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Drupal: HTTP request status fails / Drupal Status Page Reports Errors

February 23rd, 2010 | by admin |

Drupal status: http request fails

HTTP request status Fails

Your system or network configuration does not allow Drupal to access web pages, resulting in reduced functionality. This could be due to your webserver configuration or PHP settings, and should be resolved in order to download information about available updates, fetch aggregator feeds, sign in via OpenID, or use other network-dependent services.

This error is actually caused by web server settings – in particular PHP’s settings (detailed in php.ini). Your web host may have disabled the following features:

• allow_fopen_url
• allow_url_fopen

If you are lucky you can add a quick hack to the top of index.php in Drupal’s root…

ini_set('allow_fopen_url','On');
ini_set('allow_url_fopen','On');

Try again after adding the above. If it still wont work your host may have disabled fsockopen() function in php.ini. You will need to ask them to enable it for you.

As far as I have found Drupals drupal_http_request function needs fsockopen() as you can see here – (http://api.drupal.org/api/function/drupal_http_request/6) and to have
allow_fopen_url and allow_url_fopen enabled in order to work.

If this won’t work then you may have to call and beg your host to enable these two PHP features – then Drupal will be fine