The dreaded "exceeded the maximum allowed number of login attempts"

[shortmort37]

In the absence of any other suggestion, I'm going to start from scratch - disable my extensions, delete everything from the phpBB root except the things that pertain to my board (/files, /store, /images, /ext and config.php) and do a fresh copy of 3.3.5; then drop my database, reimport, and reinstall phpBB. Then delete /install and play around with logins.

Of course, disabling my extensions will do no good, if importing a database backup that has the extensions enabled (as all my backups do). Is there a simple edit to the backup file I could perform that would set each extension to disabled?

[shortmort37]

Is there a simple edit to the backup file I could perform that would set each extension to disabled?

Ah! Google is my friend. Here's a phpBB topic about it.

[janus_zonstraal]

See https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/en/3 ... s-at-once/

[stevemaury]

Is there a simple edit to the backup file I could perform that would set each extension to disabled?

Ah! Google is my friend. Here's a phpBB thread about it.

To disable all at once with SQL (but https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/en/3 ... s-at-once/ )

Code: Select all

UPDATE phpbb_ext SET ext_active = 0 WHERE ext_active = 1

If it causes problems, reverse the edit and use the KB method.

[shortmort37]

Thanks, Janus & Steve ! I'll tuck that away for some future use. But since my plan (now) is to start from scratch and reimport the database, it's just as easy to edit the .sql file per Steve Maury's update query on an active database, and flip all the 1's to 0's:

INSERT INTO `phpbb_ext` VALUES ('phpbb/viglink',0,'b:0;'),('david63/sitelogo',0,'b:0;'),...;

[shortmort37]

Well, I don't know what went haywire the first time; but the board seems to be behaving at the moment. Now to re-enable my extensions one-by-one, and install my mods (yes; I have made some mods, but they did work on my old board). I may never know what happened, but that's OK.

Thanks to all for your help.

Dan

[shortmort37]

Well, I don't know what went haywire the first time; but the board seems to be behaving at the moment. Now to re-enable my extensions one-by-one, and install my mods (yes; I have made some mods, but they did work on my old board). I may never know what happened, but that's OK.

I was overly optimistic. I re-enabled my extensions, reinstalled my mods, and everything was working. I logged out, logged back in, logged into the ACP (I would get the "exceeded" behavior there as well), and got in on first pass. I was able to contribute to a chat, delete it, add a post, delete it, navigate the board... It looked like all was well.

Sometime later, I went to the site with my phone - same login problem! Ran back to my desktop - yup; it's back. "Exceeded the maximum allowed number". No ACP changes, nothing except it is a couple of hours later.

The good news is, all of the other strange behavior seems to have abated - I can still post, chat, delete, navigate without logout. It seems down to being this crazy login behavior.

[Paul]

Check with your host if there is any caching on http level enabled. It sounds like something is being cached.

[shortmort37]

Check with your host if there is any caching on http level enabled. It sounds like something is being cached.

This from two days ago:

(04:46:13) Jaime C.
I will go to your cPanel's Cache Manager tool and turn of caching for this particular domain.
(04:46:35) Jaime C.
Wich domain am I working with here?
(04:47:32) Daniel Morton
59plymouth.net. I see the purge cache option, but nothing about nginx.
(04:48:41) Jaime C.
NGINX is what's providing that cache. Our UltraStack setup uses NGINX as a proxy alongside Apache for caching purposes
(04:49:30) Daniel Morton
OK. So, are you just going to set "Enable Caching" to "No"?
(04:50:36) Jaime C.
Correct, and purge the cache. I have actually completed this now.

[Paul]

So on your VM you are using apache or nginx?

[shortmort37]

Apache is the web server, but there’s an nginx component that’s used for caching:

NGINX is what's providing that cache. Our UltraStack setup uses NGINX as a proxy alongside Apache for caching purposes

[Paul]

Doing a curl request to your site it shows as nginx at the moment, not apache, so I think your caching thing is still enabled

[shortmort37]

*Oof*. This prolly needs to go to Tier 2. Thanks for the headzup, I’ll open another case.

[shortmort37]

I asked my service provider, why this reports nginx, not apache, for my web server.

So since NGINX is run in a reverse proxy setup alongside Apache, it would report an NGINX server... We can confirm that caching is disabled.

So I'm not sure what my next steps are. I did have Xdebug running on my old server, I'm trying to set it up for my new - and see where that takes me.

[shortmort37]

Well, I'm still working on the Xdebug thing - but, my hosting provider suggested that this issue might be implicated...

In other words - not the caching feature of nginx, but the reverse proxy aspect. Sure enough, with caching already disabled, they removed nginx and the problem went away. cURL now reports Apache.

I tried to implement @martti 's X-Forwarded-For extension (linked in that same thread), but I started getting 500 errors - I need to investigate further, I think I didn't get the environment variable defined correctly.

Just an update.