Admin section not accessible

[Willem]

I've been digging around but found no solutions.
I cannot enter the Admin section, no response comes from the (Linux) webserver, running Apache 1.3.23, PHP 4.1.2 and MySQL 3.23.30-gamma.
Posting is possible.
The directory of YaBB SE is set to drwxrwxrwx
I created an empty file Settings.bak, also -rwxrwxrwx
and I set yabbinfo.xml to -rw-rw-rw-

Any more hints? TIA!

[groundup]

so when u click on the admin cp nothing happens at all?

[Willem]

Nope, absolutely nothing. Internet Exploder just shows the hourglass, and times out after a while.
Trying to dig through the code now...

[Willem]

Hmmm,
Doing a netstat I find a connection to yabb.info on port 80... It stays in the SYN_SENT mode...
Now I'm getting really curious.

[Willem]

I think I'm getting somewhere... Let the firewall down and now I'm able to get to the admin section.
I guess my firewall rules are a bit strict. I'll be back in a while to tell you about my findings.

[Willem]

Got it  
The firewall for my server was allowing incoming www requests (on port 80) but refused outgoing www requests.
Still, I have an uneasy feeling about this (ok, ok, I'm paranoid).
Maybe it is worth the effort to patch the code so that the connection times out. I expect similar behaviour if the yabb.info website is down.

[groundup]

nice to see u got it working, partially

[sgmiller]

Folks,

I am experiencing the same problem.  My whole environment lives behind a corporate firewall.  Any hints on what I need to change to make this work (given I can't modify the firewall?)

Sam

[sgmiller]

Folks,

I don't really know what I am doing but managed to get it to work by commenting out
$contents=@file("http://www.yabb.......

in Admin.php.  Am I doing the right thing?

Sam

[Willem]

Commenting out the line works, it would be safer to add a line which sets $contents to 0 (zero), because in the next line $contents is tested for being non-zero.
In my case the firewall was just dropping the packets (not giving any indication), IMHO it would be better to have the firewall reply with some icmp-destination-unreachable (port-unreachable?) reply.
For the YaBB code I would still suggest some kind of timeout construction. No answer within 30 seconds? Then refer to the local copy of yabbinfo.xml.

[Jeff Lewis]

It's actually SUPPOSED to do that, we're looking at the issue though to make sure it won't be such an issue...

[Willem]

Jeff,

I'm down with a really bad flu, my bright moments come and go as the wind blows. I'll be better in a few days.
I looked at the code and found that a plain http connection is made to yabb.info.
In my case it didn't time out, because my firewall was just dropping the packets. In other words silently discarding them (and so do many other firewalls). Here lies the source of the problem. If PHP never is informed that the other side can't be reached, it will continue to try. What times out then, is probably the maximum execution time of the script.
A solution could be raw socket-programming with socket(), bind() and listen() calls. As socket programming is still experimental in the latest release of PHP, this could be something to get your (our?) teeth  in  .
If you're looking for volunteers....

[mylde]

I have the same problem - can´t get to the admin centre, it just times out and blank page appears - I don´t know that does it make that because of the firewall, I have to give my firewall administrator a call.

But I also have another kind of problem.

When a new user registers in to my forum. And hits the Register button, a page appears that says:

2: Failed to Connect
(f:\www\forum\Sources\Subs.php ln 274)

The strange this in this is that the account works normally. So the registeration is succesfull, but that error message just appears. Could anyone tell me is this caused by the firewall problem too ?  

[Willem]

Aie, no firewall problem. It's to do with your mailserver.

I think your mailserver settings are not correct, or your ISP doesn't allow for it.
On line 274 an email is sent out. In your case, probably the welcome message for the new subscriber.

Oops, need to add a little more:
Apparently you're running it from your Windows machine (at home?). You should then set "mailserver" to your ISP's mailserver (most likely) and set "mail-transport" to SMTP, not sendmail.

[mylde]

Thanks. Probably it is the mail server, but i can´t fix that problem yet because I can´t get to the admin section