Waiting for something to finish here at work, so I'm just sitting and watching the log files scroll by. Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam.
Fluffy seems to be doing her job. I intervened to capture some of it, so if you ended up with ads for Berlin hotels, that was my fault.
Oh, and it's a zombie network (appropriate for this time of year), so no blocking an IP address and getting rid of the lot. Vampires are much easier to deal with than zombie hordes.
Still configuring the new servers, but things are going pretty smoothly now. One of the toys I wanted to install on our existing server but never got around to is called Xcontroller. It makes CPanel prettier and less cluttered and easier to use.
I was determined to buy it and install it this time around... And then I discovered that the new hosting company supplies it for free.
Here's a sample of how it looks:
(Click for full-size version.)
The new hosting company has been very good so far. They've supplied Xcontroller for free, upgraded my 160GB drives to 200GB drives for free (well, they ran out of 160GB drives, but whatever), and gave me the benefit of their Halloween special even though I ordered the servers before the special started. (Effectively, they upgraded both servers to 2GB of memory for $199.90 - normally this would cost $60 per month.)
Yay for DedicatedNOW!
New spammer at bat. Five minutes, 10,710 spams. The previous instance was unusual only in its duration.
Oh, and this one struck out. Probably thanks to Super-Fluffy. :)
Massive amounts of comment spam coming in right now - several thousand a minute. Busy upgrading Fluffy's armament. Back soon.
Ugh. Seriously ugh. We're talking over a hundred comments a second here.
Update: New super doom-Fluffy installed. We'll see how we go with that.
Update update: 75,000 80,000 85,000 spams from a single source in under 90 minutes. It would have been more than that except that the server ground to a halt under the load. It's sped up significantly now that it's all being blocked immediately.
Update update update: Out of 90,000 95,000 spams, four actually got through. Congrats to Ted, Linda, Daniel and Lawren, who won the prize. :)
Update^4: 100,000! It's now 104 minutes since the flood started
Update^5: Looks like it's leveled off at a steady 1500 spams a minute. I wonder how long they'll keep up this futile exercise?
Update^6: Just past the two hour mark and it seems to have stopped. 123,111 spam attempts, four of which got through, for a success rate of 0.00324%. I shall now delete those four spams... And done.
Okay, it's getting towards Carnival time, and what do I find in my inbox?
Three entries.
Three.
Okay, I can procrastinate with the best of them, but this time tomorrow I want to see that inbox overflowing with bloggy goodness! I want a smorgasbord, nay, a veritable cornucopia of commentary with which to bedizen the front page of MuNu!
Did I mention that the neatest correct entry wins a prize? I should probably set up a poll for that. But I need entries first! Input! More input!
Update: Thanks guys. Six entries now. That's six people who won't get poked with the pointy stick.
Update: Oh, yeah. Send your best entry from the past month (or so) to carnival -at- mu.nu. You know it makes sense!
Tim Worstall has put together the Wikablog. I'll let them describe the idea:
Here at Wikablog, you can, in just a couple of minutes, create a page about your blog or someone else's with a few words saying what it's about. Then other people can add to it. And you can add links to other similar blogs, and talk about the blog's history, and recount the tale of the great Himalayan Blog Controversy of 2002, and whatever else you like. Soon enough, any blog can have a detailed page on here, telling us all everything we could ever need to know about it short of bothering to read it. If you still can't imagine how valuable this service is, slap yourself.It's a great idea and has the potential to bring order to the chaos that is the blogosphere. I've already setup a page for Simon World, which you are free to go and add to and edit. And Pixy has already setup one for the Munu collective. Now you can set up a page on a Wiki solely dedicated to blogs. And you needn't be the blogger. Readers can setup pages on their favourite (or most disliked, I suppose) blogs.
What are you waiting for? Go check out Wikablog and edit or start a page today. Then spread the word.
(OK Tim, where's my cheque?)
Don't forget to send in your entries to the Second Inaugural Carnival. Just email the link to your favourite recent* post to carnival -at- mu.nu. Entries close 9am GMT each Friday. Neatest correct entry wins a prize. In case of a draw, the judges will divide the prize among them and eat it.
Be there or be a regular quadrilateral!
* Recent would normally mean the past week, but for this Second Inaugural Carnival, any time in October is fine.
Munuviana, that is just http://munuviana.mu.nu, is worth some dough:
My blog is worth $36,130.56.
How much is your blog worth?
