Invalid input for update_ip_address

Hi,

There is a lot of errors in /logs, which states there is invalid input for update_ip_address operation.

The discourse is deployed in Azure, with a separated PostgreSQL and Redis service.

Error logs:

/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/rack-mini-profiler-0.10.7/lib/patches/db/pg.rb:90:in `async_exec'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/rack-mini-profiler-0.10.7/lib/patches/db/pg.rb:90:in `async_exec'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:614:in `block (2 levels) in exec_no_cache'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activesupport-5.1.4/lib/active_support/dependencies/interlock.rb:46:in `block in permit_concurrent_loads'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activesupport-5.1.4/lib/active_support/concurrency/share_lock.rb:185:in `yield_shares'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activesupport-5.1.4/lib/active_support/dependencies/interlock.rb:45:in `permit_concurrent_loads'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:613:in `block in exec_no_cache'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:612:in `block (2 levels) in log'
/usr/local/lib/ruby/2.4.0/monitor.rb:214:in `mon_synchronize'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:611:in `block in log'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activesupport-5.1.4/lib/active_support/notifications/instrumenter.rb:21:in `instrument'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract_adapter.rb:603:in `log'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:612:in `exec_no_cache'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:599:in `execute_and_clear'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql/database_statements.rb:92:in `exec_delete'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:140:in `update'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/query_cache.rb:17:in `update'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/relation.rb:380:in `update_all'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/persistence.rb:333:in `update_columns'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/activerecord-5.1.4/lib/active_record/persistence.rb:306:in `update_column'
/var/www/discourse/app/models/user.rb:529:in `update_ip_address!'
/var/www/discourse/lib/auth/default_current_user_provider.rb:74:in `block in current_user'
/var/www/discourse/lib/scheduler/defer.rb:74:in `block in do_work'
/var/www/discourse/vendor/bundle/ruby/2.4.0/gems/rails_multisite-1.1.2/lib/rails_multisite/connection_management.rb:77:in `with_connection'
/var/www/discourse/lib/scheduler/defer.rb:72:in `do_work'
/var/www/discourse/lib/scheduler/defer.rb:61:in `block (2 levels) in start_thread'

looks to me like you are forwarding an incorrect field to ip address. How do you have IP Address forwarding configured?

Thank you Sam.
I didn’t configure that on purpose. Where can I check the config?

In the Azure setup… somewhere. That data is not coming from within Discourse.

It’s ip address from our company proxy. I don’t know how is the portal address added. Can we just remove the port info to accept this ip?

No, it isn’t an IP address, and that’s the problem. If you’ve got a proxy that’s including a port number in what’s supposed to be an IP address, then the proxy is broken, and you’ll want to get that fixed.

I haven’t find the root cause yet. But I find a defected solution. By adding the following configuration in app.yml. I make the input of ip_address valid.

       filename: /etc/nginx/conf.d/discourse.conf
       from: $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for
       to: $http_your_original_ip_header
       global: true

The defected part is that the user ip_addresses are all 127.0.0.1 now. It’s not perfect, but the 500 errors won’t throw finally.

According to RFC 7239 - Forwarded HTTP Extension

5.2. Forwarded For

The “for” parameter is used to disclose information about the client
that initiated the request and subsequent proxies in a chain of
proxies. When proxies choose to use the “for” parameter, its default
configuration SHOULD contain an obfuscated identifier as described in
Section 6.3. If the server receiving proxied requests requires some
address-based functionality, this parameter MAY instead contain an IP
address (and, potentially, a port number
). A third option is the
“unknown” identifier described in Section 6.2.

If your nginx setting is using $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for as the indicate of user ip. I think ip with port will be a valid input here. You may need to strip the port info out.

Well, this needs to be amended upstream then, see:

Feel free to raise a feature request for it at:

That RFC describes the format of the Forwarded: HTTP request header. The X-Forwarded-For header, which we’re examining, has different semantics.

Thanks for the correction.
And for Azure Gateway, it does have a different definition for x-forwarded-for.
See Frequently asked questions about Application Gateway | Microsoft Learn

Q. Does Application Gateway support x-forwarded-for headers?

Yes, Application Gateway inserts x-forwarded-for, x-forwarded-proto, and x-forwarded-port headers into the request forwarded to the backend. The format for x-forwarded-for header is a comma-separated list of IP:Port. The valid values for x-forwarded-proto are http or https. X-forwarded-port specifies the port at which the request reached at the Application Gateway.

