Forum Problems...

[axn]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

We've disabled the search feature and turned off the user listing of who is online. We've also changed the forum and thread listings to 10 items. Hopefully this will reduce the load on the database server.

I'm gonna miss "New Posts"

Is there any way to cache that (or something) to reduce the load?

[R. Gerbicz]

Originally Posted by axn1

I'm gonna miss "New Posts"

Yes, that was the best button on the forum.

[jinydu]

The most users ever online figure is also gone...

[Xyzzy]

We've removed a pile of stuff, as you have noticed. We'll add stuff back in, one by one, until things start breaking. This will take some time. It is hard to figure out what features use the most resources, but we are getting a feel for it, slowly.

Sorry!

[ixfd64]

I disagree with blocking search engines. This will simply kill publicity.

[Wacky]

Mike,
Frankly, a lot of the "information" referenced in this thread is "fluff". I don't really care who is (supposedly) "online" (I never "log off" because I would then have to expend too much effort to log on again), or any of the other "interesting" aspects of this forum. To me, participation is primarily a question of being able to "communicate" with members who happen to share an interest in those topics with which I also have an interest. There are many topics in this forum in which I have no interest. However, I don't think that they are "inappropriate" and think that they have a rightful place and should be supported. Just don't expect me to follow their details. Therefore, the mechanisms of your forum which allow me to conveniently ignore those topics in which I have no interest are of significant value to me.

As I understand the situation, something, rather recently, has been causing an overload on the "back-end database server" and thus preventing the forum from presenting its information in the way that "we" would prefer.

The readers of this forum have considerable expertise. Perhaps if you can describe to nature of the "perceived" difficulty, we can collectively help to formulate a plan to help insulate the servers without placing unreasonable restrictions on those that you wish to attract.

Richard

[Xyzzy]

In a nutshell, there are 3 resources we have to manage:

1) Disk space.
2) Bandwidth.
3) Database queries.


1) We have tons of space and use a minute fraction of it.

2) We use around one half of our allowed bandwidth, and that is with the spiders being let in. Without the spiders we use around a quarter.

3) This is what is killing us. We have hard coded limits on the number of inserts, deletes and updates per hour. The attack we are experiencing right now is a simple brute force attack where a *pile* of (zombie?) computers are accessing the forum many times a minute. Even with guest access turned off, just having this many requests for error pages sometimes resets the server.

Our theory is that there are certain features that use exceptional amounts of queries. The search, for example, uses a lot. We have (when the search is on) a "captcha" system for guests to get through to search. When the system is under attack we do okay, until several people try a crazy search at the same time and then the instantaneous load kills the server.

Our priority is to get the search back online as soon as possible. This will fix the "new posts button" problem, too. (We use that feature a lot.)

Right now we are just trying to keep things up until we can figure out how best to fix this problem. Our current hosting plan is underpowered but it is affordable. And up until recently it has been entirely adequate. We have a feeling no matter how powerful of a server we had that the bad guys could bring it down. So, we have to figure out a way to be more efficient or figure out a way to close the doors to the bad guys without making the forum too inaccessible to the regular users.

Right now we are trying to figure out how to add the "captcha" system to guests viewing threads.

[Xyzzy]

You all may have noticed a lot less spam being posted lately.

The supermods recently came up with a nice system that seems to cut out spam posting almost entirely.

We're sure this is a similar kind of problem, but the speed and intensity that it has hit has given us little time to prepare a solution.

In other words, don't lose faith. Eventually we'll figure this out.




PS: Sometime tonight we may attempt to rebuild the search index, so if the forum is "down" that is what is going on.

[Citrix]

May be the archive can be public and the actual forum can be restricted to members only?

Should reduce some bandwith issues.

[moo]

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

In a nutshell, there are 3 resources we have to manage:

1) Disk space.
2) Bandwidth.
3) Database queries.


1) We have tons of space and use a minute fraction of it.

2) We use around one half of our allowed bandwidth, and that is with the spiders being let in. Without the spiders we use around a quarter.

3) This is what is killing us. We have hard coded limits on the number of inserts, deletes and updates per hour. The attack we are experiencing right now is a simple brute force attack where a *pile* of (zombie?) computers are accessing the forum many times a minute. Even with guest access turned off, just having this many requests for error pages sometimes resets the server.

Our theory is that there are certain features that use exceptional amounts of queries. The search, for example, uses a lot. We have (when the search is on) a "captcha" system for guests to get through to search. When the system is under attack we do okay, until several people try a crazy search at the same time and then the instantaneous load kills the server.

Our priority is to get the search back online as soon as possible. This will fix the "new posts button" problem, too. (We use that feature a lot.)

Right now we are just trying to keep things up until we can figure out how best to fix this problem. Our current hosting plan is underpowered but it is affordable. And up until recently it has been entirely adequate. We have a feeling no matter how powerful of a server we had that the bad guys could bring it down. So, we have to figure out a way to be more efficient or figure out a way to close the doors to the bad guys without making the forum too inaccessible to the regular users.

Right now we are trying to figure out how to add the "captcha" system to guests viewing threads.

what about switching to a colocation plan then all you would have to worry about is cpu performance problems and bandwidth space like you said wouldnt be an issue only db size and db speed.

[ixfd64]

I've noticed that each thread has now been limited to ten posts per page. The post limit was originally 100, but it was lowered to 25 about two days ago, and further reduced to ten earlier today. I guess this would help in case the DDoS attacker decides to exhaust our bandwidth by rapidly downloading threads.