OK, I want to show the category that's assigned to a post in the "posted by" line. I found a prior query about this here. This post links to the code to be used which is here.
My problem is I don't know exactly where to paste the code. Anyone?
So I left trackbacks turned off for a few hours, and just now I went and turned them back on.
Fluffy immediately turned them off again.
So I said, no, Fluffy, I want trackbacks on.
And I turned them on.
And we were instantly buried in spam. We got over 100 trackbacks in the next couple of seconds. Splat.
Trackbacks are off again.
Moral of the story: Listen to Fluffy.
Getting absolutely blasted with trackback spam right now, so I've turned them off for a couple of hours.
Hopefully Pixy won't get too grumpy with me for promoting something to do with Technorati. I've been using Technorati Tags for a while, but it's a royal pain to put them in my entries manually. So, I cooked up a cool way to do it automagically, using Movable Type Keywords and some PHP. If you want to do the same thing on your blog, check out my How To.
* Thou shalt not dob in thy mates
* Thou shalt not bung on an act.
* Thou shalt not be a tall poppy
* Thou shalt give everyone a fair go
* Thou shalt be fair dinkum
Translating these into standard English yields APPROXIMATELY the following:
* You must not incriminate your friends to the boss, the police or anyone else. Loyalty to your associates is all-important.
* You must not be ostentatious or pretend to be what you are not.
* You must treat others as your equals. If you are seen as being better than others in anything but sport you will be made to suffer for it.
* You must be fair and permissive in your treatment of others.
* You must not be insincere or dishonest.
Roll up! Roll up! The Carnival of the Munuvians is open for business!
I'm still de-borifying the templates, but the 2nd Inaugural Carnival of the Munuvians will go live Friday October 28th. And will (touch wood) re-appear ever Friday thereafter.
Want to be a part of the festivities? Send a link to your best recent post (for the inaugural Carnival, any time in October is good) to carnival -at- mu.nu. Got two really good posts and can't choose? Send 'em both.
If you have a really hot post and you'd like to spread the word, send an email to features -at- mu.nu, and our features editor* will include it in the daily roundup (or if it's really hot, give it its own space on the front page).
Questions? Send those to questions -at- carnival.mu.nu, or post them right here.
You can see an example of a feature item right here, on the front page of mu.nu itself. Yes, your own posts can get this sort of attention! Dozens Hundreds of readers every day!
Join in! Pixy says so!
* Me.
So, Mudville Gazette (an MT blog also) does this nifty thing called Open Trackbacks. You send them a trackback ping and it is automagically displayed in the entry. See this post for an example. I can figure out how to do this on every single post, but not on just one post.
Come on guys, there's got to be a thingy for this, I just can't find it!
To run the Carnival of the Munuvians. Apply within.
I worked out how to automagically make posts from Movable Type show up on the munu portal*, so it's high time we revived this. The first attempt at it didn't get very far, mainly because... I didn't do anything. So this time I'm looking for scapegoats volunteers.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to ferret out the bestest posts from right across Munuvia. I think a weekly Carnival will be the main attraction, but you'll also be able to pop individual posts up on Page One for 24 hours to give them a bit of infamy attention.
Who's with me?
Update: You'll see, if you go to the MuNu portal that I actually have this working. Leave a comment on the blog and watch the portal automatically update to reflect it! All done by the miracle of symbolic links!
The Carnival blog obviously needs some work, but I should be able to kick it into shape over the weekend. I'm thinking of making it look just like the portal. Or maybe not.
I also need to make trackback autodiscovery work when you link to the portal. Or... Actually, it probably does already. Let me try: Ping!
Hokay, autodiscovery works, now I just have to sort out the little problem with Fluffy blocking internal trackbackery. And make the Carnival blog look less like a piece of crap than it currently does.
* It's a bit round-about, but it does work.
I've fixed the "New on MuNu" section here on Munuviana. It choked on someone's post, so I fixed it so that it spits out "bad" posts and keeps going.
I've also added a section on the front page that lists the last 25 posts made on MuNu. At least, for the MT 2.6 bloggers, which is most of us. Doesn't work (yet) for MT 3, doesn't work (at all) for Wordpress.
Kei.mu.nu and Yuri.mu.nu are coming to save us!
I'm tentatively scheduling the move for 5th November, but I'll post updates here once I have the new servers up and running.
