Problems Posting

I've been trying to post a reply to a very old thread and something is causing the process to fail.

If I try to preview my post (via 'more options...'), I get the response -
"This action is available via POST only. Please press the back button and try again."

If I try to actually send the post, I just get an endless 'in progess'-style graphic. And the first time I tried the whole site went down! (which may or may not have been a coincidence.)

I think I may have seen something like this before and I'm wondering if there could be something in the content of my message that is tripping up the forum software. Are there any known bugs we should be aware of?

 

I tried editing out a portion of the text which I thought might be the cause and the site crashed again.
I also got the "This action is available..." message when trying to post this message here. This is a second attempt.

 

I did try with my android phone (still going through my home Wifi/Broadband connection, though). It picked up the draft message I had created via my Windows PC, and was also unable to post it. Did not appear to crash the site though.

I'm a bit hesitant about repeatedly trying it, if it genuinely is causing the site to crash! I'll proceed with caution...

 

OK, I've tried a different PC, and rebooted my broadband router beforehand. Still can't post the message, but I do not appear to be crashing the site. (Unless it happens after I press the post button a multitude of times in frustration at it not working!)

My internet connection is a little unreliable currently, occasionally dropping out or being extra sluggish. Conceivably, that could be part of the problem, but it seems unlikely.

The thread in question is https://www.blackjacktournaments.com/threads/split-10s-to-lose-both-hands.8010/#post-47309 However, I think it may be the content of my message that is the issue, rather than the destination.

If I can figure out how to permanently clear the draft text, I'll try adding it back one line at a time, and see if there is a particular point at which it breaks things.

 

Looks like I crashed it again. I managed to get the preview option working by cutting all but the first few lines. I pasted additional lines back and eventually the preview stopped working (i.e. clicking 'more options...' did not produce any response). Actually, I think this was probably a sign that the crash was already in progress. meaning I could still interact with the static web page in my browser, but no further responses were coming from the server.

This was all a bit of a confused process, so I still can't say exactly where in the text the problem lies. I could go through the process again if you like, maybe posting instead of previewing, or I could email the text if the admins want to look at it.

P.S. Is the server actually crashing (as it appears to be from my perspective)? I lose access from all my devices and it stays down for several minutes before eventually returning.

 

Colin, can you PM me the message you're trying to post? I'll have our techs look into it

 

I can try, but the PM interface is the same as the forum interface, so I would expect it to suffer from exactly the same issue. Hence my suggestion of email. (Or I could try the 'upload a file' option in this thread.)

Do you still want me to try PM first?

 

I'll pm you my email

 

I have had this issue from time to time and I was always able to isolate it to some particular text. Rewording that text always fixed this issue. Note that I'm talking about plain text here and not some special character.

 

Yeah, I think I did that on a previous occasion. Just thought I should report it this time because

1. It may be a known bug with a fix already available.
2. It appears as if I am bringing the server down when it occurs (though it has since occurred to me that this is perhaps not really the case; it may be that it just entirely stops responding to my IP address for a time.).

Funnily enough, the post I am trying to reply to is one of yours, in which you seek to present the results of a sim, but seem to have forgotten to include the URL. I tracked down what I think is the right URL and included it in my post. Maybe you didn't forget, but had to remove it!

 

The techs have said they can't reproduce the problem, and also confirmed that I've not been causing actual server crashes.

So I'll go back to my editing task and see if I can isolate/amend the offending part of the text...

 

I've managed to get the post to go through. It's hard to fathom the logic of what is going on - cutting a particular portion of text out and then pasting the same text back in again seemed to do the trick.

I've since confirmed that attempting to post the same original message a second time still has the same issue. (And I also managed to lock myself out from the site for a time, once again.)

 

Initially, none of the above. I just typed it into to the edit box that you see at the foot of each thread. Then, clicking on 'More Options...' or 'Post Reply' led to disaster.

For a time, the system keeps the text there as a draft, so I was editing it in place and trying again. I also copied and pasted it into a simple text file (in Notepad), which I had need of today, as the draft was no longer there when I returned to the thread.

I suppose the Windows paste buffer, which I used to take stuff out and and put it back again (rather than have to re-type it all) might be putting some kind of hidden characters in there. (I know I also used it in the composition of the original text, because I pasted in a URL from my browser's address bar.)

It's a long shot, but that might explain why the techs found no problem with the text file I emailed, if they were not copy and pasting the text into an edit box in order to test it, or were doing so in a different OS. My test today started with me opening Notepad, copying the entire text and pasting it into the empty edit box. I verified it was still failing, then played around, cutting and pasting sections, until I basically got lucky.

 

For what it's worth, I experienced similar problems again today; this time trying to send (preview) PMs over at blackjackinfo.com.

This time the error message was along the lines of 'oops something went wrong', and there was a suggestion to look at the browser console for more details.

I managed to solve the problem with the same trial and error approach as last time.

I'm posting here, rather that at bji because -

1. it does appear to be some version of the same problem
2. I noticed that I became locked out from both bji and bjt when it happened

If it's any help, here is what I found in the console log -

Code:

/community/conversations/hi-there.521/draft:1          Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 ()
/community/conversations/hi-there.521/reply-preview?quick_reply=1:1          Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 ()
core-compiled.js?_v=aaba95cd:43 PHP: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>500 Internal Server Error</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Internal Server Error</h1>
<p>The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete
your request.</p>
<p>Please contact the server administrator at
webmaster@blackjackinfo.com to inform them of the time this error occurred,
and the actions you performed just before this error.</p>
<p>More information about this error may be available
in the server error log.</p>
</body></html>
defaultAjaxError @ core-compiled.js?_v=aaba95cd:43
/community/conversations/hi-there.521/reply-preview?quick_reply=1:1          Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 500 ()
core-compiled.js?_v=aaba95cd:43 PHP: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>500 Internal Server Error</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Internal Server Error</h1>
<p>The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete
your request.</p>
<p>Please contact the server administrator at
webmaster@blackjackinfo.com to inform them of the time this error occurred,
and the actions you performed just before this error.</p>
<p>More information about this error may be available
in the server error log.</p>
</body></html>

 

So I just spoke with our devs and basically "Any combination of text, followed by the letters "select" followed by any combination of text, followed by the letters "from" would trigger the error."

So XenForo must have this inbuilt rule to prevent possible SQL injections.

 

Thanks for that. Useful to know.

In my case, my messages have not matched that template. As I mentioned, though, it seems that there is some sort of weirdness going on when I use a cut-and-paste operation when editing the text (in Windows 10 + Chrome). So maybe there is an invisible (to me) instance of the word 'select' getting into the text when I 'select' some text!

And, on the server side, it seems like a bug that it not only rejects the offending text, but also somehow locks the user out (from both sites!) for several minutes.