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Re: Server Blog

Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2019 6:44 pm
by asavage
Cron database backups are working, sorta.

ftp data is in the right place and the appropriate links to the web server are configured and seem to be working — see this post for an example of a whole lotta pictures that are stored in the ftp tree, that need to be accessible by the web server. Since the pics in that post now display, I’m assuming the mapping is correct.

To-do: config users and anonymous in the ftpd, finish SSL setup, config backups and test.

However, I’m over my cold so I have to start going to work again, in 11 hours, so when will that happen? Who knows?

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2019 3:09 am
by asavage
Fixed cookie settings. You'll probably want to <Ctrl+F5> to force a reload of any page, and your cookies will be reset. If you want, you can delete any cookie that begins with "test".

SSL/TLS

Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2019 8:14 pm
by asavage
We now have working SSL/TLS. The site can be accessed by https://nissandiesel.dyndns.org/ and you will mostly see the green padlock to the left of the address bar. Some pages have images served by http (non-SSL), so you'll occasionally see a yellow padlock.

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 7:37 am
by asavage
Two of us found an odd looping redirect problem. Wayne discovered it first, but I was able to reproduce it.

At the forums main page, selecting a forum got you sent right back to the main page. It didn't happen for me for all the forums, only the first four.

After a LOT of work, I found that deleting the cookies for nissandiesel.dyndns.org in FireFox, fixed the issue for me.

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Smilies icons in the Post page (new post or reply to a post) are not working (broken image links). I'll look into that tonight. :twisted:
phpBB-broken-smilies-icons.png
phpBB-broken-smilies-icons.png (56.39 KiB) Viewed 13850 times

Smilies

Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 4:31 pm
by asavage
Smilies are fixed. An over-ambitious rule in my anti-probing ruleset was blocking the images directory. I'm kinda surprised that attachment images and avatars were working.

dnydns client FUBAR

Posted: Fri Oct 11, 2019 11:29 am
by asavage
Background:
I run one server and several virtual hosts (websites) from my home: residential internet service. To keep overhead low, I don't pay for a static IP address: my ISP can and does change the IP of my home whenever they feel like it. It might be hourly, but usually it stays the same for quite a while. I never know when their system will change my IP address (it had been the same since Feb2019 this time), and it changed three days ago.

dyndns is a service I give money to every year, that handles Domain Name Services (DNS) mapping to my home's IP address. You type in "nissandiesel.dyndns.org" in your browser, your browser asks your ISP to go fetch info, your ISP goes to dyndns, and dyndns sends the request to my IP, where it hits my server. My server then sends the info back through that chain. It's actually a lot less expensive to pay dyndns to do this, than to purchase a static IP. Or, it was when I last looked into this sort of thing, perhaps the situation has changed.

On the old, OS/2-based server, I ran a java app that sent dyndns the IP updates. A hardware router replacement a few years back came with a feature that is supposed to tell dyndns when the IP doled out by my ISP, changes -- so I turned off the software and let the router do the job. It had been been doing that for a few years without issue.

Failure:
This morning, I found that Automatic Updating of my IP address from the router to dyndns.org was no longer working. I suppose that I had changed my password at dyndns, but I guess that I failed to update the (hardware) router configuration, so it couldn't log in to dyndns to tell them that my IP had changed.

I updated the dyndns.org password in the router, but when I checked dyndns, it had only updated ONE of my hosted sites (nissandiesel was not one of them).

These days, dyndns now recommends using software to handle updates, as it finds many of the routines loaded into hardware routers do not do a reliable job of performing the updates. I can't use the old OS/2 java software on the new Ubuntu server, so I downloaded a dyndns-recommended program to run on the server that updates ALL the sites' IPs, loaded and configured it, and now the IPs of ALL my hosted sites, which all use my residential IP address, which is dynamic and randomly allocated by my ISP . . . they now all get updated by the dyn program.

Conclusion:
Problem solved . . . until next time.

Bandwidth increase

Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2020 2:43 pm
by asavage
We got an email from our ISP, who wanted to upgrade our residential internet service. I thought I was already on their highest tier. Logged in to my account at their website: no service tier info anywhere.

Called via phone (it still works), negotiated a $15/mo. decrease to our current billing AND an increase to our outbound speed. $180/yr. savings isn't bad for a half-hour on the phone.

Ookla says outbound speed about doubled. Images may load slightly faster in your browser. Search is still slow, though :(

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:27 pm
by Nissan_Ranger
I suppose that there isn't much need for a large bandwidth on the Nissan forums anymore... They are all antiques now!

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:28 pm
by Nissan_Ranger
...Lust like me at 68!

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2020 7:32 pm
by plenzen
Me too,,,,however,, , I do use a wider band, actually, I guess, a "longer band" to go around a wider area, but I get it. :| :wink:

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2020 9:11 pm
by waynosworld
I don't speak french. :lol:

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Tue Dec 15, 2020 1:54 pm
by asavage
The server was updated to Ubuntu 20.04 about three months ago. Unfortunately, with that base OS update came a slew of unexpected updates to Apache (httpd) and php. Those broke this forum software, which was phpbb v3.2.5 and incompatible with php 7.4 . This left the forum readable but nobody could post.

Today, I updated the forum software. No doubt many things are broken, but at least posting ability should be restored.

[later]
* Site logo restored. Every upgrade of phpbb wipes the site logo back to default. Requires editing a couple of files to restore.
* Site width restored. phpbb v3.3 restricts width to 1152px by default. I set it to 100% again.
* Images resizing/zooming/scrolling fixed
* Google reCAPTCHA v3 implemented. No more Q&A for new registrations.
* reCAPCHA v3 implemented for the "Contact Us" email link, via the Contact Admin extension. I've been getting >10 spam emails/day for the past three weeks via that link; this should slow down 'bot spam to my personal email.

Re: Server Blog

Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2020 9:10 am
by Nissan_Ranger
It's become a labor of love, Al...

Search speed, new language

Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2021 6:41 pm
by asavage
I had noticed that sometimes Search worked OK, sometimes it timed out after 30 seconds with a blank page. PHP error about a timeout in mbstring

Fix: installed mbstring module for php on the server. Simple, once you know that's the problem :( Fortunately, someone already had the fix: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... #p15070801

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phpBB ships with the default language: British English. I've been trying to get American English installed as a language pack for a while; today, I succeeded. You can now update your preferred language in your User Control Panel:
  • Select your name or avatar at the upper left
  • Select "User Control Panel"
  • Select "Board Preferences" tab
  • You should see "Edit global settings" selected already on the left. In the middle, you can change "My language" from "British English" to "American English"
  • Select "Submit" to save

Emails from forum

Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 3:35 pm
by asavage
Wave Broadband changed to Astound sometime in the past couple of months. Whether it's coincidence or not, the email SMTP outbound server port changed from 537 to 587. I've just changed it here and tested it, and email seems to work again.