Well, I have found out why the forums are running slow and sluggish over recent weeks.
*begins long winded story* Well not quite. But a few weeks ago, I began to have a problem where a spammer was sending email with my domain (oddworld.au.com) as the return path. As a result I was getting all the bouncebacks, which got to over 3000 emails in under 24 hours until I realized I could turn it off and send it into internet nothingness. I thought it was connected to my domain only, but was wrong. I suspected that something was still up 2 days ago, when I got another return email sent to my info email address. So I took one of these emails into work to show my friend who runs our network. On looking at the extended mail header, he could tell that the emails were being sent from the same server as the forums are hosted on (matching IP address). Because oddworld.au.com is the default server email address, the spammer must be using the domain name also (or maybe the server puts it in automatically). So with all that mail being sent to and from the server, it's obviously taking the bandwidth and speed and making it slow for us. Now, this should be illegal ... but apparently if your SMTP (mail server) is set to be an open relay (I think this is the term he used) mail server, then anyone on the internet can use it to send email if they know how. Most mail servers only allow you to send mail from them if you are on the same network, or connected through your ISP. Spammers like to use such mail servers as they can't get in trouble from their ISP or web host for spamming. And it's basically your own fault if you leave your mail server open like this. So this now leaves us with a problem that only Justin can fix. So Peter is going to try and get in contact with him and hopefully the problem will be fixed sooner rather than later. For those of you who can't be bothered reading all that... basically some spammer is using the OWF server to send mass amounts of email and it's making the forums run goddamn slow at times. Abe Babe... |
I really appreciate you investigating this, Abe Babe. :kiss: I'm glad to know why the forums have been acting up lately, but I'm really pissed off at who is doing it. :flames:
-oddguy:fuzmad: |
Well that makes a lot of sense actually. This also makes my anger and feelings towards spammers even worse.
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Things have been working fine for me on OWF for the last few days, except for the continuing image replacement issues. The other day the entire background was small angry smilies, which was incredibly amusing, but as hard as it may be to believe, my computer is even less reliable that OWF, and my computer crashed before I could even get the PrintScreen into MS Paint. Bah, your story is better, Abe Babe - it serves a purpose.
I don't have any resentment towards the spammer, merely the fools who haven't made what he's doing illegal. |
Ah Max ... finally the time came when your banner took over some place in the forums.
Here it is in place of a little lone Fuzzle smilie. Next time it might take over the forum header.. Abe Babe... |
I despise internet spamming in all ways that it's possible to detest something with ferocious intensity. Not only do they trick the morons of the e-mail world into letting them harvest addresses, but they also use every trick they can to avoid law books. Most of the time it's near impossible to track them down, and if they are, servers are often located in countries where nothing can be done.
It really ise true though, technicalities like this should at least have an attempt made to stop them. Chances are that there are still plenty of loopholes to get through, and it'd be near impossible to stop, but it's the thought that counts. Thats the problem with the internet: enforcability. |
Enjoy:
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Heres the most recent strange happening for me.:fuzwink:
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Check out my thread "hacker". I beleive this explains the lagging.
The workload my packet verification program is reporting is that of a DoS attack on the forum server. The actual text it's reporting is: "A user with a 50 user workload is accessing the same resources, round trip for performance check packages was 3.15 minutes." Which sounds an awful lot to me like a multiloader, which tries to load the same page into some 50 browsers (simulated), and can simultaneously request every page of the forum. The requested info gets sent to a computer that rejects it, causing a huge slowdown affect. |
AHHH!!!This is pissin me off!!I click on a link like the main Oddworld discussion forum and it takes like 5 minutes to get there.Sometime's it goes "The page cannot be displayed" or "Web Site Not Responding!".This is just pissin me off!Fix this!!:fuzmad:
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Er,hehe.Sorry.I'm just tired of waitng....:fuzsad:
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yeah this is getting too slow now isnt there a way to prevent this problem ever happening again? plus its not always sending my post too!
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Alcar... |
Beleive it or not I am actually trying to fix the problem. I've been kicking off googlebots and other such loadmaking users for quite a while now.
Doesn't seem to be making a difference though... |
I'm feeling the slowness extra lately. It took five minutes to load up the OWF homepage the other day. Finally, I got fed up and decided to change my setting from Industrial to Native, because I hear Native loads faster than Industrial. Well, after a few days of having Native, I see no difference in the loading time. It's just as slow. Isn't there anything we can do to fix this?
