Jetpack: Connection: Giving Incorrect Error about Site Connected to Another Account when Connection Fails

[tmmbecker]

I've noticed this a few times recently so I think it's something that we should look into. Several users have contacted us when seeing this error:

"This site is already connected to a different WordPress.com user, you need to disconnect that user before you can connect another."

But when checking the connection, the site was connected but is actually not currently connected at all. For example:

Debug: https://jetpack.com/support/debug/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.colerainesurestart.org.uk%2F
Internal ref: 753945-hc

It was connected originally on 2014/11/25 but hadn't updated with us since 2017/12/13. The site was connected to the user that is contacting us.

Seems like something's not right with the broken connection and the error message that we're sending when they try to reconnect.

Delete and reinstall has fixed each site experiencing this problem.

Other examples:
1745309-hc (Site: breakmytoys.com )

585295-hc (Site: annabellesattic.net )

1745646-hc (seerssee.com)

753945-hc (www.e-makul.com)

moved from 1697-gh-jpop-issues

[joendotcom]

1752498-hc / 947656-zen

Site: http://www.fencingmasters.com/

This user was very helpful. We could not get Jetpack activated. It installed, but upon clicking Activate user's site went 500 error. I got him to send us the log file, here is copy/paste:

[08-Feb-2018 08:16:49 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Call to undefined function request_filesystem_credentials() in /home/fencingm/public_html/fmw/wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader-skin.php on line 93
[08-Feb-2018 12:35:08 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /home/fencingm/public_html/fmw/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/modules/widgets/milestone/milestone.php on line 391
[08-Feb-2018 12:35:13 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /home/fencingm/public_html/fmw/wp-includes/class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php on line 5679
[08-Feb-2018 12:35:32 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /home/fencingm/public_html/fmw/wp-includes/class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php on line 5679
[08-Feb-2018 12:45:37 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /home/fencingm/public_html/fmw/wp-includes/class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php on line 5025
[08-Feb-2018 12:56:22 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /home/fencingm/public_html/fmw/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/modules/widgets/milestone/milestone.php on line 391
[08-Feb-2018 13:06:41 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 67108864 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /home/fencingm/public_html/fmw/wp-includes/class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php on line 6399

Asking user to raise memory limit, as that seems to be the issue in this case.

[joendotcom]

1752498-hc

Site: N/A, never connected yet and user disappeared from chat. Followed up by ticket: 947695-zen

[joendotcom]

1752173-hc

Site: https://basicallybipolar.com/

[joendotcom]

@jenhooks noted:

For the users I’ve encountered, a deactivate > reactivate > reconnect has been working to sort this out.

[joendotcom]

1753998-hc

Site: pembrokeshirebikes.co.uk

Confirmed that this user was able to connect after using @jenhooks' suggestion of deactivating and reactivating.

[NujabesSoul]

1751209-HC

Lost them during the chat but they seem to have had the issue. I tried to get them to connect again but they stopped responding and left so I'm not sure if they were done on their end.

[jenhooks]

1755447-hc

[chaselivingston]

1432030-hc
https://www.sosviaggiatore.it/

EDIT: The user reports that deactivating/reactivating fixed it for them.

[ntpixels]

947180-zen
asking them to deactivate and reactivate; will edit if that fixes things.

[jeherve]

Also in 1760856-hc

[NujabesSoul]

953743-HC

Asked them to reinstall

[tmmbecker]

1764997-hc. cycled the connection fixed it.

[chaselivingston]

1766173-hc

deactivating/reactivating fixed it

[danjjohnson]

1784014-hc

delete/reinstall fixed it.

[tmmbecker]

1784448-hc

delete/reinstall worked

[chaselivingston]

951913-zen

Asked them to deactivate/reactivate

[chaselivingston]

1634311-hc

[chaselivingston]

1790049-hc

[chaselivingston]

1790127-hc

EDIT: Delete/reinstall fixed it.

[jeherve]

1793310-hc

[annezazu]

1296763-hc

[gaurav1984]

1801730-hc

www.uroc.coffee

_RC for the site showed it was connected with [email protected] email address_

[gaurav1984]

1802606-hc

[tmmbecker]

1804453-hc

RC for the site shows it connected to [email protected]

[chaselivingston]

957037-zen

[danjjohnson]

1789613-hc

RC shows Admin Email: [email protected]

[chaselivingston]

1806428-hc

[NujabesSoul]

1807103-HC and 1807542-HC same user, same issues.

