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[Egan_BW]

*Points at the middle sentence in the comment right above yours.

[Maximum Spin]

It is probably imgur's doing, yes. They've changed something about how they deliver images lately and I can't actually see anything from imgur anymore (no loss, frankly). It sounds like the forum software is trying to fetch the image to use as your avatar, imgur's server is unreachable or not fulfilling the request, so the forum gets stunlocked.

[methylatedspirit]

Strange... is there something fundamentally different about how the forum software fetches images for posts vs avatars? In posts, the software doesn't care at all where it comes from (as long as it's a valid image link), but in avatars, it's really uncertain as to if the image link works at all.

[Maximum Spin]

Strange... is there something fundamentally different about how the forum software fetches images for posts vs avatars? In posts, the software doesn't care at all where it comes from (as long as it's a valid image link), but in avatars, it's really uncertain as to if the image link works at all.

Well, in the case of posts, it doesn't, it just shits out an <img> tag and your browser does the rest. The forum software itself never has to touch the image as far as I know.

[scriver]

What's the address of the image you want to use Egan?

I know imgur makes you go through a bunch of hoops to get to the actual image (may be to discourage hotlinking?) do a lot of people end up using album links by mistake.

[Egan_BW]

Nah, it was the real image address. And remember that it was still working as an avatar until I set it to nothing. I'm just unable to set it to an imgur image now, but I was able to do so in the past.

[Bumber]

It is probably imgur's doing, yes. They've changed something about how they deliver images lately and I can't actually see anything from imgur anymore (no loss, frankly). It sounds like the forum software is trying to fetch the image to use as your avatar, imgur's server is unreachable or not fulfilling the request, so the forum gets stunlocked.

Can you see my avatars? They're hosted by imgur, but rotated through signavatar.

[dragdeler]

1 confirmed avatar sighting

[Maximum Spin]

It is probably imgur's doing, yes. They've changed something about how they deliver images lately and I can't actually see anything from imgur anymore (no loss, frankly). It sounds like the forum software is trying to fetch the image to use as your avatar, imgur's server is unreachable or not fulfilling the request, so the forum gets stunlocked.

Can you see my avatars? They're hosted by imgur, but rotated through signavatar.

In your case, yes. Fascinating.

[Starver]

It just means that signavatar.com is more accepting of whatever-the-imgur-URI is for the currently rotated choice, then republishes that as the 59798_v.png of the momenf on its site, in a form the Bay12 sanity checker has no problems with. (The signavatar URI is serving on plain http

Maybe there's a simple tweak in the regexp the SMF backend uses to (not) validate the imgur address (like making it m/^https?:\/\/\w+(…whatever…)$/i, if that isn't more dangerous for cross-host scripting exploits - need to research that properly). Maybe there's a better imgur URI to try that doesn't fall foul of the existing one.

But from the "does nothing for ages" I'm thinking it does like the (non-https) address, but then fails to failsafe when it pokes the source given (to check it doesn't, at least this one time, try to serve a TB-sized explicitly uncachable image, maybe?) and the source doesn't like the poke.

Perhaps the user-agent sent by the SMF backend's HTTP fetch is blacklisted now?

It wasn't originally, I presume, and once set in the those hallowed days of permissivenesz it was only ever accessed by reader's browsers providing (mostly?) unblacklisted user-agents - but on trying to update the profile settings SMF checked that field (as with all others) exactly as it was configured to before, but now with no luck due to the newer block.  The increasingly DDOS-proofed imgur server (or firewall/traffic-shaper in 'front' of the cluster) is saving itself a headache by just letting the port 80 request time out if it doesn't like the request header.

How to solve that? Well, I could see a modification (or modified copy, under this case only) to the URI-test procedure to change it to pretend to be an Edge/Firefox/Chrome/whatever browser instead of whatever innocently accurate but detested agent name it has now ("SMF Test Request", maybe, instead of the silly and sometimes totally misleading-to-cadual-observers compatibility/equivalence indication strings[1] from 'true' browsers).

I could also see the straight disabling/hobbling of the fetch-test (except that it probably stops certain problems that I wouldn't advise letting through unimpeded) so that it doesn't block like that.

Possibly Tarn could manually open some of the backend files and insert the (manually OKed) URI in there, but I don't know what format (flatfile text, YAML, .db, whatever) it is stored in, it might (ought to!) be further wrapped up in salted encryption to prevent 'simple' hacking, if done wrong it could nix the whole forum... and if one person asks then loads might - and I wouldn't want to be the one responsible for sending hordes of requests his way. Especially not being familiar with running SMF myself and almost all of this being (logical, semi-educated) guess and conjecture...


So... Set up a signavatar of your own (rotate 1 of 1 forwarded imgur images)? Find a workable alternate host (keep the imgur for reference in case your new choice is short-lived)? Get Tarn to lay off DF work to update SMF to latest version that might have the coding changes needed, 'only' breaking a half dozen or so other things us forumites like, in the process?


[1] e.g. "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 11_2_1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/88.0.4324.190 Safari/537.36 Edg/88.0.705.63"

[Strik3r]

What i think is happening is that at some point Imgur stopped allowing fetching/whatever through HTTP and that somehow causes SMF to hang?
Maybe Imgur never gives a proper response/SMF doesn't understand it so the forum software just keeps on waiting until it times out?

Either way, as the forum doesn't like HTTPS, Postimages.org is a viable alternative to Imgur for now as it is still okay with HTTP requests. Postimages has its own problems but for profile pictures it's fine.

[DogsRNice]

Im having the same issue im trying to add something to my signature
Could i be somehow triggering anti spam because it has a link? heres what im trying to add

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Want an underground tree with green wood? Check out this tiny mod I made to add one

https://pastebin.com/agKbf8dz

[Starver]

You've an imgur avatar image. If you tried the .sig without the link (frankly, anything, including "Test test test!") I suspect you'd be just as unable to update - showing that it's not (solely, but probably at all) the link causing the problem.

Choose whether to abandon your imagur avatar (or relocate/proxy your avatar hosting, like with Bumber) or not make any changes to the rest of the profile until you can organise a mob to storm the offices of imgur/SMF/Bay12 to fudge the emergent sticking point.