Admin Control Panel issue

[Bonnie]

Forum URL: (private)

I'm having the same problem a couple of other users have reported Admin Center broken

It works fine on my phone over my mobile data

I tried: clearing my tablet cache, a different browser, incognito tabs on both browsers, rebooting my tablet, and rebooting my cable modem

It still shows as a list of links.

[Craig]

Hi Bonnie

I made a reply in that topic you linked to. You mentioned it works over the mobile data on your phone, but does that mean that it didn't work on your wifi connection? That would narrow it down to the connection being the problem. As mentioned in that topic, it looks like the .css is not being loaded with the page. Can you view the .css directly?

storage.proboards.com/forum/css/admin_913.css

[Bonnie]

It doesn't work over my WiFi. Clicking anything in the list of links will load a text version of whatever, for example a reported post. I can't get to my CSS at all.

I just tried it on my laptop that is connected to my WiFi and it does work. It doesn't work on my Android tablet but it works on my Android phone when it's connected to my WiFi instead of my data plan.

[Bonnie]

An update: I forgot I also have Puffin Browser installed on my tablet. The admin panel shows just fine using Puffin. It still shows as links on Chrome and whatever the default browser is that came installed with the tablet. I have always used Chrome as my default browser and this problem just started happening today.

[Craig]

Jul 14, 2019 13:55:59 GMT -8 Bonnie said:

An update: I forgot I also have Puffin Browser installed on my tablet. The admin panel shows just fine using Puffin. It still shows as links on Chrome and whatever the default browser is that came installed with the tablet. I have always used Chrome as my default browser and this problem just started happening today.

It could have been cached on the puffin browser, maybe.  So it only does not show correctly on your tablet, using chrome browser.  All other means of accessing the page it shows correctly?

[Bonnie]

That is correct - it is only when using Chrome on an android tablet - and the generic browser that came pre installed on the tablet. I don't know what that generic browser is but I never use it, I always use Chrome.

[Craig]

Jul 14, 2019 14:55:58 GMT -8 Bonnie said:

That is correct - it is only when using Chrome on an android tablet - and the generic browser that came pre installed on the tablet. I don't know what that generic browser is but I never use it, I always use Chrome.

When you clicked the link above, did you get a 404 error?  If so, could you check the URL in the address bar, and let me know what it has in there.

[Bonnie]

when I click the link I get a wall of text in Puffin, I get the 404 not found on Chrome,

The requested URL /forum/css/admin_913.css was not found on this server.

URL is storage.proboards.com/forum/css/admin_913.css on Puffin

[Craig]

Jul 14, 2019 15:09:01 GMT -8 Bonnie said:

when I click the link I get a wall of text in Puffin, I get the 404 not found on Chrome,

The requested URL /forum/css/admin_913.css was not found on this server.

URL is storage.proboards.com/forum/css/admin_913.css on Puffin

How about in the address bar in chrome?  Does it have the full URL storage.proboads.com/forum/css/admin_913.css ?

Just wondering if the URL is somehow being changed in the browser.

[Bonnie]

In Chrome the address bar says storage.proboards.com/forum/css/admin_913.css

The error page says

Not Found
The requested URL /forum/css/admin_913.css was not found on this server.

[Craig]

That makes no sense then. The file clearly exists so it shouldn't be giving a 404 error. I ran a quick google search, and there are reports of people getting 404 errors in chrome [ as well as other browsers ] when the page does in actuality exist.

I have tried on all the devices i have available, and i haven't been able to replicate the problem, so it may be device specific. Just to run over a few points.

- It is only on your tablet that the problem presents
- It is only in chrome and the stock browser that the problem exists, but works fine in a 3rd browser.
- You have cleared cookies and cache in chrome, but the problem still persists.
- What device are you using, and is it fully uptodate?
- Would you be open to resetting chrome to factory settings to see if that helps?

Hopefully that information will help the staff here be able to replicate the problem and see if it is something they can fix on this end.

Craig

[adminabp]

Jul 14, 2019 15:56:35 GMT -8 Bonnie said:

In Chrome the address bar says storage.proboards.com/forum/css/admin_913.css

The error page says

Not Found
The requested URL /forum/css/admin_913.css was not found on this server.

Hmm, interesting...

You can duplicate that exact error by adding www to the url

From this:

storage.proboards.com/forum/css/admin_913.css

To this

www.storage.proboards.com/forum/css/admin_913.css

I know there have been some issues with some browsers automatically adding www to urls.

browser+adding+www+to+url

Including Chrome: superuser.com/questions/965229/why-does-google-chrome-automatically-add-www-prefix-for-some-websites-but-it-do

[Bonnie]

Craig - it isn't just my device, others are reporting issues with this too.  I use my admin panel every day on my tablet using Chrome and just started having the issue some time today. 

[maticonsultants]

I am facing similar issue, admin pages are not loading correctly, have checked on different networks and device, same error everywhere, CSS is not loading.

[Derek‽]

Based on all the data from the three threads on this subject the cause is clearly a DNS caching issue. Everything points to that conclusion. If you can’t access the file on one network but you can reach it on another network, it’s not the device or browser at fault, it’s the network that’s the problem.

For those who are unclear: this isn’t the same as your browser’s cache and clearing its cache and cookies won’t have any effect. The DNS cache is the persistent record of which hostnames point to which server IP addresses. These records can be updated every few seconds or every few days. If the record is flubbed at any point in the exhaustive chain or some layer is slow to update its records, anyone downstream of that change (or lack thereof) won’t be taken to the correct server.

Some change has been made to the DNS configuration by either PB or, more likely, Cloudflare and that change hasn’t propagated globally yet (or Cloudflare only made a regional change).

Yes, this can still produce a 404 error if the server the user is directed towards doesn’t have the path and file that’s being requested.

I’m unfamiliar with Puffin, but what I see of its feature list suggests to me that it likely uses its own DNS. Well, probably Google Public DNS or OpenDNS; there may be a setting to manually dictate which DNS servers it uses. That would explain why it works and other browsers on the same device don’t.

Assuming there hasn’t been a configuration error by PB/Cloudflare, the issue should sort itself out in the next couple of days (or it’s those of us who can access the file that are the slow ones and the issue will just spread rapidly in the coming days, but probably not... probably). In the meantime, manually changing the DNS server in your browser/device/router to 8.8.8.8 and 4.4.4.4, (Google Public DNS) if they support that option, will likely solve the problem for users immediately.