Forum Breaks/Bans My IP When Trying To Visit Old Post?

obsidianspider

I tried to show someone a post from 2016 of my build with a Pi 3 in a Super Famicom and whenever I try to load that post the forum will go really slowly and then I just can't go to any retropie.org.uk URLs at all. It seems that things come back after 30 minutes or so, but I am wondering if anyone else has experienced this with really old posts just flat out breaking things or your IP seemingly temporarily blocked.

Here's the post link if you dare to try it yourself.

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3376/pi-in-a-super-famicom-build/51

YFZdude

@obsidianspider
Loaded fine for me when I clicked your link.
On mobile, android, house wifi, located in U.S if any of that helps sort it.

Ashpool

@YFZdude following the provided link just works fine (except that no images are loaded; I am viewing posts by pages, not in "endless scroll mode")... Once I tried to load the 1st page of that thread I encountered the behaviour @obsidianspider descriped - for the last ~30minutes I wasn't able to reach retropie.org.uk from any of my systems (same external ip) (mobile was ok, though I haven't tried to login via that (edit: nor have I tried to switch to WLAN on my mobile)).

SuperFromND

@Ashpool Can confirm this happened to me as well, I think it might have something to do with the images. Seems like they might have all been purged or something and the backend's possibly caching that request as "active" for 30 minutes and not letting anything else through?

Just a wild guess, don't quote me on that.

Clyde

I can confirm it, too. After loading the link, I couldn't connect to any page on retropie.org.uk anymore. A new IP fixed it again.

Ashpool

@Clyde, @YFZdude Just trying to gather further data that may be helpfull in pinpointing the culprit within that thread -> as opening just the page that opens for me via the link hasn't provoked any bad side-effects, but opening page one of the thread did: In what mode are you two viewing forums threads? Paginated or "infinite scroll" ? And if it was on infinite, have you tried to scroll upward (back in time) or did the ban happened just by opening the link?

Clyde

@Ashpool Infinite scrolling, and the effect occured right after visiting the link without any scrolling.

Ashpool

@Clyde Thanks...

I've tried again and this time I was "disconnected" from retropie.org.uk in an instant :( Sorry that I jumped to conclusions due to my previous experience. Now I am really unsure why I was able to "stay alive" in the forum until the time I've changed "pages" - I had multiple tabs open for the retropie address (If it would have been old times & me using Opera Presto that may have been due to that aggressive cache/history policy fooling my observation, but nowadays its firefox/vivaldi I am using) and am really flabbergasted now! [Edit: been back in less then 30 minutes, due to shutting down the router and obtaining a new ip on [~5minute deleayed] restart]

YFZdude

@Ashpool
Thanks for the protip. Using your advice I was able to get the temp ban.

I scroll but when I jumped to the top post with the arrows I can only go about 20 posts before it has to load more posts. About the third load it got me. I think it has something to do with requesting too many image loads in a short span of time or something. Coupled with the fact that old images aren't showing correctly might be doing it.

BuZz

Sorry about that.

It's the protection I have in place to limit connections (due to bad bots etc). If the connection limits are hit too often in a period of time, the IP will be firewalled for 30 mins.

I couldn't trigger it from normal use when I configured it but maybe it's possible to trigger due to forum software changes (or the number of images on that thread).

I will disable it for now. I may be able to change the config to make it ignore static data. It's more for restricting bad bots from hogging all the nodebb connections and slowing the forum down.

[edit] Static content should bypass it anyway but perhaps it's due to the fact the images are missing that it passes the connection on to nodebb and triggers it.

[edit] It was caused by the fact the images were missing, which caused the connections to be proxied on to nodebb (which the connection limits apply to).

BuZz

I will see if I can sort out the missing images. I looked into this recently and had to regenerate thumbnails due to a nodebb forum bug, but perhaps I missed some or it's been triggered again.

BuZz

@obsidianspider I have restored the images from an old backup. If you notice any other posts with missing images, please let me know. Thanks for the heads up regarding the issues.

Clyde

@BuZz Thanks for looking into it that quickly!

obsidianspider

@BuZz Thanks so much for your help in fixing this.

Also, thanks to everyone else who tried to troubleshoot the issue. I realize I'm not active on here much lately, but the way this problem was handled is an amazing reminder of how this a really excellent community.