Aggregator problems: RSS feeds fail, connection timed out, fsockopen

Posted by ggevalt on December 12, 2006 at 10:41pm

Hi,

I am sorry to post this as I have found many references to similar problems throughout the community, but unfortunately nowhere do I see any answers. I post this in hopes that someone might help.

I am running a 4.7.3 site, www.youngwritersproject.org and have had, for some time, perfectly healthy news feeds from two sources -- a local Vermont paper and the New York Times.

Sunday night, the feeds stopped updating. I received this error: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to (NEWSFEED).com:80 in /home/(MY SITE)/includes/common.inc on line 371. ... Same message for NYTimes feed. In another spot it tells me that the connection timed out.

Here are the events of the day in order to practice a binary process of elimination:
Event: My host had a server problem and shut down for several hours. ... Response: The problem did not emerge until 12 hours after the host server problem was fixed and site had been working fine. A call to their service desk yielded a thorough search of site and server which showed no sign of an explanation.

Event: I blocked a few folks trying to pound their way into the site with a script function. ... Response: I checked IP addresses of those I blocked against IP addresses of news feed centers. They don't match, so I don't appear to have inadvertently blocked them.

Otherwise, I did nothing out of the ordinary. I have checked to see if the newsfeeds stopped doing their feeds from the location I had; I switched to another location of theirs with different news as a test and same problem.

I have, at the moment, disabled the module (and, of course, site visitors are frustrated by not having the feature, but so it goes.)

Does anyone have a solution?

Thanks

Geoffrey Gevalt
www.youngwritersproject.org
a place where students can learn to write better

Comments

RSS errors

Posted by enaille on February 10, 2007 at 2:45pm

I recently upgraded my router from a Netgear to a Cisco 1721 and now my RSS feeds are not working. I receive the error "fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to"

I've looked a couple other sites I host and have RSS problems with Mambo and Postnuke. I don't believe this is a Drupal issue rather a config on the router.

Still have not found the fix yet, but it does not appear to be a Drupal issue.

re rss problems

Posted by ggevalt on February 10, 2007 at 9:35pm

Not sure how to address your question since it doesn't seem to pertain to drupal directly.

I can tell you that the problem I referred to turned out (probably) to be some sort of server problem. My host, bluehost, which has been very responsive to queries, massaged the server and sent me a note to say that the RSS feeds should now work. I deleted and then updated the feeds and everything is now working fine.

I guess I pass that along only in that what I've learned about computers -- and from a few fine folks here -- that when you go back to the beginning and start afresh, you sometimes find a way to fix the problem.

geoff gevalt
http://www.youngwritersproject.org

geoff gevalt
http://www.youngwritersproject.org
http://www.ywpschools.net

Have the same problem

Posted by juanchoX on February 14, 2007 at 8:36pm

i have the same problem, i check all in my server, including open ports and services, in my case, was from day to another day...without reasons...

thanks people !.