I've been looking around for some time for the right platform to take MuNu to the next level. I haven't found it yet, but following last night's server burp, it's clear I have to do something.
We'll be moving from a single server to a cluster (multiple servers networked together). It's easier and cheaper to run everything on one server, but if it goes down it takes everything with it - as we've seen one too many times.
Our current server is:
Dual Xeon 2.4GHzThe best package on offer with our current hosting company is this:
2GB memory (originally 1GB, but I bought an extra gig for it)
2 200GB disks, mirrored
1500GB bandwidth
$229 per month (plus $300 once-off for the extra memory, and $199 setup)
Athlon 64 3200+But for that price at another company, I can get this:
1GB memory
80GB disk
1200GB bandwidth
$149 per month, no setup
Pentium D (dual core) 2.8GHzWhich is a much better configuration. It's actually faster than our current server - the Pentium D is essentially a dual Xeon on one chip, but with a faster bus and more cache than the old model Xeons in our server. Plus it runs at a higher clock speed.
1GB memory
160GB disk
1200GB bandwidth
We'll be getting two of these. One will run Movable Type 2.6; the other will run the database server, MT 3, and the various forums. This should help a lot with the performance problems we get when we get spamflooded. I may be able to split MT 2.6 into two halves, but that will take a bit of fiddling.
We'll still have CPanel and Fantastico (or should I say we'll have Fantastico again, as it has currently disabled itself). I'll be ordering the servers today, and we should be moving in about two weeks. I'll let you know the exact date and time closer to, um, the exact date and time.
During the move, which will take a few hours, blogging and comments will be disabled, although people will still be able to read your blogs.
Over time I'll b setting up replication on both the database and the static files, so that if one server dies everything will automatically switch over to the other. Again, that takes a bit of work, but we can't do it at all with just one server.
The cost... Works out basically the same. We actually have a backup server as well as the main server, but it only gets used for backups. The total cost of the current setup is actually slightly more than the new setup, but once I've added some options the new setup will work out slightly more.
Update: Oops, I forgot that the new company charges an extra $20 per server for the clustering. Our current host charges $25 plus $10 per server; there's another company that does it for free but we won't be going there for other reasons. Damn, there goes my M&M fund. :(
Update: Sent off an email to the new hosting company. I might also pop for 2GB of memory and a second disk in one of the servers depending on how the final quote comes back.
Update: I've put in an RFQ with our current hosting company as well. They offer a P4 3.6 at that price (but with a $99 setup), and a Pentium D 2.8 would actually cost them less, so I thought I'd ask.
Update: Got the quotes back. Looks like we're headed for Joisey (that's where the new hosting company is). I'll be placing the order today.
Update: Order placed, payment arranged (hosting companies can be fussy about this - I expect there's a fair bit of fraud going on). With a bit of luck I'll get the servers today. Whee!
And everything was going so well...
What really annoys me is that we got spammed while the server was down.*
* The server was actually stuck in an almost-but-not-quite-down state. Normal people couldn't get in, but the spammers are so persistent that some of them managed to get through. Aaargh.
Bah.
The server froze. No errors, it just froze.
I'm ordering new servers today.
Oh, and both of my ADSL lines* were down this morning, so I had to run around fixing things before I could even start running around fixing things.
I think I'll go back to bed now.
* Yeah, I know that's redundant.
Why does this post hate me?
There is something in it (and I can't quite isolate what it is) that screws up anything I've had centered in a post. I figured out it was this post because I re-saved each of my latest posts as a draft so I could figure out which one was the culprit.
It makes the post (above it) about William Wallace go from centered to left, and it makes the post several posts below it about my engagement with the ring image shift left, as well.
What's the dilly-yo?
OK, I'm sure you've probably answered this before, but I can't find it.
I have spam. Old spam. It's there, I can plainly see it on old posts. I have since closed comments on 21-day-old posts, and I have entered the names and addresses into Blacklist, but still it won't go away. I have tried to de-spam the last 20,000 comments, but it says I only have authority over 77. How do I get rid of the old spams?
Thank you...Sarah
This is the bandwidth utilisation graph for the munuserver.
That big spike is me running the offsite backups.
But see where the traffic suddenly jumps and stays high for hours on end? That's one person with a Roadrunner account, a Perl script, and too much free time, just causing trouble for the sake of it.
Welcome to my reject list, moron.
I've spent most of this evening deleting porn spam from my blog. Didn't come from just one IP, but it all promoted the same site, and most of the IPs were registered through the same company in the Netherlands.
