Paypal time out problems

I am having problems with Paypal transactions timing out

ie the message is either "(6) name lookup timed out" or
Cardinal Centinel - cmpi_lookup error - 8030 - Communication Timeout Encountered

I understand from this forum that this is caused by DNS lookup problems.

My website host is denying that there is a problem.

My question is .... that although my website is hosted by one set of people ... my actual domain (which lists the named servers) is purchased and held by a different hosting company.

Could the problem lay with the people who are the custodians my domain name ?

toyseller:

I am having problems with Paypal transactions timing out

ie the message is either "(6) name lookup timed out" or
Cardinal Centinel - cmpi_lookup error - 8030 - Communication Timeout Encountered

I understand from this forum that this is caused by DNS lookup problems.

Correct. It's a DNS issue.

toyseller:

My website host is denying that there is a problem.

No surprises there. However, it is impossible for us to to tell if it is thier problem, or a problem somewhere else along the line.

toyseller:

My question is .... that although my website is hosted by one set of people ... my actual domain (which lists the named servers) is purchased and held by a different hosting company.

Could the problem lay with the people who are the custodians my domain name ?

No! Your domain name or nameservers only relate to connectivity to your site.

The site itself will be using different name servers for outgoing connections.

Cheers
RodG

Thank you ... so it looks as if the issue is definitely with my website host. At least I dont have 2 people to deal with.

Ive just had another fail today and the strange thing is that although my logs have the
"(6) name lookup timed out" error message, the order was actually placed and the money has gone into my Paypal account.

I just dont know what to do next.

What paypal method are you using? Paypal express (which tends to not have the issue of order being placed and not being logged in the store.)

The /extras/curltester.php script as explained at http://www.zen-cart.com/showthread.php?65680-PayPal-Communications-Response-Testing-Tools is provided to help diagnose communications issues with your host server.

So, that'll help you see what issues might exist with connecting to paypal servers.

Your "Cardinal" errors are happening when attempting to connect to https://paypal.cardinalcommerce.com/maps/processormodule.asp ... which is not tested by the curltester.php script.

Perhaps those will be helpful in demonstrating the problem to your hosting company without having to go through making transactions to test it.

Im using Website Payment Pro and Paypal Express.

This is the result from the test you told me about ....

IPNCHECK.PHP - Version 1.3.9

CURL RESPONSE RECEIVED - Communications OKAY
IPN TESTING - Response Received via CURL -- COMMUNICATIONS OKAY

IPN TESTING - Confirmation/Validation response with fsockopen(): FSOCKOPEN() RESPONSE RECEIVED - Communications OKAY

Default method likely to be used for communications is: CURL, with the fallback method being FSOCKOPEN if possible.

Script finished.

I also ran this test with ?ssl=1 and ?paypal=1 ... and both passed the test.

includes/modules/paypal.php now set to CURL_TIMEOUT, 30 ... it was I think initially set to 5? up'd to 8, but still had timeouts so I set to this to 30.

It there any other timeout settings I should increase ?

They messages dont happen on every transaction, when these messages started I ran my own credit card through the website without any issue.

toyseller:

I also ran this test with ?ssl=1 and ?paypal=1 ... and both passed the test.

includes/modules/paypal.php now set to CURL_TIMEOUT, 30 ... it was I think initially set to 5? up'd to 8, but still had timeouts so I set to this to 30.

It there any other timeout settings I should increase ?

They messages dont happen on every transaction, when these messages started I ran my own credit card through the website without any issue.
CURL_TIMEOUT doesn't deal with DNS failures on the server.
I'm inclined to not set it to a large value. It's better to get the webserver's DNS services working properly.

toyseller:

It there any other timeout settings I should increase ?

The messages don't happen on every transaction

As much as I hate to tell you this, your problem is related to DNS issues, and unless you are running your own server (which you aren't) there is literally nothing that you can do to resolve the issue (other than migrate to a new host).

If you can't or don't wish to move hosts, your only other option is to keep logging the errors and forward a copy of them to the host whenever they occur, and hope that sooner or later they'll take the problem seriously and look into the matter.

It is highly unlikely that you will be their only customer suffering from this problem.

Cheers
RodG

ToySeller -

I'm having exactly the same issue as you - does your host company's name begin, by any chance, with 'T'?

MrSensible

Hi Zen Cart team,

We are looking into this issue for clients hosted with us. We found issues with the CA bundle in use, Cardinal appears to be picky with regards to the certificate chain, which we've fixed a few weeks ago & the client reported that everything was working but now the error has returned.

I've created a test script at http://enterprise.terrassl.net/~min683ad/cardinal.php

Test script works and our DNS appears fine. We have 1 customer currently reporting an issue, with a total 2 customers on the same server who had the issues in the past, no other reports on any of our servers which have the same set up. So from our end we have 2 Zen Cart customers facing Cardinal errors, nobody else reporting any issues in using Cardinal.

Is there anything else we can look at to fix this for the clients? If there are any tests or investigations we can run, please advise. We are keen to get this resolved, but are at a loss to understand why Cardinal is failing on this 2 ZC installs.

Many thanks, Edith

It's probably best to address that issue directly with Cardinal.