Drupal HTTP requests fail

[tixilite]

I get this error on my Drupal website:

Error
HTTP request status - Fails
Your system or network configuration does not allow Drupal to access web pages, resulting in reduced functionality. This could be due to your webserver configuration or PHP settings, and should be resolved in order to download information about available updates, fetch aggregator feeds, sign in via OpenID, or use other network-dependent services. If you are certain that Drupal can access web pages but you are still seeing this message, you may add $conf['drupal_http_request_fails'] = FALSE; to the bottom of your settings.php file.

[garrettroyce]

Because of abuse in the form of proxy servers on X10 free accounts, software running on your account, such as Drupal, will not be able to connect to other websites in this way.

[tixilite]

So is there no way to fix this?

[Anna]

Not currently.

What are Drupal trying to connect to? If it is of common interest there may be a chance to make an exception for it in the firewall. To do this we'd need the IP of the site Drupal is connecting to.

[tixilite]

The address that Drupal connects to is http://updates.drupal.org/ which according to cmd is 140.211.166.21.

I recently installed Drupal 7 though and when I was running Drupal 6, I don't recall having this problem. Is the limit a new rule by X10hosting?

[stpvoice]

The rule is to help bring down the number of proxies on hosting-this makes for less abuse on the server, and as proxies require a lot of requests etc, should speed up the sites of legitimate users.

[Anna]

The rule has been in place for a few weeks, it is possible that Drupal 6 had a different approach to it, or that it used another site/IP that has already been made into an exception.

I'll relay the information, this would most likely be something we can set an exception for.

[tixilite]

Has the exception been added? I am still having issues with the HTTP requests. I think it would be best to add the whole drupal.org domain, if that's possible.

[Anna]

We can only do it on a per IP basis, and the two IPs that are associated with the domain drupal.org has been added already.

So updates and such thing from their site should work, but OpenID, and other services, that use a different IP would still be blocked (unless a rule for those has been added), so it is likely that you will continue to see that error message simply because overall access is not available, assuming it is a configuration warning you get.

[tixilite]

I believe the issue is because Drupal 7 uses a different PHP function from Drupal 6(which worked fine). It seems that x10Hosting has disabled some PHP functions which Drupal uses. The functions are:

function_exists()
fread()
fwrite()
stream_context_create()
stream_set_timeout()
stream_get_meta_data()
stream_socket_client() - specifically this

I'm assuming one or more of the above functions are disabled.