Understanding Paypal Logs

[rossagrant]

Hi Jason, Sorry for my ignorance, I'm just trying to understand how to interpret the logs. i'm going through them now to understand what s potsed and what hapens during each transaction.

I think I can follow all regular transactions but I have come across this in the logs and I'm trying to work out what caused it.

In the Paypal IPN Log I get this from a couple of weeks back:

WordPress® v3.1.3 :: s2Member® v110620 :: s2Member® Pro v110606
www.actonthis.tv/?s2member_paypal_notify=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1
array (
's2member_log' =>
array (
0 => 'Unable to verify POST vars. Possibly caused by a fraudulent request. If this error continues, please run IPN tests against your server from a PayPal® Sandbox account. They provide special diagnostic tools to assist you.',
1 => 'If you\'re absolutely SURE that your PayPal® configuration is valid, you may want to run some tests on your server, just to be sure $_POST variables are populated, and that your server is able to connect to PayPal® over an HTTPS connection.',
2 => 's2Member uses the WP_Http class for remote connections; which will try to use cURL first, and then fall back on the FOPEN method when cURL is not available. On a Windows® server, you may have to disable your cURL extension. Instead, set allow_url_fopen = yes in your php.ini file. The cURL extension (usually) does NOT support SSL connections on a Windows® server.',
3 => 'array (
\'s2member_paypal_notify\' => \'1\',
)',
),
)

The corresponding section in the Paypal RTN Log is this:

WordPress® v3.1.3 :: s2Member® v110620 :: s2Member® Pro v110606
www.actonthis.tv/?s2member_paypal_return=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060124 Firefox/1.5.0.1
array (
's2member_log' =>
array (
0 => 'No Return-Data from PayPal®. Customer must wait for Email Confirmation.',
1 => 'Redirecting Customer to the Home Page.',
),
)

I was just wondering if you could let me know what scenario this would be caused by.

Everything seems to be working great so it doesn't appear to be impacting business but I just want a deeper understanding.

Thanks Ross

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for the great question Ross.

We're working to improve this aspect of s2Member, by incorporating a more verbose log reader inside the Dashboard. I'll go ahead and answer your question though.

The output you see inside paypal-ipn.log and paypal-rtn.log is a dump of all POST variables received and processed by s2Member. In addition, s2Member adds an extra element to the array that is dumped into the log file, which is represented by the "s2member_log" array key, and will contain detailed information about what, if any, actions were take by s2Member.

In these two log entries that you posted, it appears that someone, or something, attempted to access your IPN and RTN handlers with absolutely no POST vars at all. Hence, the array only contains the "s2member_log" key, and nothing else. This would indicate to me, that someone may have typed this into their browser and hit "GO" as a test perhaps? If no POST data was sent, you would see log entries like these.

Code: Select all

http://yoursite.com/?s2member_paypal_notify=1

[rossagrant]

Cheers jason,

Not sure how that happened, it certainly wasn't me testing something out, but I'll keep an eye out for it appearing in the logs again.

I just wondered what email th eRTN log referred to in this section of the log?

0 => 'No Return-Data from PayPal®. Customer must wait for Email Confirmation.',
1 => 'Redirecting Customer to the Home Page.',

Ross

[rossagrant]

Hi Jason,

Sorry, this thread clearly got lost amongst everything.

Just wondered if you knew the answer to my question above about the email the RTN log is referring to? Which email is that?

Ross

[Jason Caldwell]

Sorry. That's just a generic message given by the s2Member Auto-Return handler. The email it's referring to, is the email that a legitimate Customer would have received after checkout, processed by the s2Member IPN handler.

So that generic log entry it just letting you ( i.e the site owner ) know that s2Member's Auto-Return handler was unable to process anything immediately after checkout, because no data was received. In cases such as this, Auto-Return has failed, and now IPN is the only backup post-processor available. So, the Signup Confirmation Email that you configure from your Dashboard is the Customer's only remaining option. The Customer must wait for that email. See: s2Member -> PayPal Options -> Signup Confirmation Email.

[rossagrant]

Thanks Jason!

I noticed this today which seems a bit weird. Mentions 'Google bot?

Is it normal or anything to be concerned about?

WordPress® v3.2 :: s2Member® v110710 :: s2Member® Pro v110710
www.actonthis.tv/?s2member_paypal_notify=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
array (
's2member_log' =>
array (
0 => 'Unable to verify POST vars. Possibly caused by a fraudulent request. If this error continues, please run IPN tests against your server from a PayPal® Sandbox account. They provide special diagnostic tools to assist you.',
1 => 'If you\'re absolutely SURE that your PayPal® configuration is valid, you may want to run some tests on your server, just to be sure $_POST variables are populated, and that your server is able to connect to PayPal® over an HTTPS connection.',
2 => 's2Member uses the WP_Http class for remote connections; which will try to use cURL first, and then fall back on the FOPEN method when cURL is not available. On a Windows® server, you may have to disable your cURL extension. Instead, set allow_url_fopen = yes in your php.ini file. The cURL extension (usually) does NOT support SSL connections on a Windows® server.',
3 => 'array (
\'s2member_paypal_notify\' => \'1\',

WordPress® v3.2.1 :: s2Member® v110710 :: s2Member® Pro v110710
www.actonthis.tv/?s2member_paypal_return=1
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
array (
's2member_log' =>
array (
0 => 'No Return-Data from PayPal®. Customer must wait for Email Confirmation.',
1 => 'Redirecting Customer to the Home Page.',

[Jason Caldwell]

Other than log entries with errors, no. It doesn't hurt anything for a bot to hit these data processing scripts. All data received by these processors is verified with direct communication to PayPal. So even if a real person tried to spoof a transaction, that would fail, because it would be unverifiable with PayPal.

That being said, I would take a look at your Sitemap and other Pages/Posts to see how/why Google is attempting to index that URL. It really shouldn't be made public, because it does not display anything anyway.