I am really frustrated out how these hosting companies are turning out. This happens for every single host I have used.!!!!!!!!
Geek onboard - PM if I can assist.
I've seen similar due to BIG threads (pics, valvecasters, etc) causing instability in these types of forums and it could be worth closing the threads "archiving" and starting new.
Might have no connection.
Thank Aron.
I got a process list from tech support and it was weird. Every printout was from the word press php file. I wonder if spammers are targeting the blog? I turned off registration, got rid of every user and deleted all of the comments (which were spam). There were tons of spam comments. Hopefully this was the problem.
I posted a message on simple machines. Yes it would be nice if I could archive the current forum but still have access to it somehow. Checking on that.
Sounds similar to a denial of service attack.
I'm afraid to touch anything! :icon_eek:
I would also check to see if there is a wpress update - just to make sure you're not having an injection exploit from wpress impacting on the forum.
Jdansti - can you elaborate on the DoS thought? I mean DoS is pretty general - if users can't connect a DoS has been sucessfull, what flavour were you thinking?
Meh, after over a decade here, I'm used to writing the same posts over and over again. :icon_lol:
But I feel your frustration with this.
Which reminds me, If I have a PNP Rangemaster and PNP Ge Fuzz face but have wired the DC jacks to match the Boss ones (pin/sleeve) and have it all running off a PP+2.... :D
Yes I do have the latest word press installed. Lets see how things go.
Quote from: mistahead on June 25, 2013, 09:41:41 PM
Jdansti - can you elaborate on the DoS thought? I mean DoS is pretty general - if users can't connect a DoS has been sucessfull, what flavour were you thinking?
I was just commenting on the similarity between Aron's comment about "tons of spam comments" and what happens during a DoS attack. I know it's not exactly the same thing, but in a DoS, the target is flooded with so many communication requests that it becomes overloaded and can't handle legitimate traffic. In this case it's sort of like my mother sending so much spam to my wife's work email that her inbox fills up and she can't get real work email. (And then I have to deal with the situation. :-[ )
Yeah - good call mate, the fact it was the wpress file and flooding does look like DoS via spam bot / script attack... not so much a targeted DDoS (think LOIC) attack.
Maybe we should start a debugging page lol.
we lost some really good information from previous posts. also, it's about 3-4 days worth.
and here's me thinking i'd somehow violated the terms & conditions by one of my topics & a post disappearing! 99% of the things i say are probably inappropriate in one way or another, but i do make an effort to be civil here. lol
probably not much help, but i've noticed intermittent connection problems to this forum stretching back a bit longer than 3-4 days and possibly even more than a week (i don't remember much).
Quote from: mistahead on June 25, 2013, 11:10:47 PM
Yeah - good call mate, the fact it was the wpress file and flooding does look like DoS via spam bot / script attack... not so much a targeted DDoS (think LOIC) attack.
Maybe we should start a debugging page lol.
Lol, that might be a good idea, but I'm a total noob at this network, Internet stuff. The only reason I know about DoS is because an EE described to me how broadcasting my home wireless router's name could make me vulnerable to DoS, even with firewalls in place. For example, someone could have a program set up to constantly try to log onto my network, and even though they couldn't get in, just the fact that they would be constantly
trying to could slow my wireless network down considerably. Of course, the attacker would have to be a neighbor or someone outside my home with a laptop. ;)
Here's a noob question: does the forum software have the ability to use captcha security, especially in the areas that are being pounded by spammers? Would it help?
I think it was word press being spammed, not the forum. We will see,
There is a pattern here... I think it has to do with the JFET self bias entry ;D
Quote from: tca on June 26, 2013, 05:03:12 AM
There is a pattern here... I think it has to do with the JFET self bias entry ;D
I think you are on to something. It is possible to self-bias JFETs, but it clearly violates some basic law of nature, which in-term knocks the forum over. Either that, or it it has piqued the interest of PRISM.
We can probably recover quite a few of the last week's posts using web caching, but it will be a little bit of a slog.
Quote from: Jdansti on June 26, 2013, 03:18:00 AM
Here's a noob question: does the forum software have the ability to use captcha security, especially in the areas that are being pounded by spammers? Would it help?
Oh,
PLEASE let us not go there! Those things are so annoying to deal with - especially with the small, soft-focused screen of a laptop.
Denial of service is one thing, but it would not account for a week of postings going AWOL. These should be stored on the server. Denial of Service simply means you can't get on the site. Call the FBI or NSA - they should have your content because they record everything. If they deny they have everything, start a thread about an Iranian stompbox. They will record from then on.
Quote from: David on June 26, 2013, 08:28:54 AM
Oh, PLEASE let us not go there! Those things are so annoying to deal with - especially with the small, soft-focused screen of a laptop.
David, captcha doesn't need to be those wildly curved and hard to read characters. It can be a simple random 3 or 4 digit (and easy to read) number that you have to re-type in a field.
It could block the major part of spam posts on the forum.
