AUSTPost module

[Delights]

Anyone else having issues with the Aust post moduel not working atm...

i keep getting the following error;

ERROR:Unable to obtain a valid quote from the Australia Post Server.
You may still checkout using this method and we will contact you with postage costs as soon as possible.

the site was working fine as far as i know, it just stopped working.

[MerchNation]

My Austpost has started to display 500 internal server errors. It was working fine and will work fine if the module is switched off or if the cURL is "No" but this disables the database connection. has anyone else had issues similar to this?

Also to the post above if you switch the cURL in your admin>modules>shipping>austpost to yes your issue should be sorted:)

[Delights]

My Austpost has started to display 500 internal server errors. It was working fine and will work fine if the module is switched off or if the cURL is "No" but this disables the database connection. has anyone else had issues similar to this?

Also to the post above if you switch the cURL in your admin>modules>shipping>austpost to yes your issue should be sorted:)

I tried that, still didnt work.

[Zyan]

It's because the vcsweb server is down - try it yourself:

http://austpost.vcsweb.com/

My monitoring systems started alerting me at around 3:00-3:30 PM Eastern Australian time that it was inaccessible. I wondered since setting up a store for a client a few months ago just how reliable this server would be, and now I know.

In the meantime I've changed the server address in austpost.php to the direct http://drc.edeliver.com.au/ Australia Post server and have hard-coded the "fixed price" rates in so that it can continue to function until austpost.vcsweb.com comes back online.

[Delights]

It's because the vcsweb server is down - try it yourself:

http://austpost.vcsweb.com/

My monitoring systems started alerting me at around 3:00-3:30 PM Eastern Australian time that it was inaccessible. I wondered since setting up a store for a client a few months ago just how reliable this server would be, and now I know.

In the meantime I've changed the server address in austpost.php to the direct http://drc.edeliver.com.au/ Australia Post server and have hard-coded the "fixed price" rates in so that it can continue to function until austpost.vcsweb.com comes back online.

I must admit we normally dont have many issues with the Austpost server.

[remoteone]

The new "ozpost" replaces AustPost. Its just been posed with some bug fixes. The author, RodG, says its got a fixed shipping cost option as a default if the AustPost server is down or the shipping method cant be found.
I'll install it soon.

[Zyan]

It looks like the http://austpost.vcsweb.com/ server is back up for now. I'll have to check out the new 'ozpost' module and look at what it will take to upgrade to it - I made quite a few modifications to the 'austpost improved' module to fix a few issues with the particular store I was setting up (and to improve things like the images and issues with those being truncated in the order invoices, etc).

It's good to see that the new 'ozpost' module has better handling to "fail gracefully".

[RodG]

It's because the vcsweb server is down - try it yourself:

http://austpost.vcsweb.com/

My monitoring systems started alerting me at around 3:00-3:30 PM Eastern Australian time that it was inaccessible. I wondered since setting up a store for a client a few months ago just how reliable this server would be, and now I know.

Some things are just bad timing. Yes, the austpost server was down yesterday from around 2pm until 9pm. It had undergone a hardware upgrade (that went really well, with only a 15minute outage), but after moving various files around and forcing another reboot to ensure all was well with the new configs, the beast didn't reboot properly and needed someone to physically press the reset button (the server is located in the USA). The unprecedented downtime was a result of getting the folk in USA to do this in the ealry hours of thier Sunday Morning.

In the meantime I've changed the server address in austpost.php to the direct http://drc.edeliver.com.au/ Australia Post server

Just for the record, historical figures indicate that the drc servers tend to go down a lot more often than and for much longer periods than the vcsweb servers ever have.

Cheers
Rod

[Zyan]

It's my understanding that the vcsweb server passes on the actual estimation requests to the drc server anyway though, doesn't it? i.e. if the drc server is down and you're using vcsweb as the server, the request will ultimately still not work because drc is down?

[RodG]

It's my understanding that the vcsweb server passes on the actual estimation requests to the drc server anyway though, doesn't it? i.e. if the drc server is down and you're using vcsweb as the server, the request will ultimately still not work because drc is down?

This is entirely true for the AustPost module (but technically speaking it does a redirect rather than acting as a proxy which is more like what you are describing).

This is partially true for the ozpost module, which has its own lookup tables for most of the shipping methods (and eventually all of them).

I really do find the drc server too unreliable, otherwise I wouldn't bother with this additional work.

Cheers
Rod