Suddenly cannot connect to server

[MrsBee]

In May 2024, I disabled orders and put a notice on my website to say it would be closed for a while. Prior to that, I was publishing to it daily and taking multiple orders every day. After uploading the 'closed' notice and disabling ordering, I didn't touch the website / Sellerdeck / the server / or anything else until a couple of weeks ago. As far as I was aware, it was all still in exactly the same state in February 2025, as it was in May 2024. All pages were fully viewable whilst I wasn't taking orders and the website received traffic every day.

A couple of weeks ago my hosting company emailed me to say there had been malicious activity, which we got sorted out quickly.

However, I have now found that whilst I can still connect to my site via regular FTP (so I know the login details I am using are definitely correct) I cannot get Sellerdeck to connect. I am getting the error message shown at the bottom of this message.

I have checked and re-checked all of the settings in Advanced Network Setup (I've always kept a screenshot of all the settings). Permissions on 'acatalog' folder are 755, as they are on the 'cgi-bin' folder (a test script in the cgi-bin folder works fine). Plenty of space on server. Hosting company has confirmed that perl 5 and also those three required modules (Crypt::SSLEay, Net::SSL, Net::SSLEay) are installed.

I am stumped! Would anybody please be able to give me any ideas with regard to what to check next?

The test script failed to execute on the web server. The error could be caused by several things. Check:
- the 'Path to the Perl shell'
- the 'CGI script extension'
- the 'Path to CGI-BIN'
- the 'CGI-BIN URL'
- the amount of web space left on your server
- if your server is configured to accept POSTs to CGI scripts
- the permissions on the server:
On Linux/Unix based servers the permissions should be:
cgi-bin (755)– drwxr-xr-x
Online Store Folder (755)– drwxr-xr-x
On Windows based servers (need to be checked with the hosting company):
IIS
cgi-bin = read/execute
Online Store Folder = read/write/execute
NTFS
cgi-bin = Catalog's FTP account needs 'Change' permissions on the directory
Online Store Folder = Catalog's FTP account needs 'Change' permissions on the directory AND the IUSR_<servername> account needs to have 'Change' permissions on the directory

[Goz]

What version of SD are you running?

[Mike Hughes]

Your site appears to have a redirect on it that keeps refreshing? Possibly as a result of the malicious activity.

This will need to be fixed and removed before checking anything else as there's a good chance whatever is going on is interfering with sellerdeck and the test script will never work correctly with a redirect even if you can get it to upload.

Mike

[MrsBee]

What version of SD are you running?

It's 18.0.6.52632.0.0.VBHA, thank you

[MrsBee]

Your site appears to have a redirect on it that keeps refreshing? Possibly as a result of the malicious activity.

This will need to be fixed and removed before checking anything else as there's a good chance whatever is going on is interfering with sellerdeck and the test script will never work correctly with a redirect even if you can get it to upload.

Mike

Thank you - I've just removed the 404.shtml that I had in place, but it hasn't helped unfortunately.

In fact, I've just deleted absolutely everything from the site and that hasn't helped either!

The weird thing is though that every time I try to connect SD to the server, it creates a new 'acatalog' folder (and gives it 755 permissions from the outset). Even though SD tells me it cannot connect and gives me the above error message. If I then delete the 'acatalog' folder and do the network test again, it creates the folder again.

[Mike Hughes]

It is odd isn't it. It sounds as if it's connecting and creating the folder but isn't getting the response to verify what is happening. Or maybe it's just that its unable to upload and run the test script.

Is Sellerdeck able to create the cgi-bin (or does it exist already) and is it able to upload the test script?

[MrsBee]

Thanks Mike. The cgi-bin folder is on the server already, however I just deleted it and then published to see what happened. It told me this:-

Unable to move to the cgi-bin directory "/public_html/cgi-bin/" on the FTP server.
550 /public_html/cgi-bin/: No such file or directory

So I re-created the cgi-bin folder and gave it 755 permissions, and now I'm back to getting the original error message.

What is the name of the test script that should be uploaded by SD please? There isn't anything at all in my cgi-bin folder at present. The acatalog folder is empty too.

[Mike Hughes]

The test script is called TestSettings.pl.

[MrsBee]

Thanks Mike. I couldn't find that on the server but I found a local copy from 2021 so I just put that in the cgi-bin folder and CHMOD 755 to see what it is. Is it supposed to do anything when I view it in a browser? Because I'm just getting a 500 internal server error when I view it.

[Mike Hughes]

The test script does a bunch of things to test that all the settings look right, including testing the path to the web directory, running a test script in the cgi-bin and sending an email. I'm not sure any of this will be visible other than receiving the email.

It sounds as if something isn't working on the network setup side of things.

have you tried running the network setup?
I'm sure I'd seen that you'd run your own test script. I assume it had a .pl extension rather than .cgi?

I guess where I'm at with this is that what you have clearly isn't working which I suspect means going back to the start again and trying new settings.

Mike

[zgap111]

The network test in Sellerdeck always failed with us, but it uploads site and downloads orders without any problem... (never got to the bottom of that one)
- instead of doing the wizard/test : try upload site or download order

Definately screenshot Network Settings Window (the "Export/Import" function in there, doesn't save a setting... and I don't know if they ever fixed that either, most recent release is v18.2.4)

Below example image of our one (v18.2.2)...
- ours is blank on that field (but I don't know if in the past I imported and lost whatever it was... but upload site and download orders works for us)



My gut feeling is the path to cgi thing... a long time ago we always had trouble with that, sometimes has a "." or ".." etc...
Check with your host, maybe they might see something that is wrong in the settings

[MrsBee]

zgap111 - thanks for your post, and I don't believe it I clicked 'Publish to Web' and it worked - my site is now back online. Never in 22 years of using this software have I come across this issue before. Even more frustrating because I know I hadn't done anything to it between May and this year!

Thank you very much to you and Mike Hughes for the help that you both gave me with this - I really, really appreciate it