Endless redirect loop

Home Forums BulletProof Security Free Endless redirect loop

Tagged: 

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #11292
    Hannah
    Participant

    I am not sure why my blog http://blogs.soartists.com/ArtMatters/ is in full on mutiny for the past two weeks. By my host corrected the session path and increased the memory limit and enabled the zlib.output_compression in the file php.ini, the situation temporarily improved, and just by virtue of being able to log in finally and then updating BPS I thought we might have gotten past it, but it’s down again and I’m getting the old “The page isn’t redirecting properly. Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept cookies.” Replacing the secure htaccess with default via FTP makes it worse.

    Of course my cookies are enabled. I do have W3C and Cloudflare which might have something to do with it (I’m thinking of bailing on W3C and switching to Better WP Minify, but I can’t do anything yet). I also have the Speed Boost bonus code in my htaccess but not sure if I’ve set it properly and haven’t done the testing to see which configuration will work best yet. I’ve been looking at the forums this morning and it appears BPS is working fine with these plugins/services (and that maybe even BWPM might not be necessary if I set your Speed Boost code up correctly).  I did manage to get in long enough to apply the latest update to BPS before I was locked out this morning, but no luck getting in again since. The worst seems to have started happening after the WP 3.7/3.7.1 core updates, but this could be coincidental.

    Here’s more info from the last post from Ipower’s support that might be helpful:

    “The issue which you’re experiencing is due to the ‘max_questions’ for the MySQL database which is being used by the blog. If the MySQL user exceeds the database query limit, which is 75,000 per hour per user, then the WordPress website will be redirected to the installation page or it will not be able to connect the database. This setting is in place to ensure that the MySQL database cannot be overloaded with to many query requests. The queries will reset every hour and is kept by user; however every time the pages on your website are accessed you are still attempting to make queries to the database server. It will be fixed automatically within one hour.

    There are many possible causes for the ‘max_questions’ limit get exceeded. Some of them are:
    * A script is not closing the MySQL connection after accessing the database. In WordPress, such chances are less, however if there is an error in the scripting of a plugin or theme which you’re using, then the MySQL connection won’t close after querying the database. So, please make sure that you close the connection immediately after accessing the database using mysql_close() command from your scripts.
    * Your scripts or pages are hitting too frequently from a specific IP address through brute force tools or manually or from other websites. You can check raw logs available in the /stats directory or check the Visitor Statistics for such possibilities. Using the .htaccess Hotlink Protection and the .htaccess Block IP Addresses would resolve this issue.
    * Using a single database for multiple applications or having too many users for a single database. A solution for this is creating separate databases for separate applications as well as having separate users.”

    I wouldn’t know anything about why a script is not closing the MySQL connection. Checking my stats only shows that Googlebot has been hitting the site pretty heavily, but nothing like 75,000x per hour. I am not using multiple applications or blogs on this database.

    The blog had been getting more and more finicky over the past few weeks, only letting me to do a couple of things at time before locking me out and crashing (by this I mean displaying the wp-admin/install.php page instead of the home page (at first it would display individual posts by direct request, but even that started to fail and they also returned the WP install page) or returning 500 and 403 errors), until it locked me out for good around the first of November and Pingdom started showing me that it would be “up” (but still inaccessible) for 10-15 minutes, then down for 45. This has continued for the past two weeks. I’d have written sooner but this happened at about the same time that my husband went in for a surgery. He just got his stitches out day before yesterday and I’ve gotten fairly caught up with my other work, so it’s time to either fix it or completely scrap the blog and start over, which I’d really hate to do.

    I’m not sure this is BPS’s fault at all, but hope you won’t mind taking a look and telling me what you suspect might be behind this incredible rebellion. If I can just stabilize it enough to be able to make some changes in Admin, I’ve been making a list of settings to change/plugins to remove or switch out with others, and other housecleaning that might make things easier for the database to handle going forward. Really I have no idea what’s going on and it’s just because making changes to BPS seems to affect the way the blog reacts that I’m writing you for help today. Please let me know if you’d like admin credentials to log in with (if you can!)

    Thanks so much, I’ve always appreciated both your plugin and your support. I know this is kind of a mishmash of info and hope it’s not too confusing, just let me know if/where you need further clarification.

