NewsBlur is reporting "mnot's blog" (mnot.net) feed as responding with a HTTP 403

problem
#1

URL of the feed in question: https://www.mnot.net/blog/index.atom

Here’s the log on the “Site settings” (times seem to be GMT+1):

2014-05-07 10:16:29 HTTP Error (403)
2014-05-07 07:53:03 HTTP Error (403)
2014-05-07 06:46:46 HTTP Redirect (301)
2014-05-07 05:37:23 Not modified (304)
2014-05-07 04:33:33 Not modified (304)

Notice this is from a month ago (May 7th). It’s reporting an HTTP 403 ever since.

I tried accessing the same URL, and it looks fine from here:

$ http -h 'https://www.mnot.net/blog/index.atom' 
 HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
 ...

$ http -h 'https://www.mnot.net/blog/index.atom' 'If-Modified-Since: Wed, 07 May 2014 05:37:23 GMT' 
 HTTP/1.1 200 OK 
 ...
1 Like
#2

Looks like the url got changed (the 301). Does it say the same thing in Site Settings? Make sure to reload the site before you check so you ensure you have the latest.

#3

Hey Samuel,
Thanks for your reply.

I tried changing the URL in the “Change Website Address” to the HTTPS one (since Mark moved the website permanently to HTTPS a month ago). NewsBlur seems to have recognized it as a new feed and tried to fetch the new feed, but no luck.

Reading the entry I linked above, I found this:

In my testing, this generates a 403 with the message “TLS SNI Required.” for clients that don’t send SNI information.

403 really isn’t the greatest status code for this semantic, so I filed a bug with Apache to make it more appropriate, and to give more flexibility in the error document (since most people’s reaction to that message will be, deservedly, “huh?”).

Actually, NewsBlur is named further down in the same article.

Further research led me to PEP 466 and Python’s issue 5639. It seems like Python 2.7.x does not have built-in SNI support yet, so that must explain the HTTP 403 mnot’s Apache configuration is sending.

(Edited to change the quote from the article to a better one.)
(Edited once more to add info about Python 2.7.x support of SNI.)
(Edited one more time to add a link to issue 5639.)

#4

Yes, this will be fixed when I upgrade to the latest Python, which unfortunately isn’t happening for a little while.

#5

Python 2.7.9 has been released, backporting the ssl module from Python 3.4. This includes support for SNI, as noted in PEP 466.

Samuel, any plans to update the server’s Python to 2.7.9 in the coming days?

#6

Yep, soon as it hits Ubuntu NewsBlur will automatically upgrade to it.

1 Like
#7

See http://askubuntu.com/questions/559036/when-will-the-python-2-7-9-upgrades-be-available-from-apt-get-… for timing (when it appears).

1 Like