topic Re: Service status RSS feed in Plusnet Feedback

Service status RSS feed

jelv — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:45:46 GMT

Has anyone else had problems with the RSS feeds since usertools was moved?
http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fusertools.plus.net%2Fstatus%2Fstatus.xml suggests there is an issue.
Odd thing is I can view the feed in IE.

Re: Service status RSS feed

Oldjim — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:52:33 GMT

No problem with Firefox and emails into Outlook 2003 using RSS Popper

Re: Service status RSS feed

jelv — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 17:12:10 GMT

What IP address do you have for usertools.plus.net? I'm getting an IP that looks to be on Rackspace!

Re: Service status RSS feed

jelv — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 17:20:24 GMT

There's definitely something wrong. http://feedvalidator.org/check.cgi?url=usertools.plus.net%2Fstatus%2Fstatus.xml gives the attached.

Re: Service status RSS feed

Oldjim — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 17:31:43 GMT

It goes all round the houses so something is badly wrong
Tracing route to usertools.plus.net [37.188.117.224]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 84 ms 99 ms 99 ms 192.168.1.254
2 33 ms 32 ms 32 ms lo0-central10.ptw-ag03.plus.net [195.166.128.197]
3 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms link-a-central10.ptw-gw01.plus.net [212.159.2.152]
4 47 ms 31 ms 31 ms xe-4-3-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net [212.159.0.244]
5 32 ms 32 ms 32 ms te-4-2.car5.London1.Level3.net [217.163.45.249]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 * * * Request timed out.
9 40 ms 32 ms 33 ms ae-11-vl-3101.edge3.London2.Level3.net [4.69.202.170]
10 33 ms 33 ms 33 ms 195.50.125.70
11 33 ms 33 ms 32 ms coreb-edge5.lon3.rackspace.net [164.177.137.40]
12 33 ms 33 ms 32 ms core5-coreb.lon3.rackspace.net [164.177.137.23]
13 33 ms 33 ms 33 ms aggr333a-1-core5.lon3.rackspace.net [31.222.133.193]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 * * * Request timed out.
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 *

Re: Service status RSS feed

MauriceC — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:00:22 GMT

Agreed, that looks odd. Pathping shows something similar in the middle of the journey.
I'll flag it up, but I'd guess the networks guys won't see it till the morning.
The Service still appears to be working though
Maurice

Re: Service status RSS feed

spraxyt — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:44:08 GMT

Quote from: jelv
What IP address do you have for usertools.plus.net? I'm getting an IP that looks to be on Rackspace!

nslookup gives 37.188.117.224 which is correct and not responding to pings is intentional. It is where you suggested. I wasn't aware there was a problem with the feed, I'll check the UserTools side later.
David

Re: Service status RSS feed

ejs — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 19:52:45 GMT

There is presumably a white-list of allowed HTTP user agents, which would explain why it works in a web browser but the validators receive "HTTP 403 Forbidden" response codes.

$ wget "http://usertools.plus.net/status/status.xml"
--2014-10-07 20:47:29--  http://usertools.plus.net/status/status.xml
Resolving usertools.plus.net... 37.188.117.224
Connecting to usertools.plus.net|37.188.117.224|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 403 Forbidden
2014-10-07 20:47:29 ERROR 403: Forbidden.
$ wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:32.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/32.0" "http://usertools.plus.net/status/status.xml"
--2014-10-07 20:47:54--  http://usertools.plus.net/status/status.xml
Resolving usertools.plus.net... 37.188.117.224
Connecting to usertools.plus.net|37.188.117.224|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 24699 (24K) [application/xml]
Saving to: ‘status.xml’
100%[======================================>] 24,699      --.-K/s   in 0.08s   
2014-10-07 20:47:54 (284 KB/s) - ‘status.xml’ saved [24699/24699]

Re: Service status RSS feed

spraxyt — Tue, 07 Oct 2014 22:14:49 GMT

The feed file itself looks to be OK, last updated after the SS post at 15:10. The oddity mid way through Oldjim's trace looks to be Level3 going round the houses. The box itself is at hop 14 or 15 on that trace.
David

Re: Service status RSS feed

bobpullen — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 10:18:10 GMT

I'm inclined to say there's nothing to see here. The box is now hosted on Rackspace servers and I strongly suspect ejs's rationale for the validators is correct. Exactly what problems have you been having jelv?