     

    #11293
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    To determine if BPS is causing issues or problems or to eliminate BPS you would do these troubleshooting steps in the link below:

    http://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/read-me-first-free/#bps-free-general-troubleshooting

    If you are using other plugins that add additional .htaccess code or you have added your own custom code then you would need to add/remove that code to determine if non-standard, custom code or another plugin’s .htaccess code is causing the problems.

    The only documented and known issue with iPower Hosting is that you cannot lock your root .htaccess file with 404 file permissions and must use either 644 or maybe 444 might work.

    BPS does not really do much in regards to MySQL queries.  Most of what BPS does is at the file writing level.  We did this intentionally even though it is much more time consuming to do.  So BPS would not be related to an excessive MySQL query problem in any way.

    There is a known issue on some Hosts with Security error logging causing redirect looping.  These Hosts do not turn over control to the .htaccess file to allow error logging/handling so what ends up happening is a redirect loop since the Host is trying to handle this and BPS is trying to handle this.  Try turning off security logging in BPS.

    The liklihood that BPS is causing these issues is about 1%.

    #11301
    Hannah
    Participant

    Excellent. I’ll remove the W3C code from htaccess and see what happens. I had previously read about Ipower’s issue with 404 permissions, checked htaccess and see that it’s set to 644.

    #11302
    Hannah
    Participant

    Okay. I removed the caching code from htaccess and the blog came back up, but although I was already logged in I’ve been waiting for several minute for wp-admin to load. If I can gain access I’ll turn off security logging in BPS as you said. I’ll let you know what happens…

     

    *sigh* browser hangs when trying to get in to Admin, and now the redirect loop is back in effect. Not sure what I’m going to do, but for now I’m going to let it rest and see if I can make more progress after I calm down. Frustration level is clouding my vision. Thanks for your help though.

    #11303
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    When I go to your Home page it redirects to /wp-admin/install.php.  This could be a failed WordPress installation, but it could also be invalid code in your .htaccess files.  Do these steps.

    Delete your root .htaccess file and your wp-admin .htaccess file.  Is the problem still occurring?

    If it is still occurring then:

    Reinstall WordPress in your WP Dashboard if you can.  If you cannot do this from your Dashboard then download the wordpress.zip file and unzip it on your computer.  Then upload all WordPress files and folders and overwrite your existing website files and folders.

    #11308
    Hannah
    Participant

    Removed both htaccess files and yes, wp-install.php is still coming up after clearing cache. I’ll try reinstalling WordPress. Thanks.

     

    #11309
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    Well actually I now see the install.php page instead of seeing a redirect loop error.  But something is seriously fubar if your Home page is redirecting to your /wp-admin/install.php page.  Hopefully it is just a failed WP upgrade, which is very easily fixed by uploading new WP folders and files.

    #11310
    Hannah
    Participant

    Seriously fubar! Ipower says “If the MySQL user exceeds the database query limit, which is 75,000 per hour per user, then the WordPress website will be redirected to the installation page or it will not be able to connect the database. This setting is in place to ensure that the MySQL database cannot be overloaded with to many query requests.” so maybe it’s a setting on their end that causes this when something else goes wrong. Fresh WP install is 98% uploaded, so we’ll find out in a couple of minutes if this will help. Thanks so much for hanging in there with me, I really appreciate your help.

     

    #11311
    Hannah
    Participant

    Well, I got the home page with no styling for a second but heading for wp-admin I just got the install page again.  Thanks for trying to help, but I guess I’m out of luck.

     

    #11312
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    Are you kidding me?  That does not make any sense at all.  I have a suggestion for you – run don’t walk to a new Host.

    Ipower says “If the MySQL user exceeds the database query limit, which is 75,000 per hour per user, then the WordPress website will be redirected to the installation page or it will not be able to connect the database.

    #11313
    AITpro Admin
    Keymaster

    Web Hosts are supposed to handle DoS/DDoS attacks at the Server and not at the website level.  75,000 requests per hour by 1 user/1 IP is a DoS/DDoS attack.  This attack should not even be reaching your website and should be stopped/throttled at the Server – run do not walk to another web host.

    #11316
    Hannah
    Participant

    Got it. Thanks.

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.