MigrateToFlarum Lab, the health scanner for Flarum

clarkwinkelmann

Darkle ahah, oops. I forgot to disable the April Fools mode! It's gone now 👀

There are a few special extensions that appear when this mode is enabled 😇 I have enabled it each year but you might be the first visitor to actually notice 😂

Valeyard

Awesome resource, thanks!

clarkwinkelmann

The lab is now able to scan forums running Flarum 1.4.

While the release contains no breaking changes for extension, there was an important change to the inline javascript/json in the homepage I had not noticed in advance and of course it broke everything in my script.

In future lab updates I will probably start dropping compatibility with older Flarum betas, at the moment you can still scan forums that run versions as old as Flarum beta 7 (the current Flarum release when the lab was launched). The code starts getting a bit complicated with all the changes during the years.

fakruzaruret

Can we control extension's version control? Which is updated which is not updated? I think it should list unupdated extensions and show the last versions. Thank you very much for this great tool. @clarkwinkelmann

clarkwinkelmann

fakruzaruret I'm not sure what you mean I could/should change on the lab or what are you suggesting people do?

The lab tries to warn of extension updates but it's very limited in the ways it can guess the current version of the extension. If the lab isn't sure the extension is outdated, it won't say anything.

To check for updates on your own forum more accurately, you should use Mercury or the composer outdated -D command.

fakruzaruret

clarkwinkelmann such as mercury.

I used composer update -w command to update extensions but it does not works always. For example fof/sitemap extension is not updated this command. Then I found the new version (2.x) and I tried to update it changing composer json file. I learned the new version by chance. Composer outdated -Dshows other packages like illuminate etc.

Mercury shows a list current version and last versions. This is nice view to examine. But currently I cant use it I get error 🙁

https://discuss.flarum.org/d/27620-mercury-the-extiverse-extension-to-understand-extension-updates

command: php flarum mercury:update-check

CyberGene

May I suggest that you make the option to not publish the results the default one? Because from my understanding this is where a lot of recent Chinese spammers are getting their way to raid Flarum forums.

clarkwinkelmann

The Lab has been updated to detect Flarum versions 1.6.0, 1.6.1 and 1.6.2.

New scans for version 1.5.0, 1.6.0 and 1.6.1 will receive rating "D", won't appear on the homepage, and show a warning about the recent Flarum vulnerability with a link to https://discuss.flarum.org/d/31999

clarkwinkelmann

I have marked all Flarum versions that the lab can recognize (beta 7 to stable 1.6.1) as vulnerable.

The Lab cannot tell Flarum version 1.6.3 apart from 1.6.2 since all changes are server-side and you need an account to probe for the vulnerability, so 1.6.2 will not show a vulnerable rating. You should still update as soon as possible if you are still running Flarum 1.6.2.

If you are wondering why the list of recent scans disappeared (already a few weeks ago), the SQL query that fetched that information was poorly written and there are now so many entries in the database that the whole website would time out because of it. I still haven't had time to rewrite it properly, so for the time being the list is hidden.

FullThrottle83

Sorry to bother you Clark.
I've previously gotten A+ score in your tool. 😃

Now I get this

I am 100% that it's my fault, but do you know which parameters control this?
I've messed around with permissions, reinstalling composer and other stuff.
Forum still works, but for example your anonymous extension don't.

I'm grasping for clues for what to troubleshoot

clarkwinkelmann

FullThrottle83 what's your Flarum version in admin dashboard? All versions below 1.6.2 will receive rate D. If you really are on Flarum beta 8 or 9 you need to update ASAP as there have been numerous security fixes since then. If you were up to date but no longer are, maybe you ran a composer update that accidentally forced Flarum to downgrade?

I'll need to know your forum URL to investigate further. You can send it to me privately via Discord or email if you prefer.

clarkwinkelmann

FullThrottle83 as confirmed on Discord, the odd "beta"/vulnerable results were because Cloudflare Rocket Loader interfered with my version detection code.

I have published an update to the lab that fixes the version detection and shows a message at the top of the scan if Cloudflare Rocket Loader was detected. Most of the features work but the list of extensions on the Lab will be incomplete when Rocket Loader is active, because my code only looks for specific patterns in the assets and those are different when Rocket Loader is active.

While Rocket Loader causes issues with my Lab scanner, I am not aware of it causing any issue when it comes to using Flarum. I am curious whether it brings any benefits though, because according to the Cloudflare documentation this feature accelerates the website rendering by prioritizing text and images and delaying javascript. But since Flarum is a single page app, nothing will be visible until javascript is loaded anyway. So it could maybe even be worse? I'd be curious to know if anyone made tests to compare the performance with any without Rocket Loader.

FullThrottle83

It is up to date 🙂

My problem started when I updated composer from 2.4.2 to 2.5.2
Don't remember exactly, but at some stage I ran it as root.
That must've messed up permissions somehow. I think that is the cause of this.

You are most kind, I'll reach out to you on discord. To seek your knowledge, not to demand anything!

FullThrottle83

Thank you for your fast fix, and for identifying and explaining the cause!

You are correct, it makes hardly any difference with Rocket Loader enabled.

Without

With

Cloudflare's own speed test - Upper value is with Rocket Loader

I come from mainly handling WordPress, where Rocket Loader can have a bigger impact (depending on the site).
I'll be trying out other settings in Cloudflare.

clarkwinkelmann

The Lab can now scan Flarum 1.8 forums.

I also fixed an issue that caused forums using the FontAwesome6 extension to be impossible to scan.

JakeSteph

I discovered it completely breaks with the extension Private Forum Facade, due to the redirect it does to the /login page, therefore it will always cap you to a C, and even when the extention is removed MTF Labs still thinks the homepage is https://example.com/login, despite the canonical domain being https://example.com, and no matter how it is typed in the scan bar, will revert to https://example.com/login 😐

clarkwinkelmann

JakeSteph thanks for the report, I'll look into this and see what I can do.

ernestdefoe

No longer applies to the site I had listed.

navindra

clarkwinkelmann Wow, very very nice. It's very cool that you can detect the installed extensions... it helps to learn how some of the sites like https://outdoor.lifestyle are implemented.

Xkyer

Hello Clark,

I build a new project, and i get a D into your scan tool. When i try to visit www.example.com/forum/vendor i got access denied at my browser and when i use your tool i get a missing vendor X your vendor folder is publicly reachable.

clarkwinkelmann

Xkyer at the bottom of the report, you can see the list of requests that were performed to make the report. The lab tries to access several known files inside those folders.

Flarum comes with the necessary protections for these folders, make sure to follow the installation instructions carefully https://docs.flarum.org/install

If the config file you shared in Xkyer is the one used on this forum, the Require all denied block might not be written correctly, I believe they might only block the directory index, but not any file underneath. You already have the AllowOverride All block that should enable Flarum's htaccess file. Make sure that .htaccess file still exists, that you un-commented the rewrite rules https://docs.flarum.org/install#customizing-paths and that the Apache Rewrite module is enabled on your server.

If you need more help, it would be best to open a dedicated support discussion. Share your php flarum info output and details about your hosting company and the webserver software in use.

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