Description error?

[ra40]

So I'm looking at the various projects and click on the description...I got this message
I dunno what happened to cause this. Browser if FF 3.6.

This feature has been turned off due to overuse. Please do not query our cgi-bin web pages with scripts or your IP will be banned.

[7im]

Obviously, someone overused this feature using a script, so they turned it off. Rather than slow down the stats because of one idiot programmer pounding a url, they simply turned the feature off until the idiot realizes his mistake.

If you arrived at that page via a browser, you did nothing wrong.

[VijayPande]

Could you please report which link you were using (eg which FAH web page sent you to this page)? Thanks.

[derrickmcc]

Could you please report which link you were using (eg which FAH web page sent you to this page)? Thanks.

This is displayed when using the Description hyperlink on:

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html

[ra40]

Could you please report which link you were using (eg which FAH web page sent you to this page)? Thanks.

+1
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html
By clicking the description

THanks for looking into this.

[whynot]

+1
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html
By clicking the description

+1

And a question: how many times should I access the "Description" in order to be considered a script?

[7im]

Why would you need to read it (access it) more than once?

[whynot]

Why would you need to read it (access it) more than once?

I don't. I have to know for sake of prevention.

[7im]

While I don't have the exact number, I do know that humans are not going to trigger the problem. They just aren't fast enough, and don't want to click the same page that often. Scripts, on the other hand, can be very fast, and can access the page relentlessly.

Scripts should not access the cgi-bin pages. As a human, click on it as many times as you want.

[^w^ing]

thats amusing, since I am a human, not a script, but I was banned from accesing the cgi pages anyway.

[bruce]

thats amusing, since I am a human, not a script, but I was banned from accesing the cgi pages anyway.

Please tell us how many times you accessed them and over what time-period so we'll know what kind of limits are being applied. Also, what monitoring program, if any, were you running, (in case it was accessing the cgi pages)?

[7im]

thats amusing, since I am a human, not a script, but I was banned from accesing the cgi pages anyway.

Are you still using the old link? If using the old link, you did not get banned. It was disabled weeks ago, long before you tried it.

If using the new link, please help us fill in more details by answering Bruce's inquiries. Thanks.

[^w^ing]

It was quite a while before these links were disabled when i was getting only 403s for any cgi page and getting 403s on the new pages aswell. As I didn't exactly noticed when I got actually banned, I don't know what I did to deserve that. I seldom used those pages to look up what kind of projects I am working on so I would say I accessed those pages about 4 times that day. I used (and still do) HFM to monitor my clients, and I do use the web generator in it. I noticed that the client's pages used to show information from these cgi pages in earlier versions but since I am the only one to check out the web with my HFM generated stats it doesn't seem to be the cause, also I think I got banned after I upgraded to a newer version which only shows a link to the cgi page.

[brityank]

Could you please report which link you were using (eg which FAH web page sent you to this page)? Thanks.

I hit the Project Summary link at the top of the page, and was directed to the following:

This http url has been turned off due to overuse. Please do not query our cgi-bin web pages with scripts or your IP will be banned. Please see our web page for the new link.

PS3 users: Our apologies for this message. This link was being abused and we need to update the PS3 client which has this hardwired in. For now, please go to our web page linked above for project information.

Clicking on the our web page link takes you to the Statistics reporting, team setup, server statistics and then the Project Descriptions sends you straight back to the error page.

It's just interesting to see just what our little pieces of the protein fold are doing. Thanks.

(Edit:
P.S. - I have a dynamic IP from my DSL, and know it's been changed over the past week.)

[VijayPande]

ok, thanks for the specifics. This should now be fixed.