cpman - 10-12-2013 at 19:39
Hello!
I was just browsing the forum on my computer over wifi, when I clicked a thread, and got the message "Forbidden. You don't have permission to access
/talk/ on this server." I can access the sciencemadness home page, but not the forum.
What could be causing this?
I get the same error over wifi on my phone. I'm posing this from 4G on my phone.
Did my IP address get banned for some reason?
Could it have to do with the fact that I could nt read the captcha clearly while signing up, and thus failed it around 4 times?
Does anybody have an idea to fix this problem?
It is a pain to post from my phone...
bfesser - 10-12-2013 at 19:44
There's an IP range that's been temporarily banned. Perhaps your IP fell within that range. You wouldn't happen to be using Opera as a browser,
would you?
cpman - 10-12-2013 at 20:03
Nope. I was using Firefox.
woelen - 11-12-2013 at 00:34
This is very peculiar. I see that you were blocked suddenly, but I do not see why you were blocked. We indeed blocked a few ranges, due to spamming
and trolling, but your address is not inside the blocked range. Besides that, these blocked ranges are much older already, we did not change anything
in the last few hours.
Could you please try after a day or so with your ADSL internet connection?
@polverone: Could you have a look at this? At dec 11, 03:19 GMT cpman still could post, at dec 11, 03:39 GMT he suddenly cannot post anymore and needs
to use his smartphone. What did happen between those moments in time?
kmno4 - 11-12-2013 at 04:05
I have noticed this "strange" behaviour of SM board recently, too.
After several attempts, it turn out one thing:
IP banning happens when (any) page is several times quickly refreshing in a short time. After another "click", instead of refreshed page, known
message appears.
As to me, it looks like some kind of forum protection, but equally good it can be a bug (but i do not think so 
)
woelen - 11-12-2013 at 05:15
This sounds like a feature to protect the software from malicious DoS attacks, which can bring a site down if many HTTP-requests are made in a short
period of time.
@cpman: Did you indeed (have to) click a certain page many times?
@kmno4: Did your ban disappear automatically, or did you have to have something repaired by Polverone?
[Edited on 11-12-13 by woelen]
Random - 11-12-2013 at 05:25
Same happened with me but I changed my IP since I have dynamic one. Probably forum protection.
cpman - 11-12-2013 at 05:33
I was not clicking one thing repeatedly, but I was clicking lots of topic links, and skimmed them for interesting or useful info, then I'd hit back to
go to the forum I was in. Theoretically, this could have lead to a bucnch of hits from my IP to one page...
kmno4 - 11-12-2013 at 07:00
Yes, my ban dissapeard automatically after some time (hours)
Just next day I was able to browse the board from the same IP.
woelen - 11-12-2013 at 07:02
Thanks for the info. I hope that cpman's ban also disappears without further action and that we know the cause of this peculiar behavior.
bfesser - 11-12-2013 at 09:47
I've been noticing some other glitches and bugs in the forum lately—some that I'd never seen before. It all emphasizes how badly we need to
move forward with the migration to a new board platform.
A couple other bugs/glitches off the top of my head:
- variable name displayed in Last Post field; saw this last night, persisted through refresh/navigation untill a new post was made
- user name in Last Post field not updated after removal/bans; woelen pointed this out
- HTML parsing error occurring at a specific spot in lengthier markup-heavy posts
- double-posting as a result of hitting back or refresh in some browsers
- folders not being ordered correctly in U2U manager
[edit]
- the links under "Location:" on the "Who's Online" page redirect https:/.../whisper/ clicks to http:/.../talk/
[Edited on 11.12.13 by bfesser]
cpman - 11-12-2013 at 17:17
My ban just expired.
I have some minor programming experience, and may be able to help with the migration, if needed....
bfesser - 12-12-2013 at 06:02
<strong><a href="viewthread.php?tid=18651">call for participation: modernizing SM forum software</a></strong>
Brain&Force - 26-2-2014 at 21:20
I'm getting kicked off the forum with a 403 Forbidden at random intervals on my phone. My IP range is 66.*.*.* if that helps.
Protip: If your phone suffers the same problem, try putting it in airplane mode and then restart the antennae. You'll get a new IP and your connection
will be accepted.
Brain&Force - 24-3-2014 at 19:14
This problem is getting worse and worse on my end...now I have to reset every 30 mins. on average.
elementcollector1 - 25-3-2014 at 04:12
Oddly, I suffered this problem a while back on school library computers. Eventually, I asked the library techies to do something, and whatever they
did seemed to work.