Wrong value type sent to the database. IPv4 or IPv6 expected.(ip)

klondike · Last Edit: **Yesterday** at 12:07:26 PM by klondike

Wrong value type sent to the database. IPv4 or IPv6 expected.(ip)

I just started getting the error above and it wouldn't clear. Will see if I can find what it means.

Anway...

Tried on my phone - no problem
Tried using a different browser - no problem.
Cleared browser cache - fixed the problem.

If you see this remember the solution to try.

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Seems it was probably a glitch. Somehow my IP was not being passed and the code can't handle nulls. There are very old reports all of which were fixed.

klondike · **Yesterday** at 09:04:50 PM

OK this turned out to be a hard error.

This site runs under Apache which is a webserver that serves all the pages to your browsers.

I have found the root cause of the problem and disabled the Apache feature that was leading to it. This was based on a guess as I have other websites running this Apache feature and they are all fine.

The site (like a good chunk of the internet) sits behind Cloudflare proxy servers which do a lot of the heavy lifting in keeping malicious bots out and speeding sites up which is a good thing. The downside is that sites sitting behind such proxy servers do not "see" the real IP address of the remote user. The forum code keeps track of IPs using the site to maintain user bans and detect known spammers. There is a feature that can be added to the webserver that tells it to provide the real remote IP for a list of proxy IP addresses and that has been in use since I set the site up. It seems that something has changed or gone astray and sometimes an invalid IP (probably something called a NULL which means undefined) is being returned which causes the error in the forum code. My guess is Cloudflare changed something.

I'm not not going to bust a gut looking for the real problem as the workaround seems to have stopped it preventing the site from working. I'll do searches periodically to see if there is a proper fix. It has also occurred to me that I might ask AI

This is the Cloudflare explanation
https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/troubleshooting/restoring-visitor-ips/restoring-original-visitor-ips/
It probably won't make any more sense than my abbreviated version.

Ruthio · **Yesterday** at 09:44:23 PM

I don't begin to understand any of this, but it seems ok now! 👍

Mups · **Yesterday** at 09:49:10 PM

Quote from: Ruthio on Yesterday at 09:44:23 PMI don't begin to understand any of this, but it seems ok now! 👍

Me neither, Ruthio, may as well be Chinese.
Glad K was able to fix it though ey.

CHF · **Yesterday** at 10:30:49 PM

Nor I, Ruthio, and Mups, but thanks, Klondike.

Alex · **Today** at 02:15:04 PM

All seems to be well now Klondy, thank you

Scrumpy · **Today** at 05:15:24 PM

The plotters were out last night ..
Some wanted to get rid of you Klondike..
But I calmed them down..

klondike · **Today** at 07:24:49 PM

I think AI spotted a possible cause and the forum is back to getting the actual user IPs now. This is better for keeping rif raf out. It seems to be ok but hasn't been running this way again for long. Yesterday it started as an intermittent problem which I thought was cleared by clearing the browser cache as that worked or at least seemed to. When I looked in again last night it was a hard solid error. Hopefully it won't return but if it does I can very quickly fix it once I've seen it.