I am getting a Bad Gateway error when trying to browse to the wiki or MantisBT portions of gramps-project.org domain. MantisBT was accessible yesterday.
We were getting a similar error for the wiki a while ago. Maybe it is the same problem? Or a flaky piece of network hardware at our host?
It looks like we are having problems with our server again.
I used your link to gramps-project and the page took several minutes to load. From there, the link to ‘Bugs’ took even longer but again, the page did eventually load.
I gave up trying to log in to Mantis; it’s too slow to be usable.
Our webmaster ( @gramps-project ) will need some time to see this thread and contact our hosting service.
Don’t give up on filing that bug. Just put the task in your backpocket for a couple days.
Investigated the issue.
External spike in website traffic looks to be automated and now blocked.
Websites are working.
We seem to have a new “Verifying you are a person” test.
This “Verify you are human by completing the action below.” verification can cause problems. So inserting this troubleshooting note for future reference.
The “verify you are human” loop on Cloudflare often occurs due to browser settings or extensions interfering with the verification process. To resolve this, try clearing your browser cookies, disabling any ad blockers or privacy extensions, and using your browser’s safe mode or private browsing mode.
It is temporary and will go away soon.
The cloudflare test seems to have gone.
Thanks for the update and working on this.
That CloudFlare verification uses cookies. So will probably be periodic … until the cache expires.
It seems very slow again today.
I’m seeing this check more and more often these days. I haven’t noticed if it’s on Cloudflare every time, but yes, there are measures taken against something, AI-bot or otherwise, on the internet lately.
MantisBT is being very slow for me today. Is it my system or the site?
Slow in loading the initial view. Glacial when adding a note to an issue.
It is super slow for me as well.
Yes, very slow right now from France as well, no matter the browser
Same issue as before external spike in website traffic, I’ve blocked the ip range temporarily.
Thanks for fixing that, Sam!
Other (non-genealogical) forums I frequent have had to implement anti-bot features recently. Most seem to be using Cloudflare. They had to do that because they were being swamped (number of users on line: 10,000) by badly behaved bots that were scraping everything. I’ve also noticed that some on-line retail outlets are also using Cloudflare to verify visitors to their site are human and not bots before letting you browse their site.
I’d hazard a guess the bots are all looking for content to use to train AI models.
And gramps-project.org is suddenly unresponsive again tonight.
More than a minute between request and response.
(Remember the bad old days of acoustical modem dialup to BBS systems where that would have been an excellent response time?)
Blocked yet another range of IP addresses! Third time in five days!
On the main forum I frequent, that approach didn’t work, The problem was not fixed until the Admins implemented Cloudflare’s anti-bot software. It does mean you have to wait for a few seconds while Cloudflare checks you are human but a few seconds delay is waaaaaaay better than waiting ages or not even being able to reach the site at all.
Do you know which Cloudflare service those Admins are using? [Admin: Free plan]
Cloudflare has been active on gramps-project.org since the beginning of the year. That’s probably using the Bot Fight Mode that comes with the Free plan.
Cloudflare’s Pro and Business plans have Super Bot Fight Mode. And for the really ambitious, there are hands on customizable tools in their Bot Management for Enterprise level.
