One Reason Why Your IPN Isn't Working Through PayPal

Discussion in 'Payments processing' started by gstrong, Apr 24, 2009.

  1. gstrong

    gstrong New Member

    Joined:
    Feb 20, 2009
    Messages:
    6
    Hey All,

    Had a problem that many people seem to have had here. I set up the PayPal IPN using the instructions, made sure I had a business account, and made sure all the settings were correct. However, whenever I did a test payment, aMember would not list the payment as complete. I had to go into the transaction and manually click on the checkbox.

    Once I did that, not only did it say "Yes" in the payment column, but I received my confirmation email.

    I checked the error logs, and found this line after each test:

    CURL ERROR: (1) - Protocol https not supported or disabled in libcurl

    After doing some research, I found out that the likely problem was that SSL is not enabled in my server's CURL configurations, as per:

    http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98168

    Essentially, PayPal tries to contact the IPN file on your server for confirmation, but your server refuses to let it access it. Therefore, it's unconfirmed, and you have to adjust the settings manually.

    I did this as a quick fix:


    1. Go to Setup/Configuration
    2. Click on PayPal Link (top tabs)
    3. Go to Disable IPN verification and select "Verification Disabled - DANGEROUS"
    4. (Read the note about why this is dangerous in the left column...)
    5. Click Save

    I did another test, and this happened:

    • Got receipt notification immediately
    • Payment posted immediately
    • Error log, top field said: "paypal_r DEBUG: successfully handled" (it only said "paypal_r DEBUG:" in previous messages)

    I'm not sure what the level of hacking danger is -- probably more if you are selling web developer software than knitting needles, due to the target market -- but obviously would be better to fix the root of the problem within the PHP configuration. If I figure it out, I'll post a fix here.

    ~Graham

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