[Zope] Performance related to content loops/depth

Jens Vagelpohl jens@zope.com
Thu, 6 Jun 2002 13:29:56 -0400


it looks like the site developers used relative links in their pages, 
which can lead to this problem. using absolute links prevents it.

jens


On Thursday, June 6, 2002, at 01:04 , Granzow, Doug (NCI) wrote:

> Bear with me, I'm a sysadmin, not a developer.
>
> I'm maintaining a Zope 2.5.1 server with Python 2.1.3 on Solaris 7.  We
> recently upgraded from Zope 2.3.1.  I'm seeing a problem where,
> occasionally, a bot will come along to index our site and suddenly Zope
> stops responding to all requests.  It looks like what is happening is that
> the bot finds a loop in the content where each time you click on a link, 
> you
> are returned to the same page, but the URL has one more level of depth.  
> For
> example, I see requests in the log file for things like this:
>
> siteroot/info/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalo
> g/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog/catalog
>
> When a bot hits this it keeps going deeper and deeper until we deny access
> to the bot.  When I request a URL like that in my browser, even just one
> time, Python's CPU usage shoots to near 100%, and stays there for several
> seconds.  If I keep clicking on the link to go deeper, it doesn't take 
> long
> for it to effectively become a denial of service attack, because the
> processing time required to process each request seems to grow more and 
> more
> as you go deeper.
>
> Is there any way to stop this from happening?  Obviously we want to remove
> loops like this from the content, but as I said, I'm the sysadmin, not the
> developer.
>
> Any input is appreciated!
>
>