Strange issue with Pale Moon and CloudFlare

[John connor]

So ever since I updated Pale Moon to 28.5.0 I've experienced some oddities on two of my phpBB-based boards that run under CloudFlare. What would happen is that if I go into the ACP and delete any logs, select a different log then go back to the previous log it was like the entries were never deleted. Also, I would disable an extension, go to the index then back under the Customize tab and the extension was not disabled. So right there I knew I must have some sort of caching issue.

So naturally I logged into CloudFlare and checked things out. All looked good, nothing changed as when everything was working fine before. I played with a page rule to bypass caching and not bypassing caching, clearing the CF cache and the forum cache and restarting the browser. I got mixed results. I even bypassed CloudFlare going directing to my site via an entry in my hosts file. That worked! So then I knew it must be CloudFlare.

Finally today I tried to clear logs and disable an extension in my plain vanilla Firefox browser. Sure enough no issues there either. So then I knew it must be PM and CF. So I launched PM in safe mode and tried to clear logs and disable an extension. Same issue. This time I wondered, "what if it is some pref setting?" So I backed up my current prefs and had PM rebuild a new prefs file. Now things were working as they should be.

So in a nut shell it was a pref's interaction with CloudFlare. I don't know what pref it was, but I kept my rebuilt prefs file and did my minor about:config editing for tabs and the poison canvas, etc. Still no more issues.

Now on my desktop with PM it doesn't look like I have this issue. So I'm going to compare the pref file from my laptop to my desktop and see if I can weed out the exact pref that was the issue.

Unreal. I thought CloudFlare was going to pot on me and doing some stupid crap after having my phpBB boards behind CloudFlare for over four years with no issues once so ever. I sure as hell don't won't to lose CF because it helps get rid of a lot of nasties, I block a bunch of ASNs to hosters, block certain UAs and pay for layer 7 HTTP DDoS protection. Plus, since I'm behind a reverse proxy it's next to impossible to find my origin IP so that's great at keeping out any DDoS or what ever. Believe me. My MX record doesn't rat me out or anything. And I have taken many precautions to prevent origin IP exposure.

Anyway, anyone know perhaps why a pref would interfere with CloudFlare the way it has? In regards to like a cache issue where you can't delete a log in the ACP or disable an extension?


Second question: When I rebuilt my prefs file I lost my current PM theme. I don't even see it listed under add-ons anymore accept two other themes I had downloaded from this website. Where are themes installed and are they an xpi file that I can chose File | open to reinstall it? I'm sure that theme is somewhere in my profile folder. I just don't know where.

[Moonchild]

I can just respond with one thing here, that should answer all your questions:

dragons.png

[John connor]

Well, I certainly don't recall changing something so radical it would do this. And my pref changes are minor and have been using the same pref settings since Firefox waaaaaaay back when.

[John connor]

BINGO!

Found the problem pref. It was:

Code: Select all

browser.cache.check_doc_frequency

and it was set to 0.

I don't ever recall changing that pref and all of a sudden it was playing hell with CloudFlare. Crazy.