Ask HN: What is a user's recourse when Cloudflare is down?

2 points by batbomb 6 years ago | 2 comments

I guess post on HN and hope for upvotes.

Several websites behind CloudFlare are failing to load for me, notably for me, anaconda.org (104.17.92.24). Other sites have also been flaky.

Cloudflare's own support page has the error:

     $ curl -Lv https://dash.cloudflare.com/redirect?account=support
     *   Trying 104.19.197.29...
     * TCP_NODELAY set
     * Connected to dash.cloudflare.com (104.19.197.29) port 443 (#0)
     * ALPN, offering h2
     * ALPN, offering http/1.1
     * Cipher selection: ALL:!EXPORT:!EXPORT40:!EXPORT56:!aNULL:!LOW:!RC4:@STRENGTH
     * successfully set certificate verify locations:
     *   CAfile: /etc/ssl/cert.pem
       CApath: none
     * TLSv1.2 (OUT), TLS handshake, Client hello (1):
     * LibreSSL SSL_connect: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL in connection to dash.cloudflare.com:443 
     * stopped the pause stream!
     * Closing connection 0

I've emailed support@cloudflare.com about this. I'm supposed to create an account, which is only possible at, Surprise!, https://dash.cloudflare.com/login:

> Hi there,

> Thanks for writing to Cloudflare Support.

> While we would like to assist you with your inquiry, for the security and privacy of our users we can only work with the account holder directly, but your email address is not listed as the owner of any Cloudflare account.

> If you are a Cloudflare account holder, please submit a new support request from the email address you used to register your Cloudflare account. Note that you can also open a ticket directly through the Cloudflare dashboard following these steps:

> 1. Log in to your Cloudflare account <https://dash.cloudflare.com/login> and click on 'Support' in the top right corner, which will take you to our Help Center.

I've had workaround using a VPN in the USA, but that's really slowing my work down and obviously this doesn't work for everyone.

phillipseamore 6 years ago |

Ping or mtr 104.17.92.24. Any loss? Route seems to be correct? I.e. doesn't look like it's being proxied with your ISP etc.

Does a regular HTTP request work? curl -v http://cloudflare.com If that replies wanting to redirect you to the HTTPS site I'd guess you are looking at either a problem with libressl or certs on your system.

You might also be coming from an IP or network that Cloudflare has simply blocked.

gtsteve 6 years ago |

It might be a local routing problem that will soon be resolved, but if this has been going on for a long time then perhaps nobody has noticed.

You could write to the owners of this website and ask if they'd be willing to let you access their origin URL directly. I think many would refuse but it might be worth trying your luck.

Aside from that I'm not really sure what you could do. Perhaps mention what country/city you're in and your ISP and see if local HN users can replicate your results.