Topic: How to Debug Unusual 403 Error

[jcobban]

If I enter the following URL into my browser:

https://www.jamescobban.net/FamilyTree/editEvent.php?idir=49121&givenname=Sarah%20Jane&surname=Blackstock&rownum=4&date=7%20Dec%201883&location=Enniskillen%2C%20Lambton%2C%20ON%2C%20CA&ider=46960&type=30

A 403 access denied error is generated. I have defined an error handler page for this error to dump out all of the information provided by Apache, but I cannot see an explanation of why the 403 error is generated with the above parameters when it is not generated if the parameters are omitted. That is https://www.jamescobban.net/FamilyTree/editEvent.php does not generate a 403 error. When I make the same request to my personal copy of the web-site, which is file for file identical to the production site, the script works as intended.

How do I figure out why Apache is generating the 403 error when those parameters are provided, but not when they are omitted? Since the 403 error is not on the access to the main script, it must be on access to something requested by the script, but the error information does not provide access to that. You can reproduce this error yourself but the site will then block your IP address. The output of the 403 error page is:

$_ENV['CONTEXT_DOCUMENT_ROOT']='/home/jcobban/public_html'

$_ENV['CONTEXT_PREFIX']=''

$_ENV['DOCUMENT_ROOT']='/home/jcobban/public_html'

$_ENV['GATEWAY_INTERFACE']='CGI/1.1'

$_ENV['HTTPS']='on'

$_ENV['HTTP_ACCEPT']='text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8'

$_ENV['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING']='gzip, deflate, br'

$_ENV['HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE']='en-ZA,en-GB;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.5,en;q=0.3'

$_ENV['HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL']='max-age=0'

$_ENV['HTTP_CONNECTION']='keep-alive'

$_ENV['HTTP_HOST']='www.jamescobban.net'

$_ENV['HTTP_UPGRADE_INSECURE_REQUESTS']='1'

$_ENV['HTTP_USER_AGENT']='Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0'

$_ENV['HTTP_X_HTTPS']='1'

$_ENV['PATH']='/bin:/usr/bin'

$_ENV['PHPRC']='/home/jcobban/public_html'

$_ENV['QUERY_STRING']=''

$_ENV['REDIRECT_QUERY_STRING']='idir=49121&givenname=Sarah%20Jane&surname=Blackstock&rownum=4&date=7%20Dec%201883&location=Enniskillen%2C%20Lambton%2C%20ON%2C%20CA&ider=46960&type=30'

$_ENV['REDIRECT_REQUEST_METHOD']='GET'

$_ENV['REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URI']='https://www.jamescobban.net/FamilyTree/editEvent.php'

$_ENV['REDIRECT_SCRIPT_URL']='/FamilyTree/editEvent.php'

$_ENV['REDIRECT_STATUS']='403'

$_ENV['REDIRECT_UNIQUE_ID']='Wc6WiV1aASr64hxcPC7tKQAAAAE'

$_ENV['REDIRECT_URL']='/FamilyTree/editEvent.php'

$_ENV['REMOTE_ADDR']='70.51.85.190'

$_ENV['REMOTE_PORT']='45128'

$_ENV['REQUEST_METHOD']='GET'

$_ENV['REQUEST_SCHEME']='https'

$_ENV['REQUEST_URI']='/FamilyTree/editEvent.php?idir=49121&givenname=Sarah%20Jane&surname=Blackstock&rownum=4&date=7%20Dec%201883&location=Enniskillen%2C%20Lambton%2C%20ON%2C%20CA&ider=46960&type=30'

$_ENV['SCRIPT_FILENAME']='/home/jcobban/public_html/errors/403page.php'

$_ENV['SCRIPT_NAME']='/errors/403page.php'

$_ENV['SCRIPT_URI']='https://www.jamescobban.net/FamilyTree/editEvent.php'

$_ENV['SCRIPT_URL']='/FamilyTree/editEvent.php'

$_ENV['SERVER_ADDR']='67.231.25.52'

$_ENV['SERVER_ADMIN']='webmaster@jamescobban.net'

$_ENV['SERVER_NAME']='www.jamescobban.net'

$_ENV['SERVER_PORT']='443'

$_ENV['SERVER_PROTOCOL']='HTTP/1.1'

$_ENV['SERVER_SIGNATURE']=''

$_ENV['SERVER_SOFTWARE']='Apache'

$_ENV['SSL_TLS_SNI']='www.jamescobban.net'

$_ENV['TZ']='America/Toronto'

$_ENV['UNIQUE_ID']='Wc6WiV1aASr64hxcPC7tKQAAAAE'

[James Blond]

At the moment is seems to work. Did you solve your problem?