-oddguy:fuzcool: |
I know what you mean Oddguy. I couldnt even finish loading this page to reply, I keep getting this CGI Server error all over parts of the forums.
The server keeps deleting the process of loading the pages completely on some of the longer threads, and I havent been able to see what new replies people have made to most of them. Heres just one example of what has happened to me, take a look below. |
Waaaaaaaaa!
Well, I took more extreme measures to see if OWF forums could load up faster for me. I have the native setting and disabled all avatars and banners......and it's still as slow as ever. :crying:
-oddguy:eek: |
I too have been getting the time out errors and the page loading times of 5 minutes. Everything is getting worse and worse than ever. If it keeps up at the rate it's going the whole server might just grind to a halt [not sure if that's possible, but seems that way].
The only short term fix I can think of for the time out issues [won't fix slow loading at all] is to go into your User CP and then Options and change the topics and posts per page to something very small ... like 5 or something ... so that it will have less to load each time, thus not causing a time out. I know of 2 people at least who have stopped coming here because of the slowness. Posts are lacking. I personally am coming here less because it's too slow ... and I'm on cable. There are only two solutions I can think of. 1. Get the goddamn server fixed. 2. Move the forums and related sites. Option 1 is being pursued by Alcar with little success. Option 2 is viable although I will have to find space for it. I have in the past been offered free web hosting for Oddworld-Web, but the catch is always that I have to put a banner advertisement. Is this something you guys would want? As I personally am against banner advertising. On the other hand I have lots of space over at Advent Children.net ... but that site's hits have skyrocketed which is causing my bandwidth to be used a lot and there is not much spare. Plus there is an upcoming OW site that is all media related, which will add to the bandwith issue as well. Or I could purchase more hosting ... but I'm already purchasing 3 lots of web hosting already [my business site, Advent Children.net and shortly a media storage place to hold movies and media for any sites I run]. The other point is that Oddworld Forums currently occupies over 400 MB ... so finding that amount of space could be difficult and moving them could be difficult also. If we move, we might have to prune a lot of old posts or at least the attachments database. Abe Babe... |
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I'll be able to pay for the hosting fully, and I'd like to, as Kristen already pays for the vBulletin software upgrades (as well as the initial payment). Also, because it would house OWUniverse, and if she wanted to move OWW over then that'd be fine as well. I've actually got it all worked out :p With all the USD to AUD currency conversion. Plus, it'll make sure I don't spend all my money on food as I usually do. The only hurdles are getting my dad to use his credit card (which I can sweet talk him anyway, the old softie) and moving our mega-forums-database. Without TELNET working on the server, it means we have to tranfser everything manually. Alcar... |
Pruning attachments makes sense, since I'm positive there will be many duplicates. I'm not sure about old topics, but that's just me protecting my beloved GD. Maybe older topics from Off-Topic and the Birthdays Thread, clean up Necrum etc.
Also, you could get rid of all those unwanted members that never post. You always refute such a task, but you can't deny it would save some space. :P PS - there are five winking Fuzzle Oddicons to my left, and two green faces sticking their tongues out at me. :| |
Well this may be a stroke of luck, but today the forums are loading super fast for me.:fuzsmile:
The other day it took me five minutes to load a reply page, or a section of the forums. Now, its only taking seconds like all the other websites usually do.:fuzsmile: Hopefully this might last for a while. |
As far as we know it isn't a matter of space. It's a matter of server load, and how much is being burdened on the server. If this email thing is still occuring, the spammers may have upped the volume and thus it is crippling the server further.
For the time being I've disabled forum jump and emailing features. It should save some queries at least. I just really don't know what to do at the moment. Alcar... |
I consider this realtively unuseable...
I say we should all make a massive effort and go to every tech support board we can find, and dance around like sissies. Sound good? EDIT: After waiting a few minutes for the other page to load, and getting to read it... I agree that we should move it. Reliability is needed, and apparently we're not getting that right now. Bah. I'm grumpy. I say someone sets up a cheesy little EZboard for temporary use here, and take the free gold trial. I could bear with that for a while. Until the forums can be stablized... Then it gets the axe. |