www_server.log: "Execution error : .../www_f_find_a.gnt'"
- Article Type: General
- Product: Aleph
- Product Version: 20
- Relevant for Installation Type: Dedicated-Direct; Direct; Local;
Problem Symptoms:
The Aleph www_server log has many error messages like this:
Execution error : file '/exlibris/aleph/a21_1/aleph/exe/www_f_find_a.gnt'
error code: 114, pc=0, call=1, seg=0
114 Attempt to access item beyond bounds of memory (Signal 11)
Cause:
Spam bots / several IP addresses submitting searches that were essentially paragraphs of verbiage.
Resolution 1:
Offending IP addresses were blocked by IT department. Article 000037564 (Users connected to server; "License limit exceeded") describes how the $alephe_tab/server_ip_allowed file can also be used to block specific addresses.
Resolution 2:
Changes to www_f_find_a program to block bots made locally by EL Development; v21 rep_change to be created (-- but never was?)
Additional Information
This is a related article: Attack on www_server: vir01 z63 fills up tablespace
In this case, the bots were coming into the Aleph Web OPAC and traversing the links in order until they came to the 'Advanced' search page. At that point the original bot handed the 'Advanced' search form off to multiple other bots which started hitting the server with very large searches. The bot fills in the 5 text boxes in the 'Advanced' search form and submits the search. The search causes the error seen at the end of this message.
Complete www server log entry:
2012-10-20 03:11:57 25
IN 20121020 031157
ip address: 198.27.116.148 2471
request: "/F/INMEN84P65Y8B4LJVBBX5I5SYEC66YJMT1BV4X4862IBY9D3MV-01107?func=find-a&
...
...
Header: User-Agent <Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)>
Header: Accept <text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8>
Header: Host <www.xxx.net>
Header: Referer <http://www.xxx.net/F/INMEN84P65Y8B4LJVBBX5I5SYEC66YJMT1BV4X4862IBY9D3MV-00867?func=find-a-0>
Header: Via <1.1 MyVPN (squid/3.1.10)>
Header: X-Forwarded-For <unknown>
Header: Cache-Control <max-age=259200>
Header: Connection <keep-alive>
WWW-F : FIND-A
Execution error : file '/exlibris/aleph/a21_1/aleph/exe/www_f_find_a.gnt'
error code: 114, pc=0, call=1, seg=0
114 Attempt to access item beyond bounds of memory (Signal 11)
Category: Web OPAC
- Article last edited: 3/23/2015