Author Topic: 403 FORBIDDEN error when trying to get Podcastle RSS feed  (Read 13226 times)

jimhenry

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I'm using a home-grown podcast downloader, based on wget and a set of Perl and shell scripts.  Recently, it stopped downloading Podcastle episodes, though Escape Pod and various non-Escape-Artists podcasts still download fine.  On investigation, it seems that wget is getting a 403 FORBIDDEN error.

...I tried to insert a few lines from my script's log  files, but I'm getiting a "Sorry, you are not allowed to post links" error error from the forum software.  There are URLS in the log file but I'm not trying to make them live links with bbcode.

Any ideas?



Bdoomed

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Reply #1 on: July 12, 2014, 02:22:13 AM
Code: [Select]
Try pasting the code by using the [ code] tags?
Not entirely sure what could be going wrong there.  I know PodCastle is having sooome kind of error at the moment (though I'm not entirely sure what that error is yet, it's pretty vague at this point from where I'm sitting).

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


ninjaguardsheep

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Reply #2 on: August 03, 2014, 09:51:20 AM
Hi,

I have also had this issue with both Pseudopod and Podcastle feeds.

I have been using Mashpodder (a command line podcatcher written in bash) to download episodes, this also uses the GNU WGET tool to download the feed xml.

After some testing I found I was able to download the feed xml with CURL (another command line http tool) without issue. I was also able to successfully download the xml using WGET with the -U argument to spoof the user agent string e.g.

Code: [Select]
wget -U firefox $URL
the above command causes WGET to appear to the web server as a version of Mozilla Firefox.

However if  WGET connects using its default user agent string http error 403 is received.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2014, 12:22:01 PM by ninjaguardsheep »



ALH

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Reply #3 on: August 17, 2014, 10:06:42 AM
I too am getting "(403) Forbidden" from both Podcastle and Pseudopod.  Escape Pod, Drabblecast, StarShipSofa, and others are fine.  I'm using a console agent I compiled from source code found on the Microsoft forum for downloading XML RSS 2.0 podcasts.  I verified Pseudopod's main feed URL with the one I'm using.  I can't seem to find the main feed for Podcastle to check it.  I can go to the Podcastle web site and play the audio but when I try downloading the file to drop it into my MP3 player, the audio starts playing on a Quicktime player.



wintermute

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Reply #4 on: August 29, 2014, 11:17:47 AM
I'm also using a homegrown perl podcatcher, and I had the same problem. Switching from using lwp (which, I believe is based on wget) to cURL solved the problem for me.

Well, at least it did until recently, but the current problems look more systemic on EA's part.

Let me know if you want to swap code.

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kibitzer

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Reply #5 on: August 30, 2014, 01:52:09 AM
Yup, PodCastle's hosting was moved yesterday and this is a hangover from that. We're looking into the problem at the moment. If we can't find a fix the site will be moved back until we can resolve the problem.

Apologies for the inconvenience.


ALH

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Reply #6 on: September 01, 2014, 03:39:48 PM
Now it is truly the end of the world. Escape Pod just went dark with my client. I saw and tried the new url but my application still reports "(403) Forbidden". At first it was just Podcastle and Pseudopod. Now all three are gone.



kibitzer

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Reply #7 on: September 01, 2014, 10:26:29 PM
As far as I can tell, all three feeds are up and running, and it looks like iTunes knows about them. What URLs are you using?

http://podcastle.org/feed/
http://escapepod.org/feed/
http://pseudopod.org/feed/
« Last Edit: September 01, 2014, 10:28:26 PM by kibitzer »



ElectroSquid

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Reply #8 on: September 03, 2014, 03:27:04 PM
I don't know if it's related, but Stitcher does not seem to be picking up Pseudopod episodes. I can see one but not the backlist, and it's not the most recent episode either...



ALH

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Reply #9 on: September 03, 2014, 04:18:15 PM
My client software still says forbidden. I know the sites are up as I setup IE11's RSS function and it works fine. I'll keep looking for why my home grown package doesn't like the new servers. Until then I'll keep up with the feed via IE.



kibitzer

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Reply #10 on: September 03, 2014, 11:05:10 PM
I don't know if it's related, but Stitcher does not seem to be picking up Pseudopod episodes. I can see one but not the backlist, and it's not the most recent episode either...

Thanks. We're aware of the Stitcher anomaly and we're looking into it.


wintermute

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Reply #11 on: September 05, 2014, 12:03:34 AM
My problem was the defaut user agent string that lwp / cURL use. Once I spoofed a browser user agent, I stopped getting 403's, and started getting actual content.

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SquidgeyFlint

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Reply #12 on: September 10, 2014, 06:20:00 AM
As far as I can tell, all three feeds are up and running, and it looks like iTunes knows about them. What URLs are you using?

podcastle.org/feed/
escapepod.org/feed/
pseudopod.org/feed/


FWIW: I had some really old URLs based on feeds.escapeartists.net like feeds.escapeartists.net/PodCastle_Main and feeds.escapeartists.net/EscapePod and those URLs stopped serving traffic in the past week or so.

It is hard to find the simpler feed urls mentioned above. On podcastle.org, I can't seem to find a link to the podcast at all. On escapepod.org, the "how to subscribe" option in the nav bar points me to the feeds.escapeartists.net urls.



kibitzer

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Reply #13 on: September 10, 2014, 10:26:45 PM
Fair point, we'll look at getting those changed.


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Reply #14 on: September 13, 2014, 02:00:17 PM
As a heads up, it appears that the latest update to itunes has broken the feed. I have not updated itunes in a while (specifically for things like this - I like to let others debug the software well before I update) but this is being reported over on the Facebook page. Thought I would share the report here.

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kibitzer

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Reply #15 on: September 14, 2014, 10:16:36 PM
Thanks Fenrix. I can't see a problem my end -- iTunes still updates -- and I can't see any reports on the Facebook pages. Could you post me a link to the problem reports?


ALH

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Reply #16 on: September 20, 2014, 02:30:46 AM
I solved my client problem by adding an additional header to the request indicating my agent works like Mozilla.  It works great now.

Life is good!



startrek.steve

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Reply #17 on: October 14, 2014, 10:39:20 AM
Was this in Mashpodder?
If so can you show an example?
Steve



awfulhorrid

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Reply #18 on: November 02, 2014, 10:20:58 PM
I use podget (via a once a day cron job) to get my podcasts and noticed this week that I hadn't gotten any new Escape Artists stories in quite a while. I was really far behind, so it wasn't really noticeable until now when I'm down to a few weeks worth of stories! This thread did help me solve the problem and it actually wasn't that bad once I had the user-agent clue. I modified the Wget base options to include --user-agent="" and suddenly the podcasts are flowing again.

Hope this helps others!

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kibitzer

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Reply #19 on: November 05, 2014, 07:02:39 AM
Folks, thanks for your suggestions on fixing this problem. I wrote up an FAQ about it on our new support site (http://support.escapeartists.net). It's already helped out someone else in a similar situation and that's down to your helpfulness. Thanks!