Forum outages 15/08/2024 - 24/08/2024

[Rhothgar]

Historically any attempts to register by Russians was disallowed but they are much better now and no worse than most other places.
Scandinavians are the least bothersome group.

I cannot imagine there being many French Cars in Russia or China.

I am assuming that this isn't a registration issue just server hits for the front page?

[myglaren]

Indeed but the idea is not to let them get a foothold.

[myglaren]

It happened again overnight, but at least I have some more diagnostic data. At first sight it looks like a server configuration error rather than an external attack, but I am not sure yet.

Can't think of any reason why someone would attack this place ....unless it's some of the jokes

My wife started singing "Mama Mia".
I thought "Here we go again".

[xantia_v6]

Thanks for your offer of help.
We have a robust system of backup of the site, with at least daily on-line automated backups saved locally and at a remote site. At least once a month an offline copy of the backup archive is stored in a safe place. The backup system is monitored and managed by someone else, so survival of the forum data is not dependent on me being available.

We have also taken reasonable steps to protect the site from external attacks, but I don't share details publicly.

I need to do some more analysis of what happened last night, but network traffic volume didn't appear to spike before something caused an avalanche of open file handles which in turn caused the server log files to fill available disk space. This cause the web server to freeze.
I did change some cache settings a couple of weeks ago and will check carefully that there is no issue there

[Rhothgar]

Thanks for your offer of help.
We have a robust system of backup of the site, with at least daily on-line automated backups saved locally and at a remote site. At least once a month an offline copy of the backup archive is stored in a safe place. The backup system is monitored and managed by someone else, so survival of the forum data is not dependent on me being available.

We have also taken reasonable steps to protect the site from external attacks, but I don't share details publicly.

I need to do some more analysis of what happened last night, but network traffic volume didn't appear to spike before something caused an avalanche of open file handles which in turn caused the server log files to fill available disk space. This cause the web server to freeze.
I did change some cache settings a couple of weeks ago and will check carefully that there is no issue there

You’re doing a sterling job. Glad everything is safe and will continue to be.

What a nightmare hobbies for the greater good can be!

[xantia_v6]

To close this off for now, it appears that the root cause here was not an external attack, but due to a problem with configuration of the 'page cache'. I have temporarily disabled the page cache and the system seems to have settled down. I will review the configuration and re-enable the cache in a week or two when I am convinced that there is no other issue.

Note that the page cache had been disabled since moving to this server last year, but I enabled it about 2 weeks ago while looking at some performance optimisations.

[jeastham]

Not sure if this will help.......but on another "phpBB" powered Forum I'm on, they've stated this :

"Enhanced Cloudflare protection has been enabled due to high server load. You will see more security prompts than usual"

.......might be of no use whatsoever.......but thought I'd make mention

[xantia_v6]

Not sure if this will help.......but on another "phpBB" powered Forum I'm on, they've stated this :

"Enhanced Cloudflare protection has been enabled due to high server load. You will see more security prompts than usual"

.......might be of no use whatsoever.......but thought I'd make mention

Cloudflare is good, but expensive. I don't think that we need it yet, but I will keep it in mind.

We have implemented some alternate (and free) protection strategies which generally have been successful. As noted above, these forum outages were traced to an internal server configuration problem and not due to an external threat.

[moizeau]

Are you Scandinavian Steve?

[myglaren]

Are you Scandinavian Steve?

No but I used to live in Sweden, hence the username.