Quote from: amptramp on June 26, 2013, 09:19:09 AM
Denial of service is one thing, but it would not account for a week of postings going AWOL. These should be stored on the server. Denial of Service simply means you can't get on the site. Call the FBI or NSA - they should have your content because they record everything. If they deny they have everything, start a thread about an Iranian stompbox. They will record from then on.
Ha ha! That's a good strategy. :icon_lol:
Aron: Is it a bandwidth limit that your host has or something? My website has between 29 & 32 gigs of bandwidth used every month and it's online like 99.5% of the time, my host never shuts it down because of going over some limit. If it's something else, I would sure like to know what it is.
Some of the lost threads might still exist on some of the search engine's caches. I found a lost thread by typing something like: "title of the thread, that I'm looking for".
In this case, Bing had the cached page, so I saved it to my hard disk.
my thread disappearing meant i had to use my brain for once and have just successfully resolved a ticking problem in a compressor. it's not all bad! maybe the servers should screw up more often!
I been trying to pique prism for 2 weeks now. maybe I should start blowing a whistle. I thought I heard an nsa somebody say they "don't keep [information/data] on innocent americans". no sense of irony there, either. so they either have all the lost posts, or they have none, and missed about the north korean fuzz box development programme.
captcha would mean I'd need to turn on 'images' ALL THE TIME nearly. on my connection, that's a bad thing.
I won't comment anything constructive, I'll just mourn my first posts because I spent so much time on them and liked them a lot. Plus, one started this really nice thread about drilling :( (I know there are loads of them already, there was some advice I'd never read though) :'(
apparently it's all our fault and our chaps down at gchq. ambiguously legally tapping into the transatlantic submarine fibre optic cables that link east to west in this one round world that we all share. or something.
*edit* sorry about that, by the way.
that drilling thread was going great guns.
if we find the/a thread in our hdd cache, what do we do with it, keep it to ourself and gloat at the board loss, or post it somehow?
Quote from: duck_arse on June 26, 2013, 10:54:20 AM
if we find the/a thread in our hdd cache, what do we do with it, keep it to ourself and gloat at the board loss, or post it somehow?
The same question here. I've re-posted my thread on an experiment that I've done using some of the info that I had written in a text file before posting at the time. Although I can't remember the users that posted there.
I always clean the browsers cache after closing it...
Quote from: David on June 26, 2013, 08:28:54 AM
Quote from: Jdansti on June 26, 2013, 03:18:00 AM
Here's a noob question: does the forum software have the ability to use captcha security, especially in the areas that are being pounded by spammers? Would it help?
Oh, PLEASE let us not go there! Those things are so annoying to deal with - especially with the small, soft-focused screen of a laptop.
I agree that they are a PITA, but some are better than others. I can easily handle my bank's CAPTCHA, but I usually struggle on other sites. As Aron said, the problem doesn't appear to be the forum itself.
There indeed are some very simple captcha online - one of the best I've seen is the click captcha on casper electronics - it had stuff like click the largest circle, number etc. Good enough for general spamming, I guess and yet subtle.
I've found a cached version of the drill thread, but unfortunately it's only 6 posts long. Only has my first post on it. And i've set my browser to automatically clear cache :/
A simple unique skill testing question works equally as well - something like "what is the three letter abbreviation for "Do It Yourself?" Before the days of captcha, I modified a forum I was running to use one of these and it was 100% effective.
Weird, did a top in SSH and we are not even close to using the memory on the VPS. There's at least 600MB free. Maybe it was the word press php scripts acting up. Will monitor this.
lost or cached?
No 600MB of RAM free. I have tons of disk space free.
i was thinking of the 'lost' week of posts. they're out there somewhere, shirley? that's how the internet works, aint it? how much of a ball ache it would be to re instate is another thing entirely... just thinking out loud...
Sounds like a software glitch or something. Is it possible to have a virus?
OK the server got upgraded. We should be ok for a long time.
Quote from: Mark Hammer on June 25, 2013, 09:42:23 PM
Meh, after over a decade here, I'm used to writing the same posts over and over again. :icon_lol:
But I feel your frustration with this.
Could you repeat your tips for improving a Tubescreamer? I think it got lost in that week worth of posts.
Now THAT is funny on so many levels. :icon_mrgreen:
CAPTCHA is dead. This article (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/377590/time-to-kill-off-captcha) makes a good case.
I didn't realize Mark was an expert on the Tube Screamer. I missed those posts while trying to get the forum fixed!
Mark is the man. Just call him TS-Man.
Quote from: ggedamed on June 27, 2013, 02:53:32 PM
CAPTCHA is dead. This article (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/realworld/377590/time-to-kill-off-captcha) makes a good case.
Can't argue with that. The article does confirm that asking as contextual question is about 100% effective as GGBB has experienced.
Seems like the forum is working better once I locked down wordpress and the server got more memory.
Thanks Aron!
Is there any hope for the 'misplaced content'?
>Is there any hope for the 'misplaced content'?
No