I will seek solution in rack or Azure Gateway.
Thanks @sam also.

Hi,

Just to add to the conversation - this is standard practice in Azure Application Gateways, and it’s infuriating. They add the port to the forwarded-for header even though they also send it in the forwarded port header.

Two feedback/change requests on Microsoft which you can vote for;

Our “fix” is also the same as the above step, we’re manually setting the forwarded-for header to a generic ip as this caused lots of issues with users being logged out or the site not working properly.

Just out of interest, we are using a httpd redirect within the network, does anyone know if it is possible to rewrite the header and remove the port? Failing that can it be done in nginx (I am unfamiliar with nginx)?

I would look at submitting a PR if we get this fixed but the comments above seem to suggest the devs would prefer this fixing upstream - is that the case?

Great news! Microsoft have fixed their insufferable nonsense. Sort of!

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/rewrite-http-headers-with-azure-application-gateway/

Solo para aclarar: esto solo funcionará para SKU V2. Por lo tanto, si tienes un AppGateway V1, no podrás reescribir el encabezado.

Sí, para nosotros valió la pena actualizar a la v2 inmediatamente cuando estuvo disponible para cargas de trabajo en producción. Las pasarelas de Azure hacen muchas cosas extrañas; agregar puertos a las direcciones IP de «forward-for» es solo una de esas cosas opinadas que nos volvieron locos. Las VIP estáticas son maravillosas.

La capacidad de escalado automático de la pasarela también es excelente; ya nos ha salvado el pellejo una o dos veces. Y la redundancia de zonas, por fin, es muy bien recibida.

La migración tomó unos veinte minutos y tenemos cientos de oyentes y algunos grupos de back-end relativamente complejos. Hay un script de PowerShell para ayudarte y es muy sencillo.

No sé si usas certificados en la pasarela, pero si lo haces, la v2 es super rápida: ya no hay que esperar 40 minutos para aplicar un certificado; ahora son segundos.

La facturación es mucho más complicada (Microsoft da con una mano y siempre quita con la otra), pero para nosotros, hasta ahora, las facturas han sido iguales o más bajas.

Qué suerte tienes. Debido al mayor coste, tuvimos que volver a la SKU V1 tan pronto como terminó la vista previa de V2.

De todos modos, parece que este problema ya fue abordado aguas arriba mediante una PR fusionada y debería estar incluido desde rack 2.0. Pero según este problema, aún falta en las versiones actuales.

Temporalmente, aplico un parche durante CI/CD para resolver este problema. No es lo ideal, pero funcionará hasta que veamos la corrección en una futura versión de rack o Discourse.

Si alguien está interesado, esta es la parte que debes modificar para eliminar el puerto extra en lib/auth/default_current_user_provider.rb:

if current_user && should_update_last_seen?
  u = current_user
  ip_port_split = request.ip.split(':')
  ip_only = ip_port_split.first
  Scheduler::Defer.later "Updating Last Seen" do
    u.update_last_seen!
    u.update_ip_address!(ip_only)
  end
end

No sé si es buena idea reemplazar cualquier aparición de request.ip con esta solución rápida en otras partes de ese archivo o en otros (email_controller.rb, 006-mini_profiler.rb, request_tracker.rb), pero nos funciona.
Como dije, aplicarlo como un parche durante tus procesos de construcción/CI mantiene la base de código limpia y actualizable.

Cualquier solución “más elegante” será bienvenida.

Un breve seguimiento.
La “solución” que proporcioné anteriormente causa algunos problemas como el que se describe aquí.

Por ahora, lo eludimos envolviendo esta parte de “división” en un bloque begin…rescue…end de la siguiente manera:

begin
  ip_port_split = request.ip.split(':')
  ip_only = ip_port_split.first
rescue
  ip_only = request.ip
end

Saludos cordiales,
Sascha

Así que con este commit (actualización a rack 2.0.8), el formato ip:puerto de Azure Application Gateway v1 ya no debería ser un problema.