Resolving Origin Unreachable Error Code 520

wongjoseph10

Origin Unreachable Error Code 520

wongjoseph10

Hello,

I have a site called hermitgarden.com that's been with Ezoic for 2+ years and is hosted on dreamhost.com (migrated Nov 2024 from bluehost). Since 3/6/24, my site's traffic suddenly dropped to a consistent 0 clicks per day, when it used to be around 30 per day. I can't think of any changes that might have caused this, I haven't touched it since the Nov host migration.

The message that appears when the site is visited is:

Origin Unreachable
Sorry, we are unable to reach the origin server at the moment. Please try again later.

When I visit the site on mobile, I can see the that the error code is 520

I tried following the first suggestion in the troubleshooting guide for this issue: https://support.ezoic.com/kb/article/how-to-fix-origin-errors?id=how-to-fix-origin-errors&lang=en-US
I reached out to dreamhost to check if the IPs listed in the troubleshooting guide are whitelisted. They responded by saying ezoic's IPs should be whitelisted on their end:

By default, The Ezoic IP address you listed below are whitelisted with us
already.

I also checked the error logs and couldn't find any error regarding this.

I would recommend informing Ezoic and letting them know the IPs are
whitelisted.

I checked on Ezoic's end by using the "Confirm Whitelisting" tool under settings > troubleshooting and it says whitelisting is confirmed.
I also used the "Test Your Ezoic Connection" tool under settings > troubleshooting and it's saying everything is fine.
I checked if my site was available using https://www.uptrends.com/tools/uptime and it seems all locations are getting "HTTP protocol error".

Does anyone have any suggestions on what might be going wrong here?

Ethan

wongjoseph10 We've seen a similar issue just this week on another site hosted by Dreamhost. Can you send us a screenshot of the DNS from Dreamhost so we can double check it is up to date and matches the Ezoic DNS?

Second, can you disable any third-party caching you have e.g. plugins or at Dreamhost?

wongjoseph10

Here are the DNS screenshots for comparison. I don't remember setting up any third-party caching for this site, but not sure if one of my plugins might be doing something. If the DNS records look good, I can try removing plugins that seem like they could be related to this.

Ethan

wongjoseph10 The DNS looks good, can we try removing Jetpack? That's the only plugin that could potentially cause issues. Let us know how you get on

wongjoseph10

I removed (renamed the plugin folder for) the jetpack and anti-spam plugins a few hours ago, but no luck yet. is there anything else I can try?

heremita

Nossa eu estou passando pelo mesmo problema com meu blog, e começou na mesma data que o seu.
Já refiz até a integração com o Ezóic e nada, não consigo solucionar.

heremita

O meu blog também estava com esse erro 520, a única coisa que consegui fazer foi reestabelecer a resposta aos usuários ele esta ON de novo, porém, continua dando erro no certificado https coisa que não acontecia antes.

Ethan

heremita I'm not seeing any 520 origin errors on your domain currently - are you still running into errors? If so, who is hosting your site?

wongjoseph10

Actually I managed to resolve it just now.

It turned out that I had my SSL settings set to "strict" (settings > privacy > SSL > edit SSL settings), which requires that the origin (host server) must have a valid SSL certificate. I checked my certificates on dreamhost and I saw that there used to be a valid certificate, but it expired on 2024-02-14.

So my understanding of what happened is:

Nov 2023: I migrated my site to dreamhost from bluehost and set the SSL settings to strict, using the valid SSL certificate on dreamhost. Everything works fine.
Feb 14 2024: the certificate on dreamhost expired, but I'm guessing due to caching on cloudflare/ezoic's end, the site was still being served to users
March 6 2024: the cache records started to clear, meaning any requests would need to be forwarded to dreamhost. Since the certificate is not valid and my SSL settings were set to "strict", it returns the 520 error.
May 11 2024: I changed my SSL settings to "full", which does not require a valid certificate on the host site. The site is now back online.

In summary, my SSL certificate just expired on dreamhost and I needed to change my SSL settings to not require it.

this article explains how ezoic handles SSL in more detail: https://support.ezoic.com/kb/article/using-ssl-with-ezoic

@Ethan appreciate the help/suggestions. maybe checking SSL settings/certificates is something to add to the troubleshooting guide.

Ethan

wongjoseph10 Very glad to hear you resolved this. We'll definitely bear it in mind when troubleshooting in the future.

heremita

Olá Ethan, consegui resolver com alguns tópicos que encontrei por aqui mesmo, poucos instantes após escrever esse comentário, mas, obrigado pela atenção☺️.