Behat: example.org is unreliable for anti-spam

[Gold]

This feature is failing on the main branch.

./mahara_behat.sh rundebug settings/register_configuration.feature

And I press "Register"
And I should be on "/register.php"
And I should see "You have successfully [...snip...] processed."
      The text "You have successfully [...snip...] processed." was not found anywhere in the text of the current page.

I added a breakpoint and took a look at the page. The form does report the attached error, and the content of the form looks okay. The error doesn't indicate which field is the issue either.

I tried adding a second institution and selecting that just in case. It didn't change the outcome.

Further investigation has tracked this to the anti-spam we use. Turns out the domain 'example.org' may not be the best to test against.

On htdocs/lib/antispam/AdvancedSpamTrap.php line 35 we check the validity of the domain name by checking for MX, A, and AAAA records. This was my local results:

gold@shipnet:~/Mahara/codereview/test/behat ((baa775acad...)) $ php -a
Interactive mode enabled

php > $domain = 'example.org';
php > echo (checkdnsrr($domain, 'MX'))?'Y':'N';
N
php > echo (checkdnsrr($domain, 'A'))?'Y':'N';
N
php > echo (checkdnsrr($domain, 'AAAA'))?'Y':'N';
N
php > $domain = 'example.com';
php > echo (checkdnsrr($domain, 'MX'))?'Y':'N';
N
php > echo (checkdnsrr($domain, 'A'))?'Y':'N';
Y
php > echo (checkdnsrr($domain, 'AAAA'))?'Y':'N';
N
php >

At this point I would be inclined to be swapping out instances of `example.org` for `example.com` (or at least another domain we can rely on) in the behat tests.

[Robert Lyon (robertl-9)]

It's failing at the spamtrap check in htdocs/auth/lib.php line 3254 - so not an issue with the behat test but an issue with the spamtrap checker
I suspect one of the spam checkers is timing out and so causing the form validation to fail

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Do we need to have the spam settings set for this test? Both example.org and example.com are domains that can be used for illustrative purposes.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Mahara because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Robert Lyon (robertl-9)]

The failings here only occur when there is DNS issues at example.org / example.com

And looking at the answer section from dig:

dig example.org

;; ANSWER SECTION:
example.org. 33350 IN A 93.184.216.34

dig example.com

;; ANSWER SECTION:
example.com. 86400 IN A 93.184.216.34

They resolve to the same place so using one of the other may not give us peace of mind - we just have to cope with their DNS being down / broken once in a while.

The official documentation at https://www.iana.org/domains/reserved mentions that these are the proper domains to use for this purpose, it says:

IANA-managed Reserved Domains

Certain domains are set aside, and nominally registered to “IANA”, for specific policy or technical purposes.

Example domains

As described in RFC 2606 and RFC 6761, a number of domains such as example.com and example.org are maintained for documentation purposes. These domains may be used as illustrative examples in documents without prior coordination with us.