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Admin Tools

#39073 This request is blocked by Admin Tools Joomla 3

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
This is a public ticket

Everybody will be able to see its contents. Do not include usernames, passwords or any other sensitive information.

Environment Information

Joomla! version
3.10.11
PHP version
7.4.33
Admin Tools version
6.1.10

Latest post by DaveOzric on Friday, 09 June 2023 10:48 CDT

Thursday, 08 June 2023 17:57 CDT

DaveOzric

Hello, my site went into the blocked IP mode for all IP addresses (I tried several IPs) after SiteGround migrated the site. At least I believe that's when it happened but I am not positive.No other site has done this and they have all been migrated. Several are still J3.

I have tried to install several versions of AT but they all put the site into this mode as soon as the upload goes through. I need to login via FTP and delete the admintools.php file to get back in the site.

What could be causing this? I have not logged in and made any changes prior to this happening. We are building a new site on J4 and just need this site to hang in for a little longer. I am not sure what to look for to troubleshoot.

Thank you,

Dave

Friday, 09 June 2023 00:20 CDT

nicholas

There is no such thing as “blocked IP mode”.

If you believe that an IP address is blocked, have you tried unblocking it? If not, as soon as you re-enable Admin Tools the IP address remains blocked and you don't get to access the site from it.

Is it always the same IP address? If it's not, check the Reason you are getting blocked for.

Is it the IP address you are connecting to the Internet from? If it is not, and it's always the same IP address, remember that you may have to set “Enable IP Workarounds” to Yes in the Configure WAF page. Read the documentation for the explanation. Basically, you might have enabled SuperCache (or whatever SiteGround calls their simple Varnish caching proxy setup these days) which means that PHP "sees" the same IP address —that of the Varnish caching proxy— as the visitor's IP address for all requests. Enabling the workarounds will use the X-Forwarded-For HTTP header instead; this one is set by Varnish and contains the real IP address of the visitor.

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!

Friday, 09 June 2023 08:48 CDT

DaveOzric

Hello, I know this makes no sense. This is the message I am getting on the admin login. I should have mentioned the frontend is not blocked but shows the 404 page. I see the server IP is in the blocked list. I think I know what is causing it now. They moved the site to another hosting server in another city and this site is resolving by A record IP, not Nameservers. They are giving me a certain amount of time to change it to the new IP. Somehow the old IP is blocking itself? I get this message trying to login to the admin area from any IP. I tried from three different IP addresses. The frontend is not blocked from these IPs. Only the admin URL.

This request is blocked by Admin Tools. Please change this message in the component's options. If you are  the administrator of this site and have blocked your own IP address on accident please visit https://wglbbo.org/administrator/[email protected] where [email protected] is the email address of your (Super User) account. This URL will only send you an email if the IP address from which you are accessing it is being blocked by Admin Tools. If you are not blocked no email will be sent; you don't need an email with instructions to unblock your IP if your IP is not blocked.

Friday, 09 June 2023 10:18 CDT

nicholas

 I should have mentioned the frontend is not blocked but shows the 404 page.

If your IP is blocked by Admin Tools, it's blocked on both the front- and the backend of the site. What you describe cannot happen in the way you are describing it.

Maybe you additionally have a different issue in the frontend?

I see the server IP is in the blocked list.

As I said, remember that you may have to set “Enable IP Workarounds” to Yes in the Configure WAF page. 

Somehow the old IP is blocking itself?

No. The new server is behind a load balancer or another kind of non-transparent proxy. As a result PHP always sees the same IP address for all incoming requests, the IP address of the load balancer / non-transparent proxy. Enabling the IP workarounds will solve that problem for you.

Remember to also delete all IP blocks, history of blocked requests, and blocked requests. Otherwise the IP will be auto-banned once again due to its history of being repeatedly blocked.

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!

Friday, 09 June 2023 10:48 CDT

DaveOzric

That's very odd. I believe this setting was turned on. Allow administrator access only to IPs in Exclusive Allow IP List. Why the frontend goes down at the same time is very odd.

I have turned off this setting (I never turned it on) and cleared the IPs from all the lists. 

This site is going away soon so I am fine with this resolution.

Thank you for helping me figure this out.

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