MyBB Community Forums

OK, I am almost embarrassed to post this, but here goes.

A user reported having trouble posting content in a thread (he is copying his stuff from another message board to ours). He said he'd get a 403 error every time he tried to copy one particular post over.

So, I tried copying to post myself, and got the same error:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /newreply.php on this server.

Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

It also happens with editpost.php.

After meticulously going through the original post and copying only small bits at a time, I finally found the cause:

In the post he was trying to copy was the phrase "group sex" (please don't even ask). If I had that bit of text in there, when either selecting 'update'/'post thread' or 'preview post', it would give that error.

I am on the latest version of MyBB, and I even went so far as to disable all plugins. I have tested just that phrase alone in a new post, and get the same error.

Interestingly, the phrase causes no issues in private messages. Just posts.

Any clue what might be going on here? I'm at a complete loss. Nothing shows up in any error log files from MyBB or on my server. Hopefully somebody else has encountered this.

Thanks!

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Some more data:

I have another domain, on the same hosting as the other, that was a 1.6.8 installation, with only Gravatar and the default Akismet and Hello World plugins, none of which is activated.

I upgraded it to 1.6.9 and tried the same phrase, and get the same error.

On another domain, with entirely different hosting, and 1.6.8 installed, I do NOT get the error. I will install the upgrade to 1.6.9 and see if it occurs there.

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Last update: I did the upgrade on the other site and have no problems with the phrase.

But, I did the upgrade script rather than full upgrade, so I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

It could be something with the host maybe.

I'm at a loss at this point.

Check your error log file. That might give more details of why it experienced an error.

As I mentioned in the original post, nothing pertinent shows up in the error logs.

sounds like an anti spam plugin simply blocking everything if specific words or phrases appear

(2012-12-31, 04:42 PM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]sounds like an anti spam plugin simply blocking everything if specific words or phrases appear

I figured it might be Akismet, but after deativating/uninstalling, the issue still exists.

Do you have any other anti spam plugins installed? Do those two file have a Chmod of 644?

(2012-12-31, 04:59 PM)JordanMussi Wrote: [ -> ]Do you have any other anti spam plugins installed? Do those two file have a Chmod of 644?

No other spam mods, and the chmod permission on all of the files and folders are correct.

Posting works fine as long as you don't use that specific phrase.

I had a similar problem with random 403, 500, and 503 errors. It turns out it was the Apache mod "mod_security". You might want to temporarily ask your host to disable for your site and see if the problem is resolved.

(2012-12-31, 09:24 PM)pandaa Wrote: [ -> ]I had a similar problem with random 403, 500, and 503 errors. It turns out it was the Apache mod "mod_security". You might want to temporarily ask your host to disable for your site and see if the problem is resolved.

Thanks, I will give that a try. Pretty desperate at this point hehe.

Quick update, after having the site white-listed from mod_security, it seems this issue is resolved. Very odd behavior. Thanks for the help everyone.