Server Blog

News & discussion about the forum's server, hardware, software, upgrades, features, etc.

Moderator: Nissan_Ranger

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asavage
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Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
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Re: Server Blog

#166

Post 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?
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
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asavage
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Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
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Re: Server Blog

#167

Post 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".
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
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asavage
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Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
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SSL/TLS

#168

Post 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.
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
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asavage
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Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
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Re: Server Blog

#169

Post 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.

-----------------------------

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 13836 times
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
User avatar
asavage
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Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
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Smilies

#170

Post 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.
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
User avatar
asavage
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Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
Contact:

dnydns client FUBAR

#171

Post 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.
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
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asavage
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Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
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Bandwidth increase

#172

Post 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 :(
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
Nissan_Ranger
Posts: 270
Joined: 17 years ago
Location: Canada

Re: Server Blog

#173

Post 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!
The old 'six gun' was as popular as the cell phone in its time and just as annoying when it went off in the Theater.
Nissan_Ranger
Posts: 270
Joined: 17 years ago
Location: Canada

Re: Server Blog

#174

Post by Nissan_Ranger »

...Lust like me at 68!
The old 'six gun' was as popular as the cell phone in its time and just as annoying when it went off in the Theater.
plenzen
Posts: 890
Joined: 16 years ago
Location: Cochrane Alberta Canada

Re: Server Blog

#175

Post 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:
Retired Pauly
Problem with being retired is that you never get a day off.
1987 D21-J SD25 KC
KJLGD21FN
waynosworld
Posts: 571
Joined: 11 years ago
Location: Vancouver Washington USA

Re: Server Blog

#176

Post by waynosworld »

I don't speak french. :lol:
I know the voices are not real,
but they have some really good ideas.
User avatar
asavage
Site Admin
Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
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Re: Server Blog

#177

Post 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.
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
Nissan_Ranger
Posts: 270
Joined: 17 years ago
Location: Canada

Re: Server Blog

#178

Post by Nissan_Ranger »

It's become a labor of love, Al...
The old 'six gun' was as popular as the cell phone in its time and just as annoying when it went off in the Theater.
User avatar
asavage
Site Admin
Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
Contact:

Search speed, new language

#179

Post 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

------------------------

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
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
User avatar
asavage
Site Admin
Posts: 5431
Joined: 18 years ago
Location: Oak Harbor, Wash.
Contact:

Emails from forum

#180

Post 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.
Regards,
Al S.

1982 Maxima diesel wagon, 2nd & 4th owner, 165k miles, rusty & burgundy/grey. Purchased 1996, SOLD 16Feb10
1983 Maxima diesel wagon, 199k miles, rusty, light yellow/light brown. SOLD 14Jul07
1981 720 SD22 (scrapped 04Sep07)
1983 Sentra CD17, 255k, bought 06Jul08, gave it away 22Jun10.
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