I am Blacklist ignorant -- so much so that I don't even know how to get into it. What do I need to do to get rid of the porn spam?
I and many of my readers have been unable to comment. We keep getting an error message:
"Build error in template 'Comment Preview Template': Error in tag: Can't find included template module 'Remember Me' "
This has happened before, but beginning yesterday it has become the norm.
Help.
Pixy, Blacklist seems to have fallen over. I don't seem to be able to get it to actually do anything when I try to get it to search.
Even if I just ask it to list the last n posts, it returns a response saying no comments/pings were found to match the criteria. It insists it can't find anything by simple text string either.
Did somebody hit Fluffy with a bad can of Alpo?
Paul
Referrer spam has recently become a huge problem for blogs. Not only does it clog up your referrer lists, but it puts a significant load on the server and has increased our bandwidth usage by something like 50%.
Later today I'll be installing referrer filters right across mu.nu. I've been filtering Ambient Irony for the past few days without any problems. Now, it might happen that someone might not be able to follow a link from an oddly named web site to your blog. If you hear of this happening, it's the filters. Let me know what the linking site is, and I can adjust the filters to fix that.
You (and your readers) will always be able to access your blogs from a bookmark or by typing the URL straight into the browser; this only affects links from other sites.
Someone just asked me what's my RSS feed, and that's actually a good question.
How do I find this out?
I don't do RSS. It makes my head hurt.
Thanks!
-H
Did a quick google for flash and MT with no luck and I am to lazy to keep digging. I am hoping that someone else has already checked this out. Is it possible? Can it be done?
The reason I ask is for a countdown clock. The ones I have found in java are kinda lame, but I think I can scam a really good one that is in flash.
If no one has any idea, I will have to get off my lazy bumm and do more googling!!!
I just wanted to pop in and share my appreciation for the enthusiastic welcome you folks gave me over at Ellis Island. It would have been plenty good enough that Pixy is just even doing this for people, but on top of that y'all made me feel quite welcome.
Thanks again, everyone! Now, all I have to do is figure out how to use Movable Type...
- Obi-Wan
Forward Biased
So, in an effort to avoid blogging I've been despamming Munuviana. I finally got that pesky keno trackback that's been bugging me---yay! I also seached the last 50,000 comments and found dozens of spam comments to delete. I tried to seach the last 99,999 comments, but it timed out....
Anyone know how many comments we have in all of munu? Just curious, really...
UPDATE: Found 5 more running 60k.....
Another Update: found 5 more at 70k!
Oops!!! accidently deleted one of Pixy's comments. Guess I got carried away...Sorry, oh Great and Powerful Lord of Munu! Anyway, I timed out again at 80,000 comments, so I guess I'm done anyway. But it was fun while it lasted!
I've updated the email system on the munuserver to a new version. It seems to have worked, with the possible exception of some incorrectly encoded binary attachments (which were probably viruses anyway).
If you use munu for your email and run into any problems, leave a comment here.
A MuNU blog, yours truly, is in the running for the Best Canadian Blog!
Angry in the Great White North
But despite a weeklong lead, I've slipped to second place, only a couple of votes behind a surging Bound by Gravity (not a Munuvianan!). If you would like to see a MuNu blog win this inaugural award, I invite you to visit my blog, and place your vote using menu on the left side panel.
Thank you for your support. Cheers!
A question for any of the Munuvian Computer Literati--is there such a thing as a "cookie grabber"? i.e. a website that can read your cookies for a different website and use them against you? It sounds like an Urban Legend to me, but I haven't been able to track down any confirmation or disputing info.
So, say that I went shopping at JCPenney.com. (Assume for this exercise that I were silly enough to be using IE). Could they "grab" the cookies that, say, Amazon.com sets, and somehow magically deduce my password and order the complete works of Conway Twitty boxed set using my identity?
Thanks for putting up with me!
The comments function seems to be going kerflooey. It only creates a "blank" form and after you leave a new comment, it doesn't show up despite the number indicator changing. Haloscan problems maybe?
Hello, fellow Munuvians!
(all together now, just like we learned in our 12 step programs, "Hi Vinnie!")
Pixy? Might I trouble you for a login and password to Cpanel?
You see, the Pulitzer Committee simply will not consider me unless my entire body of work is displayed, and my export file is simply to big to upload into MT itself.
Don't make me get the mice....
