Problem loading some pages, 522 error [Fixed]

[Nojay]

Browser: FireFox on Win10, also FireFox on Android phone. Located in Britain.

Some manga chapters, but not all, fail to load a given page with (eventually) a "click to retry" button. Clicking the button doesn't help, it just repeats.

It's always the same page for a given manga. Different mangas that have this problem have it happen on different numbered pages and it remains consistent even if I close and reopen the MangaDex webpage.

This issue only started happening about ten days ago for me (not exactly sure though).

I use the Polite Manga Downloader program to save copies of some mangas for offline reading and it also fails to access the same pages. The error messages in the program logs report that the remote server specifically returns a 522 error in that case. Here's an extract of the PMD program's error log for a typical failure:

- 02:26:58 Polite Mangadex Downloader 6.6.5.0 - 64-bit
...

03:23:51 Retrying (5/5)

• 03:24:37 https://cmdxd98sb0x3yprd.mangadex.n...75856b14696e63e09bdaf455376580474d468ae2d.jpg: The remote server returned an error: (522) <none>.
• 03:24:37 Chiyu Mahou no Machigatta Tsukaikata ~Senjou wo Kakeru Kaifuku Youin~ c84: Error getting image 5: The remote server returned an error: (522) <none>.

- 03:24:37 Downoad Queue: Done

 

[Angry_Panda]

Disclaimer: not a dev or otherwise a staff member. Not especially technical, but based on what I've seen:

Known error - been some discussion on the support channel of the discord about this. Appears to be occurring mostly in Western Europe. 522 isn't a standard HTML error and seems to indicate a Cloudflare issue ('Connection Timed Out', presumably between CF and an MD server somewhere along the line).

Using a VPN to get outside the region (and presumably away from the affect pathing/mirror) seems to resolve the issue, if that's an option.

 

[Nojay]

522 isn't a standard HTML error and seems to indicate a Cloudflare issue ('Connection Timed Out', presumably between CF and an MD server somewhere along the line).
As an experiment I tried forcibly loading the image listed in the log that didn't load (...ae2d.jpg) and got a CloudFlare error page in my browser. Further tests with other problem pages in different mangas suggest the issue I'm facing is with CloudFlare refusing connection with cmdxd98sb0x3yprd.mangadex.network

 

[hypo]

I encountered quite the same problem over the last few days, on 2 browsers on my desktop (FF and chrome) but also on FIrefox Android.

What I found is that you can have access to the failing pictures if you toggle the Data Saver setting, but also that the problem can appear on both settings, but for different pages and/or different chapters.

 

[Nojay]

Update: I have a crude workaround for the rare CloudFlare 522 errors popping up when I attempt to download a manga using Polite Manga Downloader. It requires direct intervention by me when the failure occurs to fix it on the fly but it seems to work although it might require a retry or two if I don't get the timing right. Long explanation follows...

I downloaded and installed ProtonVPN, the free version. This version explicitly doesn't support P2P traffic. MangaDex page loads trigger the P2P flag causing ProtonVPN to block the page load traffic but only after a delay. This delay is usually long enough for the problem page to get to my system though. So my process is:

Start ProtonVPN but do not connect to a remote server right away.
Start PMD downloading a manga that I know CloudFlare will have problems with, generating a 522 error.
Wait until PMD starts retrying and failing to load the problem page.
Quickly connect to a remote server on ProtonVPN. At this point PMD will retry getting the problem page via the VPN and it will usually succeed since it is requesting the page from a different server, not the problematic cmdxd98sb0x3yprd.mangadex.network.
Once PMD has downloaded the problem page then I immediately disconnect ProtonVPN. PMD will usually then load the rest of the pages of the manga using my non-VPN internet connection.

It's a lot of work to get around a CloudFlare incompatibility issue but it gets me my manga fix. It might also solve the "Click to Retry" problem when browsing manga directly on the site, I haven't tried that yet (wait until page fails to load, start VPN, disconnect after page loads? Might work)

 

[Tscheddov]

Update: I have a crude workaround for the rare CloudFlare 522 errors popping up when I attempt to download a manga using Polite Manga Downloader. It requires direct intervention by me when the failure occurs to fix it on the fly but it seems to work although it might require a retry or two if I don't get the timing right. Long explanation follows...

I downloaded and installed ProtonVPN, the free version. This version explicitly doesn't support P2P traffic. MangaDex page loads trigger the P2P flag causing ProtonVPN to block the page load traffic but only after a delay. This delay is usually long enough for the problem page to get to my system though. So my process is:

Start ProtonVPN but do not connect to a remote server right away.
Start PMD downloading a manga that I know CloudFlare will have problems with, generating a 522 error.
Wait until PMD starts retrying and failing to load the problem page.
Quickly connect to a remote server on ProtonVPN. At this point PMD will retry getting the problem page via the VPN and it will usually succeed since it is requesting the page from a different server, not the problematic cmdxd98sb0x3yprd.mangadex.network.
Once PMD has downloaded the problem page then I immediately disconnect ProtonVPN. PMD will usually then load the rest of the pages of the manga using my non-VPN internet connection.

It's a lot of work to get around a CloudFlare incompatibility issue but it gets me my manga fix. It might also solve the "Click to Retry" problem when browsing manga directly on the site, I haven't tried that yet (wait until page fails to load, start VPN, disconnect after page loads? Might work)

unrelated to your issue, but what is this downloader exactly ? only could find old forum posts from 2018 . . .
is there a github link ?

 

[Nojay]

unrelated to your issue, but what is this downloader exactly ? only could find old forum posts from 2018 . . .
is there a github link ?

https://sizer99.com/pmd/

It takes some configuration to set up but the person behind the program does try to keep up with changes to the MangaDex APIs to keep it working. I've not seen any malicious activity from running it myself (ads, miners, keyloggers etc.)

PMD doesn't hammer the MangaDex servers when downloading a manga, hence the "Polite" part of its name. You can set the minimum delay between page fetches with a random delay added for extra politeness.

Conveniently it does have a log window that reports errors if there are problems downloading a manga or a specific page. That's how I found out about CloudFlare not talking correctly to one of the MangaDex page-issuing servers (cmdxd98sb0x3yprd.mangadex.network)

 

[BraveDude8]

Should be fixed now, let us know if you're still experiencing this.