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#14544 Rokbox issue: video doesn't play

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
n/a
PHP version
n/a
Admin Tools version
n/a

Latest post by nicholas on Monday, 07 January 2013 08:19 CST

Friday, 04 January 2013 03:23 CST

user61600
Hello,

I have an issue on one of my websites: http://www.ixinauccle.be/index.php/fr/nos-videos
On this page you can watch videos. There are two types of videos:
- .FLV that are saved on the server
- Youtube videos

Youtube videos are playing fine but the videos saved on the server are not playing anymore since I have installed Admintools. This is quite frustrating. I can easily understand that in order to play different types of files, Rokbox needs to execute different php files.

I already contacted Rockettheme.com to get more info on the files that need access.

I gave access to the folder containing the rokbox plugin. I gave access to the folder containing the video. But I still get an 403 error.

This is the error message I get:

The requested URL /media/videos/ixinauccle.flv&autostart=true was not found on this server.

I can confirm you that the file is located at this place! 

Could you please provide me more insights on the reason of this issue?


Kind regards,


Thierry

Friday, 04 January 2013 04:38 CST

nicholas

Let's make sure that the problem is indeed caused by Admin Tools. In order to do so, try the following:

1. Try setting the Error Reporting level in your Global Configuration to "None". Many errors are caused by harmless PHP Notices and Warnings being output to the browser, breaking anything which requires HTTP header manipulation such as Joomla!'s session management, AJAX calls and download systems.

2. Try to replicate the issue after disabling the "System - Admin Tools" plugin. If you can still replicate the issue, it is not caused by Admin Tools. Disabling that plugin means that Admin Tools code (including the Web Application Firewall) is not running on your site.

3. If you suspect an issue with the .htaccess file, replace its contents with the contents of the stock htaccess.txt file shipped with every version of Joomla!. If you are on GoDaddy please wait for 1-30 minutes for the changes to be effective. Then, retry loading the problem page. If you can still reproduce the error, then it is not caused by .htaccess Maker.

If doing any of the above resulted in the issue still occurring, it's not related with Admin Tools and I can't help you. If doing any of the above did stop the issue from occurring, we'll have to do some troubleshooting.

First go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Configure WAF. Make sure "Log security exceptions" is set to Yes; if it's not, set it to Yes and click on Save. Now try reproducing your issue. Immediately after that, please go to Admin Tools, Web Application Firewall, Security Exceptions Log and go to the last page. The last log entry should have the date and time of when the issue occurred. Please copy the Reason and Target URL here so that I can help you.

If, however, you do not see a log entry, or the Date and/or IP address do not match your last access, this problem is not caused by Admin Tools' WAF. In this case, you will have to do some .htaccess troubleshooting. You may need to read the general .htaccess troubleshooting page, as well as the page on finding out necessary .htaccess exceptions.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Monday, 07 January 2013 05:09 CST

user61600

Thanks for the reply.

 

My problem is related to case 3. Whe I remove .htaccess from the server, all videos are playing fine.

I decided to disable all .htaccess maker functionalities and to enable them one by one. I found the one that is giving the issue: it is the protection against file injection. If I enable this feature I can't play videos stored on the server within Rokbox! In the browser I get an error 403. If I check the  Security Exceptions Log, I can't find an error message. 

The question is how does it come that file injection protection prevent me from watching videos stored on the server. What information would you need in order to give me further assistance?

 

Regards,

Thierry

Monday, 07 January 2013 07:12 CST

nicholas

Hello Thierry,

The "Protect against common file injection attacks" option will block all requests which contain a query parameter with something that looks like a URL. For example something like http://www.example.com/index.php?foo=http://www.google.com would trigger this kind of protection. It seems that RokBox is using this kind of URL parameters to determine which video to play. This is a lousy implementation which I would recommend against. It can be potentially exploited to mislead other people into loading malicious content into their browser, using your site as a trojan horse. Anyway. I can just tell you that you can either not use RokBox or disable the "Protect against common file injection attacks" feature in .htaccess Maker and regenerate your .htaccess.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Monday, 07 January 2013 08:18 CST

user61600

Thanks for the quick reply.

Your replies helped me.

You can consider this case as solved.

Monday, 07 January 2013 08:19 CST

nicholas

You're welcome, Thierry!

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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