Help regarding ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS sought

[csearle]

Hi, I wonder if any of you clever guys could help me with an issue I'm having?

I am getting the ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error on my computer when I try to gain access to lemonfool.co.uk. This suddenly started the other day and has stubbornly remained ever since.

So far I've established that I can gain access with my phone and with the computer I use for my flight simulator (the one I'm using now). I have tried to delete all cookies first from lemonfool.co.uk and then from all sites (what a pain). I have tried using the unbanishable Edge browser, with the same result. I have newly installed the Opera browser but that produced the same error too.

To help I've included some pictures below (images that I own).

The first shows the error using the opera browser. The second shows the result of a "curl" command-line command, where the basic access appears to work, the third is the Network log of the debugger window in the Chrome browser, in which the redirection seems to get into its loop. Trouble is I don't know what it means really.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

[GrahamPlatt]

Bizzare.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/543 ... a-http-302

Not noticed any abberant behaviour myself.

There are some strange goings on in the DNS world at the moment mind, though your redirects don’t seem likely to be related

https://torrentfreak.com/google-cloudfl ... on-240613/

Looks like the DNS operators are taking a stand…

https://fosstodon.org/@MattPounsett/112696324920572063

[bungeejumper]

I had that three times yesterday, but it seems to have settled down now. Famous last words......

[ReformedCharacter]

I had that problem a few days ago, but I had previously edited my hosts file to point lemonfool.co.uk to its IP address. When I commented that out in the hosts file the problem disappeared immediately.

RC

[csearle]

I had that problem a few days ago, but I had previously edited my hosts file to point lemonfool.co.uk to its IP address. When I commented that out in the hosts file the problem disappeared immediately.

I'll take a look, thanks.

I have just tried this site to establish which DNS I am using. It is a Tiscali one and is the same on the not-working computer as this one (presumably because they use the same ISP).

Chris

[GrahamPlatt]

viewtopic.php?p=669560#p669560

I know you are aware of this Chis (since I landed on it following you linking to it re adverts).

But it may explain the problem if you have the old ip address in your hosts file, as suggested by reformedcharacter above.

[chas49]

https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=669560#p669560

I know you are aware of this Chis (since I landed on it following you linking to it re adverts).

But it may explain the problem if you have the old ip address in your hosts file, as suggested by reformedcharacter above.

I just tested this by putting the IP address back in the hosts file and got the error! Take it out again and it goes away.

EDIT - the IP address must have changed in the last upgrade - it now seems to be 92.205.11.138

[csearle]

Team, you're wonderful! That was it. I'm back on my trusty notebook computer!

Thank you!

So I too had an entry in the hosts file for lemonfool. I had completely forgotten that I had done this (and why). It had the old IP address in it. I was aware that stooz was changing servers but even that hadn't triggered me to think I needed to do anything.

Thanks again team!

Chris

[GrahamPlatt]

Once again, unrelated to the redirect troubles here, but worth being aware that the “direct to ip address” trick will no longer work for many sites, due to “name-based virtual hosts” being used and set up to specifically exclude direct ip-address access, as explained here:
https://superuser.com/questions/875941/ ... f-hostname

[mc2fool]

Once again, unrelated to the redirect troubles here, but worth being aware that the “direct to ip address” trick will no longer work for many sites...

What, you mean like: http://172.217.16.238/ ? I doubt there were many sites (unlike google) that ever worked on, 'cos the vast majority of websites are on shared hosts ... as that 9 year old article says....

[UncleEbenezer]

It's a misconfiguration and has been happening since the Jun 25th work. I've been meaning to report it ...

lemonfool.co.uk works fine.
www.lemonfool.co.uk redirects to www.lemonfool.co.uk (i.e. the identical URL). So your browser gives that error message rather than send infinite requests.

There might even be technophobe Fools out there who are locked out by it! As I was on my desktop (but not my laptop) before I took the time to investigate.

It's of course possible that's not the whole story.

[chas49]

It's a misconfiguration and has been happening since the Jun 25th work. I've been meaning to report it ...

lemonfool.co.uk works fine.
http://www.lemonfool.co.uk redirects to http://www.lemonfool.co.uk (i.e. the identical URL). So your browser gives that error message rather than send infinite requests.

