Error prevents creation of account, I had to do it manually

Someone just signed up for an account with us. I got the mail from PayPal, but nothing from aMember. I logged into aMember and there were error in debug:

Code:

 CURL ERROR: (35) - Unknown SSL protocol error in connection to www.paypal.com:443 

one second later:

Code:

paypal_r ERROR: IPN validation error: Cannot validate PayPal IPN post: FOPEN [www.paypal.com] results to [ ()]
mc_gross => 25.00
invoice => 1234-XXX

I have many membership types and the odd thing is, two hours before this, someone created exactly the same type of membership and paid via PayPal - no problems at all. Over the years, I've had a tiny amount of errors where it just seems there's a 'server fart' and maybe that's happened this time. Is there a way of me checking there isn't something more major happening here? There is nothing my host has changed in last 48 hours.

I've since had two PayPal payments go through, so I'm leaning towards 'server brainfreeze moment' rather than anything serious. If those two other payments went through and accounts were set up by aMember and admin mails sent out, surely it can't be a script/server permanent problem?

am using latest 3.x version of aMember by the way.

also seeing this problem with 3 different amember installs. any help?

i have set up this fix: http://www.amember.com/p/2013/01/paypalfix-for-v3/ even though my Version 3 of amember is said to not need this. I applied this fix on 1 of 3 amember installs and the 1 that has been patched does not seem to be having this issue anymore...although the issue was seemingly random so i will keep watching.

yes, random seems to be the way. I´ve had another one happen today, again paypal, again same curl error message in the debug log. I had three paypal payments go through normally, another one fail.

swintec, I made that change to my script when it was published, so that´s not the issue, or at least not the sole issue.

strange, that seems to fix it for me. Was happening a lot today and it all of a sudden stopped when I made the changes. Guess i will keep watching. Fwiw, it seems to have happened more during the afternoon time. (USA time).

Alex,

I think we can forget the possibility of hosting/servers because multiple people are having the same problem.

For me there are only two possibilities:

1. PayPal is doing something expected (but possibly new) that aMember is not expecting and not dealing with correctly.

2. PayPal is doing something wrong in the last few days that they need to fix.

It´s very strange that it seems random. I´ve had five PayPal payments go through and two fail.

FWIW, I can say that after making the script changes for curl, i have not seen the issue again. not sure why this would have done it especially since they postponed this change on paypals end for awhile and my version of amember 3.0 was said to not need this.

as an update a few days later, I still see the error now and then.

NTC69, who is your hosting provider? Would be nice if the planets align just right and we happen to use the same host so hopefully we could narrow this down.

Alex, what sort of config on the server could be causing this, after working fine for a number of years? I do not know where I can look to narrow down the culprit since it is so random.

We've been having this problem once every 10-14 days or so, basically a cUrl error between AM and Paypal:

09/17/13, 02:52 PM
…ember4/payment/paypal/ipn
173.0.81.1 Curl error: name lookup timed out
Click to Expand
Exception HTTP_Request2_ConnectionException
HTTP_Request2_Adapter_Curl::wrapCurlError [ library/pear/HTTP/Request2/Adapter/Curl.php : 196 ]
HTTP_Request2_Adapter_Curl->sendRequest [ library/pear/HTTP/Request2.php : 923 ]
HTTP_Request2->send [ library/Am/Paysystem/Transaction/Paypal.php : 90 ]
Am_Paysystem_Transaction_Paypal->validateSource [ library/Am/Paysystem/Transaction/Incoming.php : 285 ]
Am_Paysystem_Transaction_Incoming->validate [ library/Am/Paysystem/Transaction/Abstract.php : 48 ]
Am_Paysystem_Transaction_Abstract->process [ library/Am/Paysystem/Transaction/Incoming.php : 231 ]
Am_Paysystem_Transaction_Incoming->process [ library/Am/Paysystem/Abstract.php : 463 ]
Am_Paysystem_Abstract->directAction [ application/default/controllers/DirectController.php : 29 ]
DirectController->__call [ library/Am/Controller.php : 118 ]
Am_Controller->dispatch [ library/Zend/Controller/Dispatcher/Standard.php : 295 ]
Zend_Controller_Dispatcher_Standard->dispatch [ library/Zend/Controller/Front.php : 954 ]
Zend_Controller_Front->dispatch [ library/Am/App.php : 1694 ]
Am_App->run [ index.php : 43 ]
09/17/13, 02:52 PM

Doing a whois confirms that the above IP is PayPal's:

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?ip=173.0.81.1

I've logged tickets with AM and with our hoster. The hoster has tried recreating the error using a test script provided by AM support with no luck. At this point, I'm stuck in the middle with an intermittant failing system and the two parties that support each respective product are pointing fingers at each other.

Is there any hacks, fixes or config changes on the host or in AM that could help this?

I've continued to have this problem, probably once/twice a month, such a low level that I'm not pulling my hair out about it.

Swintec, sorry didn't see you'd replied in here...I'm on Futurequest which is a VERY good, pretty costly host and in ten years have never had any significant downtime, so I'd personally discount that as a possibility.

ntc69 did you ever find a fix to this issue? I have the exact same error and issue.

nope. As I'd mentioned before, it's such a low level error (I think maybe I've seen it twice since my last post in this thread in September) that I've never bothered to chase it up and I intend to go over to version 4 pretty soon. There's definitely something there be it in AM coding, PP practices or hosting set-ups but I won't lose sleep over it if it's that rare.