1

Are you using stock Docker compose setup? Yes

Describe the problem you’re having:

I’ve been subscribed to Plex Media Server for a long time, and sometime in the past week it stopped updating with 403 errors. Happens in demo instance as well, and also fails myfeedsucks. Appears to be blocking based on User Agent:

wget Plex Media Server --user-agent=“Tiny Tiny RSS/21.03-ceb8179cc (http://tt-rss.org/)”
–2021-03-25 13:52:34-- Plex Media Server
Resolving forums.plex.tv (forums.plex.tv)… 216.218.159.24, 2001:470:1:9f1::24
Connecting to forums.plex.tv (forums.plex.tv)|216.218.159.24|:443… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 403 Forbidden
2021-03-25 13:52:34 ERROR 403: Forbidden.

wget Plex Media Server --user-agent=“Blah RSS/21.03-ceb8179cc (http://blahrss.org/)”
–2021-03-25 13:53:19-- Plex Media Server
Resolving forums.plex.tv (forums.plex.tv)… 216.218.159.24, 2001:470:1:9f1::24
Connecting to forums.plex.tv (forums.plex.tv)|216.218.159.24|:443… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/rss+xml]
Saving to: ‘30447.rss.1’

30447.rss.1 [ <=> ] 31.01K --.-KB/s in 0.02s

2021-03-25 13:53:20 (1.25 MB/s) - ‘30447.rss.1’ saved [31750]

Include steps to reproduce the problem:

Try to subscribe, or force refresh of existing subscription.

tt-rss version (including git commit id):

8c32ed76d

Platform (i.e. Linux distro, PHP, PostgreSQL, etc) versions:

Ubuntu 18.04, docker-compose

Please provide any additional information below:

With research, I saw that SELF_USER_AGENT is supposed to help work around this. Either it’s been removed, or (likely) I cannot figure how to properly implement it in .env (TTRSS_SELF_USER_AGENT=“Mozilla”) or config.php.

2

You can definitely override the user agent; however, the correct solution is to contact the site operator(s). It only takes a few minutes and it’s entirely possible the issue can be resolved. It’s at least worth a try.

3

I agree, but I’m not even sure I’m registered over there and I tended to err on the side of lazy. I really only use that site as a way to know that a new release is out. I guess I’m too filled with “call-center script” trauma thinking they won’t even know what I’m referring to.

4

Well now that I think about it, the Plex developers suck. Just reading through their forums it becomes pretty obvious they’re completely uninterested in their users.

Anyway, if you are a Plex Pass member you already have an account for their forums (it’s the same as your Plex Pass login). But you probably just need to fire off an email to somewhere.

Regardless, SELF_USER_AGENT is defined in functions.php. You can override it by defining it in config.php but this will cause a NOTICE since the script tries to (re-)define it later. Not a big deal, but just letter you know.

5

they sure do suck, subscription money and personal data from their captive userbase which haven’t discovered jellyfin yet.

6

Ah, so it’s down to my ineptitude then…sorry. I just can’t figure out the config.php thing (either I’m not using the right one or I’m not using the correct syntax - app/tt-rss/config.php seems to get overwritten by a restart, and it seems to ignore when I put it in app/tt-rss/classes/config.php as putenv(‘TTRSS_SELF_USER_AGENT=Mozilla’);

7

Yeah, no way I was paying for subscription. Stuck with it because it of the wife and kid liking the ease of using on the Roku TV.

8

Right, you’re using Docker.

You can definitely do this with a plugin. You’d use HOOK_FETCH_FEED and make your own call to UrlHelper::fetch() with a custom user agent, then return the results. This is probably the best approach because changing the constant affects the entire installation and you only need to change it for this one feed.

9

Another solution could be having someone else fetch the feed, like Feedburner for example

10

Or use curl and pull the xml on the tt-rss server.

11

Thanks, that’s what I did for now. Not that I like having to pull it through yet another service, but again…lazy.