403 forbidden error when working with Glitch

Hello,

I am a computer science teacher and I favored Glitch for my html lectures. My lab has 14 computers running Ubuntu ΜΑΤΕ 20.04 LTSP (1 server, 14 thin clients). The students are working on a static site based on the Blank Website template.

So far, Glitch serves the purpose very well but there is one problem I would like to report. When all 14 clients are logged in to Glitch, some or all of them are getting the 403 Forbidden error, which shows up in the preview pane (either next to the code or in a new window). Refreshing the preview does not fix the error. The error may or may not go away after some time; it is random behavior, really.

Is this a known issue? Do you think it is related to the fact that multiple computers are working with Glitch at the same time from the same LAN?

Most importantly, is there anything I can do to fix this?

Thank you very much in advance,

Dimitris

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I think the support folks at Glitch will be able to give a more concrete answer, but as a user, I know that sometimes you have to manually type ‘refresh’ in the terminal to get the editor in sync. Did you reload the window or type refresh?

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Hello christina,

Thank you for your reply. I haven’t tried the refresh command because I was not aware of the terminal tool. I will give it a try and let you know. By the way, your answer also helped me discover the Logs tool, which, I think, will help me find out more about the source of the error.

Meanwhile, anyone with an idea why the 403 error appears in the preview pane, please come forward.

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Hi there - when you say “some or all” do you mean that some of the students are seeing the preview just fine? My first thought was that maybe your LAN blocks the glitch.me domain, but if some of your students can see that domain fine, then it could be rate limiting. Can you email support@glitch.com with this info and we’ll investigate further!

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Hello jenn,

Thank you very much for your reply.

Well, it is random behavior, I am afraid.

FWIW, the lab session lasts about an hour and a half. At the beginning everything works fine but as time passes most students get the 403 error and finally all of them. To be more precise, in the last 30 minutes, none of the students could see the preview while they were updating the content of the style.css file. A couple of them did see the preview at some point but only for a few seconds.

I’ve emailed support as you suggested.

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The only other time I’ve heard of a 403 happening is with accessing glitch from a tor node. Maybe somehow you are getting marked as tor node due to the amount of traffic you are generating. A 403 webpage with https still working should most likely mean glitch is denying your connection.

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My theory is that the 403 error is some sort of ratelimiting/WAF. Tor nodes are probably getting blocked because some are likely scraping projects and the students were getting blocked because they looked like abusive scrapers.

Hello,

Thank you very much for your responses. I have contacted Glitch Support directly and they came up with a solution. I haven’t tested it yet but I will in a couple of days and will update this thread.

It is quite fortunate that Glitch has this very vibrant community and a great support team.

Dimitris

Στις Παρ, 12 Νοε 2021, 14:32 ο χρήστης RiversideRocks via Glitch Support <glitch@discoursemail.com> έγραψε:

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Hello,

FYI, the 403 error has been fixed. The Glitch support team did their best to solve the problem and I would like to thank them one again. The source of the problem was that multiple requests to the Glitch server originated from the same address.

Please, consider this thread closed.

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