I am working on a post for a Texas PreGame Summary. This Saturday we play Colorado. I am unable to find the following information on their athletic website and my husband has no idea either. Can anyone help?
Who is Colorado's main rival?
Do they have any players receiving National Recognition for their skills? If not, who is their top player?
Do they have any unique traditions, besides Raphie?
Any help would be appreciated!
Oct. 9 - I just want to wish all Munus a Happy Thanksgiving, Canadian style. (I know it's way early for Americans and cause for bemusement by Australians who are approaching summer .. but hey! Things may be upside down and a trifle early here in the Great White North but good wishes are never too soon or too late, right?)
I am grateful, for one thing, that the ever vigilant Pixy and Fluffy stopped the source of the spam that attacked us while we in the Great White North were in the midst of the holiday weekend.
Most of all I'm grateful (and now I'm really serious) for all you Munu foks whom I have come to think of as my family. I suck at leaving comments, but I do read Munu blogs and it really helps me cheer and laugh and, yes, keep going.
Bless you all, and here's toasting to winter and/or spring and, most of all, we must raise a toast ...
To the future! Because there is one. (And never, ever, doubt that.)
So I just checked my blog and all of a sudden all of my apostrophes have turned into question marks.
So: grandmother's becomes: grandmother?s and any conversation looks like
??Hello!??
It was fine yesterday, does anyone know what's up?
-H.
I awoke this morning to a breakfast of scrambled eggs and SPAM, except I didn't have any eggs just SPAM. It wasn't all that bad just six or seven trackback SPAMs but I noticed something interesting.
My general spam policy is that any time I have to go into a post and remove any form of SPAM, I close the comments and turn off trackbacks while I'm there. SPAM me once, shame on you. Spam me twice Shame on me. As I was going through today's SPAM I noticed that all of the effected posts already had trackbacks turned off!
Is this some magic trick of Fluffy's? Or have spammers found a way to trackback to posts where trackbacks have been turned off? If they have, we have a serious problem.
An odd thing happened...
My friend who occasionally comments on my blog, received some email asking her at "http://itsallaboutde.mu.nu" to exhange links with their viagra site.
Is this the new fad in spamming, to spam our commenters?
Has anyone else had something like this happen?
I'm getting a lot of comments rejected for questionable content. Somehow, MT has decided that anything with the letter "d" in it is bad. Examples:
d: b
dist
d. h
It took me maybe ten minutes to edit a comment on my own site to the point that it was considered okay.
I don't suppose anyone's been overzealous with the blacklist lately . . .?
I happened to notice some spam comments here at Munuviana, so I deleted 'em. But there's also a spam ping listed on the menu page that I can't seem to get Blacklist to find (it's atlantc keno). Paul? Jim? Pixy? Can anybody zap it?
This is what Fluffy does all day, and why trackbacks sometimes don't work:
Killed 14 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:18:07 CDT 2005It never stops.
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:19:07 CDT 2005
Killed 20 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:19:11 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:20:11 CDT 2005
Killed 11 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:20:14 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:21:14 CDT 2005
Killed 11 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:21:17 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:22:17 CDT 2005
Killed 18 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:22:21 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:23:21 CDT 2005
Killed 11 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:23:25 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:24:25 CDT 2005
Killed 16 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:24:28 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:25:28 CDT 2005
Killed 12 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:25:32 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:26:32 CDT 2005
Killed 14 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:26:35 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:27:35 CDT 2005
Killed 19 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:27:39 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:28:39 CDT 2005
Killed 21 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:28:43 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:29:43 CDT 2005
Killed 14 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:29:47 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:30:47 CDT 2005
Killed 10 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:30:50 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:31:50 CDT 2005
Killed 6 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:31:53 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:32:53 CDT 2005
Killed 10 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:32:56 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:33:57 CDT 2005
Killed 9 trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:34:00 CDT 2005
Re-enabled trackbacks at Sat Oct 1 20:35:00 CDT 2005
Fellow Munuvians, I have recently learned that we (Air Force Security Forces) have lost one of our own. She is the first female Airman killed in Iraq. Please take a minute to visit the Slaughterhouse and read my post. If you are so compelled to do so, please post on your own site and provide trackback to the post at the Slaughterhouse, not here.
I am trying to gather words of encouragement and support for the friends and family that she has left behind.
Thanks in advance to anyone who is willing to help.
SlagleRock Out!
