posted 6 years ago #

    It's Bad Behavior. First, make sure that you are using the latest Bad Behavior (currently v1.2.2). Then, if that doesn't improve the situation, add the IPs to Bad Behavior's whitelist. And, if even that doesn't work, contact Bad Behavior's developer.

17. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    Thanks for letting me know. I must've been using an older version of BB. I installed the newest one & activated it.

    I'm still getting the same 412 error at Google's Remove URL site but I suppose it may be possible that my host server hasn't updated itself, a cacheing problem somewhere along the line, or some other reason. I'll wait till tomorrow morning & see if it corrects itself by then.

    Do you add IPs to the BB whitelist via the whitelist.php file within the BB folder? If so, do you add IPs in this section of the file?

    $wp_bb_whitelist_ip_ranges = array(
// "10.0.0.0/8",
// "172.16.0.0/12",
// "192.168.0.0/16",
// "127.0.0.1",

18. James
    Happiness Engineer
    Posted 6 years ago #

    Yes, that's were you add the IPs to the whitelist. And, be sure to remove the two backslashes ( // ) before the line that you want to use.

19. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    I just did a little more digging at the Google site & may've located my problem & perhaps it's not related to BB after all.

    I see under "remove a dead link" at http://www.google.com/webmasters/remove.html#outdated

    the following:

    Note: We'll accept your removal request only if the page returns a true 404 error via the http headers. Please ensure that you return a true 404 error even if you choose to display a more user-friendly body of the HTML page for your visitors. It won't help to return a page that says "File Not Found" if the http headers still return a status code of 200, or normal.

    When someone comes to my server using the old link, I've configured things so that they see a 404 template within my theme folder. Will this satisfy Google or not?

    If it should, then I'm back to square one...

20. James
    Happiness Engineer
    Posted 6 years ago #

    No, I have had experience with this before, it is Bad Behavior causing the error when using Google's automated URL removing tool. Check Bad Behavior's log if you don't believe me. But, even if you added it to your whitelist, Google would still deny your request because the link would then return a 403 (rather than a 404).

    On a side note, why is your server configured to return a 403 msg. when people use links from your old blog? A 403 msg = "Access Denied". I think that a 404 ("Not Found") would be much more appropriate.

21. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    You're right macmanx...I misspoke (& reedited that post accordingly). I'm using a 404.php msg. located within my theme folder.

    Thanks for pointing me back to BB as the culprit. I've posted at BB's comment thread & hope Michael may have some ideas.

22. James
    Happiness Engineer
    Posted 6 years ago #

    His response will be that you need to add either the IP or user-agent for Google's automated URL removing tool to Bad Behavior's whitelist.

23. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    I did add my IP to BB's whitelist file & as you said, it worked. Michael did say that everything related to Google should be "internally whitelisted" & 412 errors aren't supposed to happen. But I guess there's something not working quite the way it should somewhere (don't know if it's Google or BB). Maybe Google Remove URL works differently than other Google services/features that might interact w. BB?

24. James
    Happiness Engineer
    Posted 6 years ago #

    If you can copy the entries in your Bad Behavior log that are related to blocking the Google URL removal tool and submit them to Michael, he may be able to look into them and find out what caused the initial problem.

25. error
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    Indeed.

26. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    Michael asked me to search those logs. I'm pretty new to phpmyadmin & once I open it I can't figure out how to find the BB log. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

27. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    I found the BB logs in phpmyadmin.

    Now, I'm trying to find the logs for the specific attempts which generated a 412 error. I've searched for my own IP & I don't see any hits in which there is a denied reason. Then I tried searching using the Google URL for the Google Remove URL feature ( http://services.google.com:8882/urlconsole/controller )& couldn't find anything that looked like that in the log. I guess the next thing I'll try is looking through every attempt which generated a denial.

    Are there any other search criteria I should try?

28. James
    Happiness Engineer
    Posted 6 years ago #

    Try searching for just "google".

29. richards1052
    Member
    Posted 6 years ago #

    Thanks for the suggestion.

    I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to do this search. Within the BB log, I've clicked on 'Search.' But I can't figure out into which field I enter 'Google.' The fields I've tried give me an error so I know I'm doing something wrong. Should I try 'Browse' instead? Or something else?

30. James
    Happiness Engineer
    Posted 6 years ago #

    Login to phpmyadmin, go to your WordPress database, hit the "Search" tab, enter "google" into the "Word(s) or value(s) to search for (wildcard: '%')" field, highlight your Bad Behavior log table in the "Inside table(s):" field, and hit "Go".

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