There might even be technophobe Fools out there who are locked out by it! As I was on my desktop (but not my laptop) before I took the time to investigate.

It's of course possible that's not the whole story.

Although this was not the cause of the issue reported here, I will flag this to the site owner.

[Infrasonic]

Although this was not the cause of the issue reported here, I will flag this to the site owner.

I've mentioned it before when LF maintenance or upgrades happen and there have been issues, it's worth running extensive checks on the domain to make sure all the DNS/TXT ducks still align.

It can be done quite easily via free webtools like these...https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx

https://mxtoolbox.com/NetworkTools.aspx

[UncleEbenezer]

It's a misconfiguration and has been happening since the Jun 25th work. I've been meaning to report it ...

lemonfool.co.uk works fine.
http://www.lemonfool.co.uk redirects to http://www.lemonfool.co.uk (i.e. the identical URL). So your browser gives that error message rather than send infinite requests.

There might even be technophobe Fools out there who are locked out by it! As I was on my desktop (but not my laptop) before I took the time to investigate.

It's of course possible that's not the whole story.

Although this was not the cause of the issue reported here, I will flag this to the site owner.

Indeed, it seems I wrote too soon.

Yesterday I tried posting from the desktop (my diagnostic efforts having ended at the point where I could read the site). The form submitted from lemonfool.co.uk to www.lemonfool.co.uk, which in turn generated the redirect loop! The fact that differs between two computers suggests strongly something in my browser settings: probably slightly different security/privacy settings.

p.s. the fact that your quoting my post turned www.lemonfool.co.uk to http://www.lemonfool.co.uk/ seems broken, too!

[chas49]

It's being investigated.

The reformatting of the link a separate issue whch I'll flag as well (although it's less of a problem I think?) As far as I can see, it's not the quoting that did it but the trickery that the BB software does when displaying links. The http: bit is actually there in the links in your post just not displayed. For some reason, it gets displayed in a quote.

[UncleEbenezer]

It's being investigated.

The reformatting of the link a separate issue whch I'll flag as well (although it's less of a problem I think?) As far as I can see, it's not the quoting that did it but the trickery that the BB software does when displaying links. The http: bit is actually there in the links in your post just not displayed. For some reason, it gets displayed in a quote.

Hehe. Trickery with posted links goes a long way back with me ... to the first web software I released back in 1995. These days it's rarely a good idea to second-guess browsers (which have much of the same capability built in), except when proxying pages from an intranet to the outside world. But I agree, not a serious issue: more on the level of the pink marshmallows filter.

Though an http:// link to a site like lemonfool that redirects it to https:// doubles the server load on those requests, and *that* may be related to the bug that redirects (if the https:// vhost is configured to think it's the dummy http:// one).

BTW, the server claims to be Apache, but during the Jun 25th works the message suggested nginx. Both excellent servers, but ... is this down to a server that was standing in during works, or is the server fibbing for dodgy reasons of security-by-obscurity?

[Lanark]

Though an http:// link to a site like lemonfool that redirects it to https:// doubles the server load on those requests

Not necessarily, if HSTS is configured then there is zero additional load in using HTTPS, the redirect will be done within the web browser.

[UncleEbenezer]

Not sure who is the techie team at Lemonfool and to what extent they have this in hand, but if it would help, I'd be happy to take a look. Fixing a web server damn well should be within my competence!

[mc2fool]

Not sure who is the techie team at Lemonfool and to what extent they have this in hand, but if it would help, I'd be happy to take a look. Fixing a web server damn well should be within my competence!

It's not clear that there's anything to have in hand, as the dearth of Lemons screaming indicates that this isn't a widespread problem, if at all. I rather suspect it's a local (browser, PC or DNS, etc) configuration issue for any that have been affected (which doesn't include me).

FWIW using Firefox and the HTTP Headers Live add on I'm not seeing any redirection at all (except when I try to go to http://www.lemonfool.co.uk, when a 302 Found response comes back from the server with a Location: https://www.lemonfool.co.uk header). Ditto without the www.

[Infrasonic]

I've not had any access issues since the upgrade, the old bookmarks work fine across FF, Brave and Chrome. That hasn't been the case on previous upgrades, so I'd tend to agree with mc2fools assessment.