Re: Service status RSS feed

jelv — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:16:04 GMT

No posts received by FeedDemon since 1st October.
Attempting to re-add the feed fails (see attached). Previewing says:

Quote
FeedDemon was unable to locate a valid feed for this site.

Edit: http://usergroup.plus.net/pugrss.php and http://usergroup.plus.net/pugrss2.php (I'm not actually subscribed to this one) are also failing.
Edit 2: I'm subscribed to 24 feeds in all, only two are failing (the service status and first pug one). The feeds that are working include two others from Plusnet: http://community.plus.net/feed/ and http://feeds.feedburner.com/Servicestatusnet

Re: Service status RSS feed

avatastic — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 08:13:36 GMT

Quote from: Bob
I'm inclined to say there's nothing to see here. The box is now hosted on Rackspace servers and I strongly suspect ejs's rationale for the validators is correct. Exactly what problems have you been having jelv?

OT: Rackspace is a secure area of Plusnet's network where an IRCd is not permitted?

Re: Service status RSS feed

bobpullen — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 08:54:05 GMT

Quote from: avatastic
OT: Rackspace is a secure area of Plusnet's network where an IRCd is not permitted?

Who said anything about Plusnet's network?

Quote from: Linn
The Usertools website is moving to a new network location where IRC access is unfortunately against our security policies.

Quote from: jelv
No posts received by FeedDemon since 1st October.

Feedly here and that's working fine. Let me have a fiddle with FeedDemon and see if I can replicate the problem. The Usergroup and ourselves have been fixing the odd thing here and there over the last week or so, none of it is stuff that I'd expect to break the RSS feed though?
Edit: Doesn't seem to be user agent related:
bpullen@pvs-csctools:~$ wget --user-agent="FeedDemon/4.5 (http://www.feeddemon.com/>
--11:02:47-- http://usertools.plus.net/status/status.xml
=> `status.xml.3'
Resolving usertools.plus.net... 37.188.117.224
Connecting to usertools.plus.net|37.188.117.224|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 24,184 (24K) [application/xml]
100%[=========================================>] 24,184 --.--K/s
11:02:47 (829.64 KB/s) - `status.xml.3' saved [24184/24184]

Re: Service status RSS feed

dvorak — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:36:32 GMT

it's like the weird one of service status emails going into spam for me since the move.. which is still happening.

Re: Service status RSS feed

avatastic — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:50:16 GMT

To be fair, I'd automatically consider mail from a rackspace IP to be spam too.

Quote from: Bob
Nothing is insecure at present, however we have legitimate concerns about continuing to run an IRC daemon from the location we're moving the Usertools server to.

I forgot to ask at the time for you to elaborate

Re: Service status RSS feed

bobpullen — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 10:16:03 GMT

Quote from: dvorak
it's like the weird one of service status emails going into spam for me since the move.. which is still happening.

Remind me, it's a Gmail mailbox rather than a Plusnet one you're talking about isn't it?

Re: Service status RSS feed

bobpullen — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 10:55:00 GMT

Right, FeedDemon should be working now. It's a firewall issue. I'm not sure why it's catching FeedDemon and no other RSS reader though, that's something we're going to need to look into.

Re: Service status RSS feed

jelv — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 11:57:18 GMT

I have 5 new service status postings in FeedDemon!
Thanks

Re: Service status RSS feed

Anotherone — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 12:02:50 GMT

Just FYI I've got all present and correct from the 24th Sept to date using FF RSS feed, but it looks as though your issue has been found and fixed.

Re: Service status RSS feed

bobpullen — Thu, 16 Oct 2014 12:34:33 GMT

Quote from: Bob
Right, FeedDemon should be working now. It's a firewall issue.

We've created an exception for FeedDemon etc. and re-enabled what was causing the RSS problems. Shout up if you notice anything untoward.