"INET_ATON failed - host not found" (PayPal payment confirmation error)

[musicscotland]

Hello,

Has anyone any experience of an "INET_ATON failed - host not found" error?

I'm currently being bounced between PayPal and Actinic regarding a server error which generates the following message:

Program = ORDERSCR, Program version = 21561 , HTTP Server = Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) , Return code = 999 , Date and Time = 2009/05/06 13:11, Internal Errors = INET_ATON failed - host not found (www.paypal.com: Resource temporarily unavailable)

(found at http://www.musicscotland.com/cd/error.err )

This results in no payment confirmation being passed back to Actinic once a PayPal payment has been confirmed - I receive the orders but have to manually process payment confirmations in Actinic : Pending Payment Service Provider. Everything else on the server seems to function OK and PayPal seem to think that the server is finding paypal.com no problem:

"As the PHP version, albeit Sandbox, works, it shows that your server is able to communicate with PayPal and receive packages too. Leaves open your Perl installation or Actinic."

And from Actinic:

"The problem is a DNS problem between the web server and PayPal. The error appears many times but there is no Actinic fix that we are aware of. The DNS has to be checked and corrected. We can fix the problem only if the site is hosted by us."

Nice.

Any ideas welcome...

[pinbrook]

what version of Actinic?

we had a problem with v6 and 7 a few years ago with paypal getting stuck in pending.. i cant remember the error message though

let me know if you have 6 or 7 and i'll dig out thefix

it got fixed for 8 and above by actinic.

[musicscotland]

It's v9.0.3 actually - only became a problem after I upgraded from v6 and changed to a dedicated server. Yes I saw the fix, for a different problem I think - http://community.actinic.com/showpos...6&postcount=96

The signs are that it's a DNS issue. PayPal support suggests:

"...set up a DNS resolver. Basically its a DNS cache that the server will use instead of constantly asking an external DNS server. This could resolve slow responses from your current DNS server. It might be that Actinic is expecting an answer faster than it's currently receiving..."

Anyone know how to do this, offhand?!

[musicscotland]

For those having this issue and running their own dedicated Linux servers, this issue was actually caused by a Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) setting. Unless this setting is Permissive (or Disabled, rather than Enforcing), the server will not be able to look up the paypal.com domain correctly, in order to send payment confirmation callbacks.

This actually compromises the security of the server to some extent, but there seems to be debate over its usefelness - eg "life is too short for SELinux" vs "applications should be fixed to work with SELinux, rather than disabling the OS security mechanism":

http://www.crypt.gen.nz/selinux/disable_selinux.html

http://securityblog.org/brindle/2006...sable-selinux/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selinux

Anyway it would be reassuring to me to know that my server is operating at maximum security - perhaps Actinic should investigate this more...?