Paypal IPN Failing suddenly

[chriscana]

I've gone through dozens of emails and support requests between paypal and lunarpages - not to mention the time you all have put into it (thanks kindly). I don't know if a solution can be reached at this point. I'm tempted to just disable IPNs on the paypal side and call it a day.

You said the only thing IPN does is echeck and refunds? Why would I get IPN failure posts daily if my shop hasn't had any refunds or echecks? If thats all I have to worry about, I can handle that without needed the ipn communication. I don't know why it would post multiple daily IPN requests if none of those are happening, though. Just want to be sure.

[DrByte]

You said the only thing IPN does is echeck and refunds?

No. That's not exactly what I said.

When using Express Checkout and Payments Pro, the only value that IPNs provide is to automatically update orders in your store when a change takes place with one of those transactions, such as a refund or void or echeck clearing. If you don't need any of that, then simply turn off the IPN notification option in your Paypal account and leave it.

An IPN is sent EVERY time ANY transaction is added or updated in your account.
The only thing Express Checkout benefits from is when any of those updates are related to echecks or refunds.
But IPNs are still sent for everything. Your store will receive and acknowledge them all, but then just ignores what doesn't apply to existing EC transactions.

(Same for Payments Pro too, by the way, but that's beyond your present post.)

[DrByte]

And, since yours have been failing for a long time, it's certainly not an urgent thing you need to fix.

[chriscana]

In response to IPN log file writing, debug was set to off. I have enabled it for log writing. Will check back one those have written.

[DrByte]

There should be some logs now ;)

[chriscana]

So far there are logs with titles beginning with paypalwpp_Paypal_Action and Paypal_CURL but none with IPN listed yet. Checking in /includes/modules/payment/paypal/logs and logs dir is 777.

[DrByte]

Do you get one if you visit https://idosersoftware.com/ipn_main_handler.php via your browser?

[chriscana]

In the browser I get: Nothing to process. Please return to home page.
Yes. I am now getting IPN logs. See attached

IPNLog.zip

[DrByte]

Right. So it works when not submitting data. But when anything tries to submit (POST), it just aborts. Not what it's designed to do.

[RodG]

According to them they did run it from the correct server/IP. See their response below, and also the output of iptables -L -n for the firewall that is attached to the message (too big for post).

Apologies. My mistake, they did indeed run it from your server.

I see nothing amiss with any of the tests made, and although the firewall rules are somewhat convoluted (I've seen a lot worse), they don't appear to be the source of the problem.

I'm less inclined to suspect networking issues. Instead I'm now leaning toward it being damaged code.

Upon further investigation/consideration I'm also now less inclined to suspect networking/firewall issues. However, I'm not so much leaning towards 'damaged code', but more towards a server/configuration problem (Perhaps mod_proxy?).

I'm not in any way saying it is not 'damaged code' because there is still a bit of doubt as to whether you really do have a new 'clean install', or whether you did a partial/full upgrade... Those mixed character sets (collation error) previously mentioned do nothing to clear these muddy waters.

I'll get back to you if I can think of anything else, or have other suggestions for things to test, but in the meantime I can only suggest you follow DrBytes advice.

Oh, just out of curiousity, are you experiencing any other problems? (even seemingly unrelated ones). For example, do you have any issues updating or adding products? or is the IPN your *only* problem?

Cheers
Rod.