XF 1.5 Connectioned timed out issues with Gmail and Gravatar

[Nicky Vermeersch]

Hey everyone

Since a week Im being prompted by problems on my xf website, that connections to gravatar and gmail are timing out.

Gravatar timing out:

Spoiler: Gravatar Time out error

Server Error Log
Error Info
Zend_Http_Client_Adapter_Exception: Unable to Connect to tcp://www.gravatar.com:80. Error #110: Connection timed out - library/Zend/Http/Client/Adapter/Socket.php:235
Generated By: Unknown Account, A moment ago
Stack Trace
#0 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/Zend/Http/Client.php(973): Zend_Http_Client_Adapter_Socket->connect('www.gravatar.co...', 80, false)
#1 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/Model/Avatar.php(457): Zend_Http_Client->request('HEAD')
#2 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/ControllerPublic/Register.php(374): XenForo_Model_Avatar::gravatarExists('mr730507170@gma...')
#3 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/Audentio/Invitation/Extend/XenForo/ControllerPublic/Register.php(62): XenForo_ControllerPublic_Register->actionRegister()
#4 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/FrontController.php(347): Audentio_Invitation_extend_XenForo_ControllerPublic_Register->actionRegister()
#5 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/FrontController.php(134): XenForo_FrontController->dispatch(Object(XenForo_RouteMatch))
#6 /usr/share/nginx/html/index.php(13): XenForo_FrontController->run()
#7 {main}
Request State
array(3) {
  ["url"] => string(46) "http://www.mcmiddleearth.com/register/register"
  ["_GET"] => array(1) {
    ["/register/register"] => string(0) ""
  }
  ["_POST"] => array(17) {
    ["username"] => string(9) "hoavaBigo"
    ["205632cff5f365cce92b4bfec11f7c5f"] => string(9) "hoavaBigo"
    ["0dc6df76570be87d56cb4e222ac093f5"] => string(21) "mr730507170@gmail.com"
    ["1acfe66404bf2498e980eaa85bf2f31a"] => string(21) "mr730507170@gmail.com"
    ["b0ca006ce61da4e1cb9e07bc14ba63d6"] => string(0) ""
    ["dob_month"] => string(1) "4"
    ["dob_day"] => string(1) "1"
    ["dob_year"] => string(4) "1982"
    ["a9d5fdce82fc2b850a08a46ca54d9725"] => array(1) {
      ["Languages"] => string(0) ""
    }
    ["custom_fields_shown"] => array(1) {
      [0] => string(9) "Languages"
    }
    ["69a3d89fb7192db217aeb0c99851776b"] => string(14) "Asia/Hong_Kong"
    ["captcha_question_answer"] => string(0) ""
    ["captcha_question_hash"] => string(40) "7b051f0a7d30916a7660cf96aba29a7f50de9f42"
    ["agree"] => string(1) "1"
    ["submit"] => string(7) "Sign up"
    ["_xfToken"] => string(8) "********"
    ["reg_key"] => string(32) "ecff27572e81381e6d3efe8be93dc1d4"
  }
}

I also started experiencing issues at the same time with relaying mail to Gmail (I connect to gmail to send email to members)

Spoiler: Google Mail time out

Server Error Log
Error Info
Zend_Mail_Protocol_Exception: cannot connect to host; error = Connection timed out (errno = 110 ) - library/Zend/Mail/Protocol/Pop3.php:109
Generated By: Unknown Account, 2 minutes ago
Stack Trace
#0 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/Zend/Mail/Storage/Pop3.php(190): Zend_Mail_Protocol_Pop3->connect('pop.gmail.com', 995, 'SSL')
#1 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/Model/EmailBounce.php(288): Zend_Mail_Storage_Pop3->__construct(Array)
#2 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/Deferred/EmailBounce.php(19): XenForo_Model_EmailBounce->openBounceHandlerConnection()
#3 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/Model/Deferred.php(295): XenForo_Deferred_EmailBounce->execute(Array, Array, 7.9999980926514, '')
#4 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/Model/Deferred.php(429): XenForo_Model_Deferred->runDeferred(Array, 7.9999980926514, '', false)
#5 /usr/share/nginx/html/library/XenForo/Model/Deferred.php(374): XenForo_Model_Deferred->_runInternal(Array, NULL, '', false)
#6 /usr/share/nginx/html/deferred.php(23): XenForo_Model_Deferred->run(false)
#7 {main}
Request State
array(3) {
  ["url"] => string(41) "http://www.mcmiddleearth.com/deferred.php"
  ["_GET"] => array(0) {
  }
  ["_POST"] => array(3) {
    ["_xfRequestUri"] => string(1) "/"
    ["_xfNoRedirect"] => string(1) "1"
    ["_xfResponseType"] => string(4) "json"
  }
}

I am not being throttled however, since that would show up as a different error number. However it is very sudden that I start seeing connection refused for both these services at the same time. Does anyone experience them too or have any idea on where to start looking? I was thinking the firewall might have been blocking outgoing connections, but iptables -L shows no rules, so there should be no blocking of outgoing connections. I recently upgraded to CentOS7 fresh install after using 6.5 for quite a while.

 

[Amaury]

These are mostly problems on their end, so there's not really anything you can do.

We get them with Gravatar from time to time.

 

[Nicky Vermeersch]

From time to time I could understand, but I'm getting these very often (one week time I had 54 pages of error logs). It seems it is happening every single time.

Also I can access www.gravatar.com just fine, but on my remote server when I visit the website with 'links', it gets stuck on establishing connection. Maybe my ip got blacklisted or something?

 

[Paul B]

Check with your host that there is nothing preventing the connection, such as the firewall configuration.

 

[Fred.]

I had similar problems after updating to PHP7, It could not connect over IPv6 because I don't have IPv6 yet. I disabled IPv6 on the network interface and that fixed the problem.

 

[Nicky Vermeersch]

Check with your host that there is nothing preventing the connection, such as the firewall configuration.

The host basically only gives me hardware and a connection, and usually does not offer software or user support with problems. But I'll try, maybe there's a more upstream problem like the dns resolver.

I had similar problems after updating to PHP7, It could not connect over IPv6 because I don't have IPv6 yet. I disabled IPv6 on the network interface and that fixed the problem.

How very odd. I checked it out even though I am not using PHP7. I looked it up in the manual and followed the steps described in https://wiki.centos.org/FAQ/CentOS7#head-8984faf811faccca74c7bcdd74de7467f2fcd8ee afterwards I rebooted the server. Now I resend mails for registrations and had two users register properly without any error. Seems that indeed was the problem!

 

[Fred.]

I knew I saw both of these these errors a few days ago.
I was also surprised.

 

[Nicky Vermeersch]

Also there were no logs to be found that pointed into that direction, I could have spent days trying to figure it out. Pinging gravatar and google mail services would work, visiting their webpages with the links program wouldn't. scp/ftp wouldn't work and then other stuff did. Glad its solved now