What does error code 429 mean?

When some tool etc. tries to connect to a WordPress page hosted by Seravo you might come across an HTTP error code 429 Too many Requests, if the tool is considered to be doing too much requests. This status message is shown to the one committing the HTTP request (for example via terminal or console) as well as to the site administrator through server logs.

Below is an example of log /data/log/nginx-access.log which shows that someone who tried to load the page /wp-login.php had an 429 error instead of a login page.

[30/Jan/2020:15:52:49 +0200] "GET /wp-login.php HTTP/1.1" 429 162 "-" "Mozilla/5.0

These 429 HTTP-responses are a part of information security policy provided to customers by Seravo. Security measures get activated when traffic from the same IP-address is too frequent (for example DOS attack) and especially when directly pointed to an admin or a login site (for example brute force -attack). In normal situation no-one should be seeing these security measures taking place since the basic user doesn’t normally try to load the site 200 times per minute when using a normal web browser.

You may also come across to the error message when using a tool that is loading all the pages on the site very quickly. When this occurs it is recommended to check tool settings so it would go through the pages more gradually.