Register.php permissions issue mid-registration

[nonliteral]

I started out on 3.05, and have kept fairly current on patches and upgrades, and am now on 3.07.

Somewhere along the line (in the past 3 months) an error has crept into the registration process, which I didn't catch until someone e-mailed me.

When a new user registers, it takes them to the age screen, and then the rules page, but after they agree to the rules, and it calls register.php the next time, they get a "403 - Forbidden; you don't have permission to access /forums/register.php on this system" (despite the fact that they've just been to that same page twice).

I've triple checked permissions, and have even tried setting it (and subdirectory that contains it) to '777', but I still get the error.

I went in and did a bit of editing, and changed the Post action on the Rules page to a Get to see what variables were getting set, and the only thing I can see that looks funny is that "S" is blank, which I suspect should be a session ID.

I'm sure that this is something stupid I've done, but I can't find it for the life of me... Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

- Chuck

[Steve Machol]

The first thing I recommend is that you reupload all the original vB non-image files (except install.php). Make sure you upload these in ASCII format and overwrite the ones on the server.

[nonliteral]

Thanks, Steve

Actually, I just did this when I upgraded it to 3.07 last week (I had the problem before the upgrade) -- would that have accomplished the same thing, or should I go back and re-upload the 3.05 files?

[Steve Machol]

It's either a bad file, bad templates or bad file permissions. The first step is to reupload the original 3.0.7 files.

[nonliteral]

Hi Steve

Thanks -- I've re-reuploaded the 3.07 files, and still have the problem. Can you suggest which template I might want to look at?

[Steve Machol]

Create a new style and choose no parent style. This will force it to use the default templates. Then change to this style and view your forums with it. Do you have the same problem?

If so, then it has to be file permissions.

[nonliteral]

Thanks, Steve...



I finally got a chance to try using a new style as you suggested, and no joy, I'm afraid -- it still does the same thing.



I'm having trouble figuring out how it can be a file permission issue
-- register.php is called 3 times, and successfully loads the first
two, then gets the 403 Forbidden issue the third time it's called
(after the user agrees to the forum rules).



All of the vBulletin files are in /forum, and I've tried chmodding both
register.php and /forum to 777, with no change in behavior.



Could it be a permission on another file that's a problem somehow?

[nonliteral]

More information...

I've just found that if I disable COPPA registration, everything seems to work correctly. Unfortunately, on this particular forum, I'd really like to use the "reject anyone under 13 rule" (which is how I'd had it set previously).

- Chuck

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Could we get a link to the forum so we can see what happens?

[nonliteral]

Sure. The forum is at http://freea3.org



I've currently got the COPPA function disabled.



Thanks!

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Could you enable the COPPA again for a few minutes. HArd to see what is going wrong if everything goes correct now.

[nonliteral]

I've set it back to "deny users under 13", which is the mode I was having problems with.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

You can switch it off again.

Must admit that i can not see what is going wrong here, everything seems to be in place and working ok. Do you have any rewrite rules, or .htaccess protections setup?

[nonliteral]

Bingo.



I don't know how, but it appears to have been my referral-spammer
rules; I've got a list of referrers I ban just because I'm tired of
seeing them in my logs (think "male enhancement" type sites). I
can't figure out why it's tripping over them (none of the domain names
banned come close to the forum domain name), but if I remove them, that
fixes it.



Thanks for your help!



Now I'm off to try to see why registration e-mails aren't getting sent :-)

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Nice to see you got a bit closer to the problem.