Discourse Went Down Suddenly. No one can log in

[WesPenre]

My Discourse at wespenreboards.com has been down for a few hours. Members tell me that some get the error message that the forum could have been hacked. Another says that they get the message the certificate has expired. A third person now gets this message: “FetchEvent.respondWith received an error:no-response.”

When I try to log in myself (I’m the Admin), I just get the spinning wheel. The forum is up-to-date, so the certificate should be also. To be sure I ran this:

cd /var/discourse
git pull
./launcher bootstrap web_only && ./launcher destroy web_only && ./launcher start web_only

But it doesn’t help.

Anyone having any ideas?

[Ed_S]

Do you have any kind of CDN in play?

If you ssh to your server, and try

wget -q --timeout=3 https://localhost/privacy  -O - |egrep generator

does that work?

How about

wget -q --no-check-certificate --timeout=3 https://localhost/privacy  -O - |egrep generator

How about if you put your full URL in there instead of localhost? Try both versions of the command.

[JammyDodger]

Hey Wes

It doesn’t look like your site is up at the moment. Have you done anything in the meantime?

I’m wondering if you may need to update your data container if it’s not been done in awhile. I’m still a little hazy on the two-container set-up, so I’ll pop an @pfaffman bat signal in as I’m sure he knows more about the rhythm for that.

[WesPenre]

Hi Jammy! I remember you since before. I did an update/upgrade in the meantime. That’s all… OK, I’ll wait until pfaffman comes on then.

[WesPenre]

OK, I’ll try that…

[WesPenre]

@Ed_S

wget -q --timeout=3 https://localhost/privacy  -O - |egrep generator

does that work?

How about

wget -q --no-check-certificate --timeout=3 https://localhost/privacy  -O - |egrep genera

These commands don’t work, but I might do it incorrectly. Do I exchange https://localhost/privacy with https://wespenreboards.com/privacy?

What does /privacy stand for in this case?

[Ed_S]

Better if you try them first using literally localhost, and then subsequently try them with your actual domain.

/privacy is just a standard page on every forum: what we’re doing here is seeing if the forum is responding at all, locally.

[JammyDodger]

@Ed_S

/privacy is just a standard page on every forum: what we’re doing here is seeing if the forum is responding at all, locally.

This may have updated recently as now the /privacy and /tos pages only appear when company name has been filled in. I don’t know if this would affect the test in this case, but thought it sounded relevant.

There a bit more info on the decision here:

Should privacy policy and ToS be automatically generated on install?

Hi Jurica! Welcome to Discourse, and good catch. This is a recent change that we made just in the last week. Many sites do not need these legalese pages, especially small, private ones that are not connected to a company or brand. But if you add your company name on the last step in the setup wizard they will be created for you. You can then go and edit them to suit your needs. You also always have the option of linking to TOS and Privacy notice on your main website if you have one. Lo…

[WesPenre]

@Ed_S

Better if you try them first using literally localhost, and then subsequently try them with your actual domain.

/privacy is just a standard page on every forum: what we’re doing here is seeing if the forum is responding at all, locally.

OK. So, I tried with localhost/privacy. Then only localhost. Then wespenreboards.com only, and last wespenreboards.com/localhost. The result was the same using any of them:

[WesPenre]

@JammyDodger

This may have updated recently as now the /privacy and /tos pages only appear when company name has been filled in. I don’t know if this would affect the test in this case, but thought it sounded relevant.

There a bit more info on the decision here:

Hi Jurica! Welcome to Discourse, and good catch. eagle This is a recent change that we made just in the last week. Many sites do not need these legalese pages, especially small, private ones that are not connected to a company or brand. But if you add your company name on the last step in the setup wizard they will be created for you. You can then go and edit them to suit your needs. You also always have the option of linking to TOS and Privacy notice on your main website if you have one. Lo…

So there is nothing I need to do with this?

[Ed_S]

@JammyDodger

This may have updated recently as now the /privacy and /tos pages only appear when company name has been filled in. I don’t know if this would affect the test in this case, but thought it sounded relevant.

That’s interesting - it’s used in discourse-doctor. So that might need to be updated.

@WesPenre

The result was the same using any of them

Is that a zero which should be an upper-case O perhaps? Did you also try the versions with --no-check-certificate ?

If /privacy doesn’t work, perhaps try /about instead.

[WesPenre]

@Ed_S

Is that a zero which should be an upper-case O perhaps? Did you also try the versions with --no-check-certificate ?

If /privacy doesn’t work, perhaps try /about instead.

Yes, it’s a zero. OK, I’ll try an O instead and /about.

And yes, I tried the other algorithm, too, but I used a zero, so I’ll do both…

[WesPenre]

I tried both commands, but it’s not working:

[tobiaseigen]

@WesPenre

So there is nothing I need to do with this?

The change to when TOS and privacy pages are created is fairly recent. If your site is not new then it does not affect you.

@Ed_S

it’s used in discourse-doctor. So that might need to be updated.

Not sure how it is used in discourse-doctor. @pfaffman can you weigh in here? Is it used for troubleshooting, or just to verify that the links exist?

We’ll be doing more to educate new site owners about this functionality.

[Ed_S]

@WesPenre

but it’s not working

ok, so the problem you have isn’t a reachability problem, it’s probably a problem that Discourse isn’t starting up properly. Can you paste the entirety of what you see when you run the launcher start?

[Ed_S]

@tobiaseigen

Not sure how it is used in discourse-doctor

It’s used by get_discourse_version which is called by check_if_hostname_resolves_here which may report DNS PROBLEM if the connection to localhost and to the fully qualified domain don’t report the same version. However, it looks like it might be silent if both connections fail. See here.

[WesPenre]

@Ed_S

ok, so the problem you have isn’t a reachability problem, it’s probably a problem that Discourse isn’t starting up properly. Can you paste the entirety of what you see when you run the launcher start?

So how do I run the launcher start? I’m unfamiliar with all this terminology, unfortunately.

[Ed_S]

@WesPenre

how do I run the launcher start

Something like

cd /var/discourse
git pull
./launcher start web_only

(Bearing in mind that I’m not personally familiar with the two-container setup that you are apparently using. Also bearing in mind the question upthread as to whether you should update your data container.)

[WesPenre]

This is how it turned out:

[WesPenre]

Awesome! I tried to log in, and now it works! Thanks a lot, Ed.

Why did this happen in the first place, do you know?