[georgestephanis]

This seems to be a lot of issues all centering around the past week. I'm investigating currently, but my guess is something bad went out with the latest update.

Have any of these problems occurred with a prior version of Jetpack?

[georgestephanis]

The string spotted comes from here:

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/5bbf1019d92943c01f8c84c0f22b13ebf676846c/client/jetpack-connect/jetpack-connect-notices.jsx#L171-L174

The const being tested for ( ALREADY_CONNECTED_BY_OTHER_USER ) maps as follows:

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/5bbf1019d92943c01f8c84c0f22b13ebf676846c/client/jetpack-connect/connection-notice-types.js#L10

alreadyConnectedByOtherUser doesn't seem to appear as a string anywhere but in Calypso, so my guess is that it's just used elsewhere in calypso as a const and passed around, without having any external pattern matches.

It's getting fired off by:

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/30b6c1b8d322efcd61485fd28f57364640d831c6/client/jetpack-connect/authorize.js#L405-L415

That conditional also reads similar to:

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/30b6c1b8d322efcd61485fd28f57364640d831c6/client/jetpack-connect/authorize.js#L309-L312

the bulk of which seems to trace back to https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/commit/b86e401086f6fbf46ae31ff74719abb0b6b25a32 from this pull request by @roccotripaldi

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/pull/15852

My working theory right now (with admittedly little evidence to validate it) is that the error is saying the site is already connected to a different wpcom user, but the conditionals aren't testing if the connected user !== the current user -- so it just means it's already connected, and would need an extra conditional to verify the user ids aren't the same.

@roccotripaldi -- any thoughts / input / hot takes?

[tmmbecker]

In addition to all of that, is there some reason why a lot of these sites are showing as connected to these strange user email addresses?

[tmmbecker]

947512-zen

[georgestephanis]

@tmmbecker So, possibly of interest, WP Core defaults the admin_email option to [email protected] --

https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/aaf99e691391cfceb004d848450dbbf3344b1bee/wp-admin/includes/schema.php#L407

[georgestephanis]

Minor tweak: looks like @roccotripaldi is out until 2/19, paging anyone at @Automattic/poseidon that may have some history with this code to offer hot takes?

[StefMattana]

Another one here 952365-zen
Asked to reinstall JP

[lezama]

cc @johnHackworth and @Automattic/luna as they have been fighting the connection process lately.

[zinigor]

One more report here: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/jetpack-set-up-site-already-connected-no-access/

[StefMattana]

952823-zen
Asked to reinstall

[joendotcom]

1753440-hc
https://obvioveiculos.com.br/

[joendotcom]

1814408-hc

[jeherve]

953257-zen

[NujabesSoul]

1824497-hc

[georgestephanis]

Got another internal report from @rickybanister --

I just one second ago hit this

in this case, that error is not true I don’t think. I created a PRessable test site, signed up for pressable with wpcom, so the account matches, and I saw that.

[annezazu]

1827523-hc

[jeherve]

1124776-hc

[tmmbecker]

802067-hc

[roccotripaldi]

Oof! I think I found the problem.

I say oof, because the problem is in Jetpack with this line:

https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/blob/master/class.jetpack-connection-banner.php#L87

i'm working on a PR to fix

[annezazu]

1851549-hc

[annezazu]

1851647-hc

[NujabesSoul]

1852369-HC

[danjjohnson]

1854401-hc

[jeherve]

1854438-hc

[sirreal]

8881 Should fix the problem.

Until that is released, I suspect that a workaround via Calypso-initiated connections should be ok. The users can manually enter their URL at https://wordpress.con/jetpack/connect.

[StefMattana]

Just checked that ^^ (YAY) but meanwhile I got this ticket so reporting it: 964309-zen

[sirreal]

We've deployed a Calypso-side patch to mitigate this problem (https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/pull/22609). We'll plan to revert that when there's a Jetpack release with the fix from #8881

Documented here p7rd6c-1gh-p2

[georgestephanis]

Even after the new version of Jetpack ships, folks may be continuing to use the old version to connect and thereby break things -- so it may be best to leave the conditional in Calypso until affected versions drops to negligible levels according to plugin version tracking. https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/advanced/

[oskosk]

@georgestephanis but people using old versions of Jetpack will be already connected (probably)

[georgestephanis]

Yeah, I know, I'm more thinking about edge cases, which at our scale is still a decent bit. We'll see -- hopefully I'm overthinking it.

[sirreal]

We're considering removing the Calypso-side workaround and restoring the original behavior. Anyone care to weigh in?

https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/pull/22613#issuecomment-396521051