External webfeeds not loading on Joomla on HIC VPS

[jeffj]

I am using Joomla (v1.5.11) on three sites and am experiencing a problem loading webfeeds from external servers:
#1. The installation on HIC shared server is working fine.
#2. The 1st installation (domain A) on HIC VPS server is not working on external feeds.
#3. The 2nd installation (domain B) on HIC VPS (same server as #2) is not working either.
Webfeeds from the alternate domain on the same server are loading fine (i.e., feeds are working internally #2 <--> #3); the problem is confined to feeds from all external servers, resulting in the following errors: "ERROR LOADING FEED DATA" or "UNABLE TO RETRIEVE FEED DATA."

While in the Joomla support forums, I ran across someone else who had a similar problem, except this person was on a GoDaddy domain. Here is the response from someone who was helping him:

If I remember correctly, to get out of GoDaddy's server infrastructure you need to configure a proxy to handle external HTTP requests, direct requests don't work. This is why there is a specific GoDaddy GMail auth plugin that has proxy server settings:
http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/gdgmail

Joomla! needs a global proxy setting functionality which we don't have as of yet (unfortunate) which would resolve the issue in these cases. It is certainly an interesting security perspective from GoDaddy and something whilst perhaps annoying I can see the value in. The same goes for the SMTP which I believe you have stuff for as well.

I am wondering if this solution will also help me resolve my "ERROR LOADING FEED DATA" problems.

If so, how can this be implemented on my HIC VPS? I would need specific instructions.

Thanks in advance!

[randy]

I have only two sites made with Joomla, but I deal with "Joomla" since early 2006. So far I have not had a problem. I am interested in your problem and discussed it with my colleagues. Regarding your problem we found information only about 'Joomla! Security Newsfeed' module. Log in to administrator page. Go to your Module Manager from Extensions and choose the Administrator Tab, find the 'Joomla! Security Newsfeed' and disabled it. Another option is to reinstall this module.

[jeffj]

Randy, thank you for your response. I appreciate your help. Are you running Joomla 1.5.11 on a VPS @ HIC? If so, are your com_newsfeeds component and mod_feed modules both working correctly, that is, loading webfeeds from external sites?

Here are my thoughts:

A) Disabling the Joomla Security Newsfeed only removes the error message on the back-end, because it's not a front-end feed. Even so, disabling this module (which I tried) does not help fix my problem on the front-end feeds. I want feeds on the front-end, and I need to run the com_newsfeeds and mod_feed to do that.

B) I seriously do not think it's a corrupted mod_feed set of files, because my com_newsfeeds component doesn't work either. Besides, it's not working on 2 separate sites on the same VPS server. Could it really be that both com_newsfeeds and mod_feed sets of files on both Joomla 1.5.11 installations be corrupted? Highly unlikely, especially since I have faithfully updated Joomla, which overwrites files with updated ones.

C) To clarify, it is working fine on feeds coming from the same VPS server (even on different domains), but it is not working on any feeds coming from external sites. Conversely, my HIC shared host Joomla 1.5.11 installation works on both internal and external feeds. This leads me to suspect that it's a VPS-related setting.

D) A Joomla expert checked my PHP and Joomla settings and agrees with other users who concur that the problem is with my web server settings not allowing any http requests from external sites. They have recommended that I write to my web host to see if they can open this up for me. Where can I look to check on this?

E) Another possible cause emerged when I was looking at my web services within the Web Host Manager. It indicates that "httpd" service has stopped. I cannot seem to restart my httpd service with WHM. Whenever I try to restart it manually, it completes 3 steps, but then fails on the fourth step to restart.

I welcome help from any others, as well.
- jeff

[lnxcode]

Jeff!

Thanks for your email.

In terms of Joomla not allowing http requests, you can enable / disable this function in the php.ini, which you should have full control over since its a VPS. The PHP.ini is in the /usr/local/... path or you may find it by doing "updatedb, and then locate php.ini"

In terms of apache, when you go to the "status" section of WHM, does it say running or failed currently?

[Vron]

Hi jeffj, do not reinstall anything, first check your error logs. Start to watch this file

/usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

during the occurrence of the problem. Then surely you will know from where the problem come. I got it for something else, if you have mod_security rules then may be some rules can block your external addresses.

[jeffj]

Denis, thanks for responding.

1) PHP.INI
What settings exactly am I looking for? Here is the section that may apply. Please advise.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Fopen wrappers ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; Whether to allow the treatment of URLs (like http:// or ftp://) as files.
allow_url_fopen = On
allow_url_include = On

; Define the anonymous ftp password (your email address)
;from="john@doe.com"

; Define the User-Agent string
; user_agent="PHP"

; Default timeout for socket based streams (seconds)
default_socket_timeout = 60

; If your scripts have to deal with files from Macintosh systems,
; or you are running on a Mac and need to deal with files from
; unix or win32 systems, setting this flag will cause PHP to
; automatically detect the EOL character in those files so that
; fgets() and file() will work regardless of the source of the file.
; auto_detect_line_endings = Off

2) HTTPD SERVICE STOPPED
Sorry, it was not in WHM, but in Virtuozzo. FIrst in System Services, then I checked the Action Log. See 4 attached screen shots.

[jeffj]

Originally Posted by Vron

Hi jeffj, do not reinstall anything, first check your error logs. Start to watch this file

/usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

during the occurrence of the problem. Then surely you will know from where the problem come. I got it for something else, if you have mod_security rules then may be some rules can block your external addresses.

@Vron: Thanks for the tip. I just recreated the feed error problem, then went to check out the error_log file. It is a whopping 175MB! It's taking awhile to download. I'll keep you posted on what I might discover.

But first a couple questions:
1) What do you mean: "I got it for something else..."
2) Where would the mod_security rules be stored? Can I check those out? If so, how?

[DOCENTA]

Hello,
You do not need to download the whole Apache error_log but just login via SSH as root and watch it with:

tail -f /usr/local/apache/logs/error_log

[jeffj]

@Denis: Also, attached is a 5th screenshot for you...

This was on the "Xinetd" tab:

No services available for this VPS.
Probably your VPS is misconfigured or having a resource shortage.

Any thoughts here?

[DOCENTA]

Hello,
Also you may look for error_log file into the folder from where the error is originating. Use the same way with tail -f to watch them in real time or if you like to see the last 100 rows do via SSH:

tail -n 100 error_log