Website Updates and Issues

This is the welcome and goodbye section for the community. New members should introduce themselves here, read the rules and get free cookies!

Moderator: Developers

User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

We've upgraded phpBB to 3.0.11 (from 3.0.8). The reason for the downtime was because our database was bigger than normal, and SF decided that that was because of spam and took it down.

I had to disable the search function to cut down on database size (from 150MB to 50MB), but we may run into their spam measures again :|

We should be back up to normal :o
...
User avatar
Shade
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Posts: 7349
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:25 pm
Location: Gensokyo

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by Shade »

That's pretty retarded. Damn you, Sourceforge.

And my post disappeared, too. Damn.
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

hmm... I was thinking we lost the forums on Nov 26, not Nov 25 :|

Oops, we lost some posts, I guess.

Let me know if some things are broken!
...
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

Here's the e-mail they sent everyone who's connected to the project on SF:

Code: Select all

Your project, Egoboo, was found to have one or more databases taking up an inordinate amount of disk space. We've checked the contents of a number of such databases, and we found them to filled with spam comments. As such, we've taken a backup of this data, and then took the database offline.

If you were legitimately using that space, or if you are willing to clear out any illegitimate spam content from these databases, please let us know via a support ticket and we'll get this sorted out: https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/site-support/new/

Best Regards,
Chris Tsai
SourceForge Support
sfnet_ops@geek.net
They took both of our databases (the phpBB2 and phpBB3), the phpBB2 was ~50MB, the phpBB3 was ~150MB
...
bgbirdsey
{]-[0{0|307 (Developer)
{]-[0{0|307 (Developer)
Posts: 1864
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:22 am
Location: Minnesota, USA

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by bgbirdsey »

We cannot eliminate the search capability since it is the only means to get a listing of "posts since your last visit."

I have disabled posting attachments in posts and private messages. There is no telling what kind of abuse could happen through that channel. And since there is no way to know what is being stored in someone's inbox, or what malicious message might be spammed to all users it is better to turn it off.

It seems there is no simple way for us to see what is causing the memory problem, so here are a couple of suggestions.

1) Find out which post in "Off Topic" has the attached file and edit the post to remove the attachment or delete the post.
2) Consider eliminating the so-called "SPAM" folder. If not, it may be pruned. This may be the cause of the confusion in the email from SourceForge. If it is that important, someone can rip it from here and post it on some other site.
3) we should possibly prune the forum games section.
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

? Attachments are on the web server, not the database.
There are currently 12 attachments, totaling only 1 MB on the webserver. (the limit is 5 MB)

There is an option to use the mysql server as the search thing (-mysql instead of -native, the default), but I dunno how that works :(

All it was is that our database was larger than normal, and they removed it since usually when databases are larger than normal, they are filled with (unwanted) spam. I don't know if they even looked in the database itself.
...
User avatar
Shade
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Posts: 7349
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:25 pm
Location: Gensokyo

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by Shade »

We could always just rename the "SPAM" thread into something like "General silliness" or something if that's an issue.

It might also be of help to delete the hundreds of spambots cluttering up our member list, even those that have never actually posted anything.
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

This is the info I got via my ticket asking why the database poofed.

Code: Select all

Greetings,

The database has been restored. And for the record, the reason this was removed was that the size of the database was considerably larger than the normal range, which in the vast majority of cases, means that there's a large amount of spam.

Please review the data in your database, and make sure to clear out any spam you may have so that this doesn't happen again.

Regards,
Chris Tsai, SourceForge.net Support
So, delete the spambots, rename SPAM to something else, and we should be good?
...
bgbirdsey
{]-[0{0|307 (Developer)
{]-[0{0|307 (Developer)
Posts: 1864
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:22 am
Location: Minnesota, USA

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by bgbirdsey »

Is there any reason to retain 99 pages of general silliness? As far as I can see, that is the only thread on our forum that could account for such a large footprint.

Also, where is the data for the private messages? Is it also in the php database? I could look all this stuff up somewhere, I'm sure, but I would really rather do other things.
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

There are currently 1011 private messages totalling to 1 MiB in the mysql database.

The only data that are not in the mysql database are the actual attachments and the avatars uploaded.

Removing the whole of "SPAM" and "Word Association Game" would only reduce the footprint by 20% or so. We just have more posts a day than usual (40 a day for the last 4 years!)
...
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

Do we still wish for a monospace font with support for colors and sizes and such? It can be added easily if we want it.
...
User avatar
Shade
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Posts: 7349
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:25 pm
Location: Gensokyo

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by Shade »

Always good to have, so why not.
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

This should be working, hooray!

It uses the same font as the code bbcode for the default theme
...
User avatar
Shade
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Potion Mimic (Senior Member)
Posts: 7349
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:25 pm
Location: Gensokyo

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by Shade »

Aye, thanks. AoD may want to use it for the status table in his PnP. :)
User avatar
penguinflyer5234
Sheep (Developer)
Sheep (Developer)
Posts: 3025
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 1:39 am
Location: Best Southwest

Re: Website Updates and Issues

Post by penguinflyer5234 »

Avatar uploading has been disabled. You may still use off-site images.

(those pesky old bots with their uploading of avatars)
...
Post Reply