Jump to content
Brian Enos's Forums... Maku mozo!

Server might be about to crash again


ima45dv8

Recommended Posts

I'm still looking into why (two tech companies are actually) the server's been crashing so frequently lately.

And in the FYI department, if anyone sees anything that indicates the forums/server might crash - a PM to me will most likely be useless. Call me on my cell: 480 600-0822.

be

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Looks like there's a problem again. I'm trying to access the TV, Music, ... section and getting the SQL driver error described earlier.

12:57 AM EST and it's acting up on my end in the gallery.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few things to look for though I don't know that they will be the answer:

SOFTWARE

-Member names that begin with characters like "." or "(" or worse a space. These can cause Invision and PhPBB boards to expect a command and get nothing but a name and can force the

board to crash trying to track the activity of such a name.

-multiple topics in the history of the forum that have the same name ( "My New Open Gun" ) and no description. If there are several of these and one is opened in a search it can fool

the admin CP into opening two or more at the same time and scramble them up causing a loop which can crash the board.

-Topic titles or new member names with alternating caps (eXaMpLe) especially if they change color, font or type size as they go. A lot of hacks that enjoy doing damage leave this as

sort of a calling card and are worth looking into

HARDWARE

-If the board is locally hosted and there is actually a tower at home base archiving the data pull it down for an afternoon and see if its due for a RAM swap. Old flooded RAM can get

, for lack of a better word, senile and get crash prone over time. This is more common in gaming servers and boards because of there huge transfer but an old tower with old RAM will

get there in time too.

-If the system is liquid cooled check the lines and make sure they arent sweating somewhere they shouldn't. A drop of moisture can crash a server but dry up while its down and

leave no sign it was even there.

If all else fails read all the posts and see if any of the posts read backwards summon the dark god DOON ZEWOO crasher of shooter forums. Then recite the encantation "DOOBLE ALFAA!"

and send it back to the fires of hell!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting comment about new members, we seem to be getting dozens of new members per day which seems unlikely to me... I wonder how many are trying to spam the forums and getting locked out because of the spam-lock that prevents them from adding links.

If you click the members tab at the top, select ALL then sort by Joined Date you can see dozens of new members signing up each day for the past few days

Link to comment
Share on other sites

-Member names that begin with characters like "." or "(" or worse a space. These can cause Invision and PhPBB boards to expect a command and get nothing but a name and can force the

board to crash trying to track the activity of such a name.

Looks like there is a member with just a space for a name , check out today's birthday list

cpty1 (50), Scout454 (65), kippiazaz (48), galt11 (34), Sean Gaines (37), wcmesa (33), bobobooie (63), Newcomer (44), Tom and Nathan (55), lazy42 (36), Bassius (65), (41), Glockman1000 (41), leighton, Bobboo (66), sparks1 (60)

After Bassius is the age then there is an age with no name preceding it... There are 16 birthdays today but only fifteen names are showing. If there is a way to search members on birthday (I don't think there is) then we could identify the weird member name.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few things to look for though I don't know that they will be the answer:

SOFTWARE

-Member names that begin with characters like "." or "(" or worse a space. These can cause Invision and PhPBB boards to expect a command and get nothing but a name and can force the

board to crash trying to track the activity of such a name.

-multiple topics in the history of the forum that have the same name ( "My New Open Gun" ) and no description. If there are several of these and one is opened in a search it can fool

the admin CP into opening two or more at the same time and scramble them up causing a loop which can crash the board.

-Topic titles or new member names with alternating caps (eXaMpLe) especially if they change color, font or type size as they go. A lot of hacks that enjoy doing damage leave this as

sort of a calling card and are worth looking into

HARDWARE

-If the board is locally hosted and there is actually a tower at home base archiving the data pull it down for an afternoon and see if its due for a RAM swap. Old flooded RAM can get

, for lack of a better word, senile and get crash prone over time. This is more common in gaming servers and boards because of there huge transfer but an old tower with old RAM will

get there in time too.

-If the system is liquid cooled check the lines and make sure they arent sweating somewhere they shouldn't. A drop of moisture can crash a server but dry up while its down and

leave no sign it was even there.

If all else fails read all the posts and see if any of the posts read backwards summon the dark god DOON ZEWOO crasher of shooter forums. Then recite the encantation "DOOBLE ALFAA!"

and send it back to the fires of hell!

Uh. Ok if you say so.. My head hurts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Multiple joins in one day could be simply a matter of something particularly appealing being posted and many folks joining to be able to view it. Or it could mean trouble too. It could be wise to set a non use deadline in the forum that kills an account if it goes "X" amount of time between logins. Adding another permission level that goes before the first 50 post count "Classified" status could help weed out one time spam joins. Say the first 10 posts your status is "temporary" and at regular intervals admin washes the membership of any member under 10 posts that hasn't logged in for say 1 week. This weekly wash could improve the situation.

Sadly it only takes one person posting a hot link to an attack site to cause all sorts of bad bad things to occur. This kind of filter could reduce that. Of course as a general rule any member should always be very cautious when offering external links in a post.

Mods please PM me if you would like to follow up with me on any of these thoughts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Found him.... This guy has no member name ---> http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showuser=25253

Thanks Paul. The weird thing is though, I can't find him in the ACP, even when just searching with the email filter with: glockman. Also, searching for his member ID: 25253, did not return any results. I did find probably the same member - because he has the same pic in his profile: Glockman1000 - with 58 posts. (Edited to add - of course he is the same member, because Glockman1000 is right after Mr. no-name.)

But since the no-name member account has 0 posts since he signed up a year and a half ago, I doubt if that account would have anything to do with the server crashing.

And thanks for all that interesting info JerryShoots!

My feeling is I don't think our server can handle the steady amount of heavily rising traffic we've been experiencing lately. So in the FYI department, we will be moving to a new server soon. It will be over twice as powerful, in every aspect, as our current server.

Current The Planet Server:

Hard Drive 3x Seagate 146GB: SAS:15K

RAM 4x Generic Standard

Drive Controller Dell 9G Drive Controller - SAS/SATA RAID

Motherboard Dell Single socket 1067FSB - Quad Core Capable

Processor Intel 2.13 GHz 1066FSB - Kentsfield

New TSS Server:

E3 Quad Core

8GB Ram

(4) 1TB SATA

Raid10

Cpanel

Total Server Management

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...