Ewen Wannop's Site Down?

[Hugh Hood]

Ewen, I hope you are well these days.

As I attempted to access <https://speccie.uk/software/> this morning, I
received a 403 error saying "Access is forbidden to the requested page".

My sincere hope is that this is a temporary anomaly, as your site is
invaluable to Apple II users.

Regards,




Hugh Hood

[David Schmidt]

His site is looking good from my end of the internet.

- David

[Hugh Hood]

David,

Thanks for that report.

I tried again in FireFox (V110.0) after clearing the cache, and still
get the 403 error.

So, I went over to Edge (which I really never use), and it pulls up
Ewen's site just fine.

I dunno.




Hugh Hood

[Speccie]

Hugh,

> Ewen, I hope you are well these days.

I am still here, and am alive and kicking...

> As I attempted to access<https://speccie.uk/software/> this morning, I
> received a 403 error saying "Access is forbidden to the requested page".

Strange. I did nothing to it yesterday, though I may not have accessed it, and it was working fine for me when I checked just now.

Downdetector does show Zen Internet had some problems yesterday, but they sound more like local access to users in the UK, than with the Zen Internet servers themselves.

Let me know if it has persisted, or is now working again today...

Cheers - Ewen

[Charlie]

It seems to be a Firefox problem. Both Edge and Opera access the site
with no problem. Firefox still gets a 403 error.

Charlie

[Hugh Hood]

On 2/20/2023 9:31 AM, Charlie wrote:
>
> It seems to be a Firefox problem. Both Edge and Opera access the site
> with no problem. Firefox still gets a 403 error.
>
> Charlie
>

Charlie,

Indeed you are correct.

After changing the FireFox 110.0 useragent string to the one for Chrome,
Ewen's site came up just fine.

Thanks for confirming that it was a Firefox issue.




Hugh Hood


P.S. - Ewen, I am most pleased to hear that you are well. I wish you
continued good health.

[Speccie]

Hugh,

> After changing the FireFox 110.0 useragent string to the one for Chrome,
> Ewen's site came up just fine.

I can’t think why Zen Internet have a dislike to FireFox, and it is nothing obviously I can do anything about anyway.

> P.S. - Ewen, I am most pleased to hear that you are well. I wish you
> continued good health.

The NHS here in the UK, manages to keeps me alive...

Cheers - Ewen

[mmphosis]

This seems like a web server side issue. The web server should not be doing
anything more than logging the useragent string. On the other hand, Mozilla
should not be doing anything to work around web servers that do weird
things. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1805967

Changing the useragent in Firefox to make the rv:version match the
Firefox/version appears to resolve the issue. As long as I can go to
https://speccie.uk/software/ I am happy. I don't care about those other
sites trying (and failing) to detect IE11. To change the useragent string:

about:config

general.useragent.override

String

+

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:110.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/110.0

OR...

Apple ][

:D

[Jerry Penner]

mmphosis <mmph...@macgui.com> writes:

> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:110.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/110.0

One observation is that it worked fine with Firefox 109 but gives the
403 error with Firefox 110.

One can play around with the Firefox's user-agent string and reproduce
this behavior:

This works:

general.useragent.override=
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/109.0
^^ ^^

This does not:
general.useragent.override=
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/110.0
^^ ^^

And then this does:
general.useragent.override=
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:110.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/110.0
^^ ^^

It's an odd bug.

--
--
Jerry jerry+a2 at jpen.ca

[Speccie]

On 21 Feb 2023, mmphosis wrote
(in article <mmphosis-...@macgui.com>):

> Changing the useragent in Firefox to make the rv:version match the
> Firefox/version appears to resolve the issue. As long as I can go to
> https://speccie.uk/software/ I am happy. I don't care about those other
> sites trying (and failing) to detect IE11. To change the useragent string:

It seems the problem has arisen with the latest Firefox update v110.0, as when I started Firefox 109.0.1 this morning (from here in the UK), my web site came up just fine.

Firefox then announced there was an update, and after the update was applied, and I restarted Firefox, the 403 error then appeared.

That would confirm what you are saying here...

Chrome reports the website is not secure, and won’t open it either, which implies Zen’s certificate is not being recognised, and Safari (on the Mac) seems to be having problems too...

Zen seems to be down again just now, as I can’t now even get to my CPanel or Portal, so I will keep monitoring this, and talk to Zen if it does not resolve itself...

Cheers - Ewen

[Peter 'Shaggy' Haywood]

Groovy hepcat Speccie was jivin' in comp.sys.apple2 on Tue, 21 Feb 2023
06:56 pm. It's a cool scene! Dig it.

>> After changing the FireFox 110.0 useragent string to the one for
>> Chrome, Ewen's site came up just fine.
>
> I can’t think why Zen Internet have a dislike to FireFox, and it is

I use firefox 68.5.0esr, and had no trouble accessing your site.

> nothing obviously I can do anything about anyway.

You could, I suppose, contact them and complain..., or at least ask
what the deal is.

--


----- Dig the NEW and IMPROVED news sig!! -----


-------------- Shaggy was here! ---------------
Ain't I'm a dawg!!

[Speccie]

Peter,

> You could, I suppose, contact them and complain..., or at least ask
> what the deal is.

That is the next step...

It is fine on Safari on the Mac, which is often fussy about some sites, and is also fine on my iPhone, though that does report the site is not secure.

It is even fine on Webber, as the domain name is set to accept both HTTP and HTTPS connections!

Cheers - Ewen

[Speccie]

Hugh, Peter et al...

> It is fine on Safari on the Mac, which is often fussy about some sites, and is also fine on my iPhone, though that does report the site is not secure.

I raised the problem with my website service provider Zen, and got a quick response this morning. It seems to have resolved the problem for me, so can someone please confirm it has been resolved for you as well?

This is what Zen said:

"An update last week on Firefox we think triggered the server firewall protections our end and we pushed a fix out (which should now be in place for your account)”

Cheers - Ewen

[Charlie]

Your site is now working for me with Firefox v110.0 64bit.

Charlie

[magnusfalkirk]

I agree with Charlie, your site is working fine on the latest version of Firefox now.

magnus

[mmphosis]

It's working now! :)

I removed the custom useragent string from Firefox. All is well.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/110.0

[Jerry Penner]

Working here for me, just like the others report. Firefox 110 Linux.

[Hugh Hood]

Ewen,

Thank you for having the website problem corrected for us. Like the
others have reported, I am able to access your site just fine in FireFox
110.0.

Kindest regards,




Hugh Hood

[Speccie]

Hugh and everybody else...

> Thank you for having the website problem corrected for us. Like the
> others have reported, I am able to access your site just fine in FireFox
> 110.0.

Thank you for confirming all is now well. It seems to have been a problem caused by Firefox changing their identification string, which with Zen being too careful, meant they had to reset their firewall...

As Zen is the most outstanding ISP here in the UK, and tops the “Best ISP” charts every year, and who actually have people locally in the UK on the phone if you need to talk to them, I will not be changing my ISP!

Cheers - Ewen