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Dealing with Cloudflare 520 errors


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Not sure how many of you are running into this, but a number of my site's members run into Cloudflare 520 responses, but it's not tied to anything my host can identify and it's limited to a subset of members (i.e. isn't a common problem for all members indicating a configuration or server sided issue).

Thus far, it has been limited to Chrome users and the fix has been to Clear Browsing Data (all cookies, cache, etc).  However, there are a number of users that can't get the "instructions" are facing 520s not knowing how to use Incognito mode or a different browser to get to our site's page explaining the fix.

With that said, is there a way for me to intercept or customize the 520 error and landing page via Cloudflare to provide these instructions or redirect to a page of my choice (and I'm I'd imagine it can't be hosted on the same site otherwise they would just get an error to that)

Edited by Clover13
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7 minutes ago, Dll said:

I don't think this is a cloudflare issue, it's a server issue behind it. 

Generally it is, but if you search around this issue you'll see many randomly receive it.  I would say if every user (myself included) is getting CF 520s, then it's likely to be a server sided issue. 

However if it's only a subset and isolated to one browser for those users (i.e. Chrome normal is broken for them, however Chrome Incognito works, as does Firefox, Edge, etc), then it's likely an issue with the user's machine.  This is further reinforced by the impacted users I've worked with so far Clearing Browser Data in their instance of Chrome and that fixing the issue for them.

I suspect it's something to do with cookies impacting header limitations in CF (that the origin server doesn't have), and the subsequent Clearing Browser Data (which clears cookies as part of it) resolves the issue. However I am just speculating, if I could reproduce this on my machine I could debug it better but my users are not very computer savvy so getting them to simply do the Clearing Browser Data has been a challenge.  This is also why I want to replace the default CF 520 page with a custom one with instructions, since most users (in my niche) may not think of trying Incognito mode or a different browser to get to the site and view the site topic with these same instructions.

It just kinda sucks to have to spend $20/month to serve up a custom 520 page with instructions to fix it, whereas I could re-route it to another site/page that isn't fronted by CF.  There are other benefits to CF Pro however.

Edited by Clover13
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