Live Writer 418 Unused Server Error

Upon inspecting the access log, here is what I see:

[Fri Sep 19 05:37:45 2014] [error] [client xx.xx.xx.xxx] ModSecurity: Access denied with code 418 (phase 2). Pattern match “/admin/sqlpatch.php/password_forgotten.php” at REQUEST_URI. [file “/dh/apache2/template/etc/mod_sec2/99_dreamhost_rules.conf”] [line “38”] [id “1990005”] [hostname “www.mydomain.com”] [uri “/2010/01/admin/sqlpatch.php/password_forgotten.php”] [unique_id “VBwjmUBaJ-cAAEWHU0kAAAAz”]

Looks like this is a dreamhost security measure with ModSecurity. Having them look into it.

I was having the exact same problem until I upgraded my WordPress installation to 4.0.

Turns out this is a part of Dreamhost’s mod_security, and while it does help protect your server against hacking, it seems to interfere with consistent uploading of posts with pictures in them via livewriter.

You have 3 options, just keep posting until it works (sometimes over 10 times), just use the default wordpress editor, which to its credit, has gotten much better over the years, or switch hosts.

Thanks for responding so quickly! I edited my post to say that it worked after upgrading WP to 4.0 through the WP Dashboard, not through Dreamhost’s panel.

So for some explanation, LiveWriter is white listed in mod security BUT it sometimes passes the wrong headers so it trips the scans we do. We’re upgrading our whitelist and scans to allow it, and certainly you can turn off the extra web security, but frankly I’d consider using the WP dashboard as it is much better.

Also there’s no appreciable difference between the DH upgrades and the default WP one, since our upgrades just runs WP’s

Just moved to DreamHost a couple weeks ago, mostly because the previous host took forever to figure out why Live Writer stopped working if I needed to upload posts with pictures (it was some other error, not 418). Finally they completely disabled mod security on my account and I was able to post again.

Now on DreamHost I’m seeing this 418 at random times. Usually it’s when I’m trying to log in to my control panel from Firefox. Today I got it several times trying to publish a long-ish post with about 15 small pictures (screen shots).

One thing I like about Live Writer is that I can drag in a screen shot and it auto-resizes and links to the full-size picture. I can set the thumbnail to be small, medium, or large. I also save local drafts over a period of hours or days as I write a post. Mika, you say the WP dashboard is better, but aren’t these “offline” tasks that only a dedicated program can handle?