Site Problem

[Tools]

Re: Site Problem

Thanks Tomterm8,

Reorganisation of the forums is usually fairly straight forward but...... if you are unsure of what you are doing or make just one wrong setting the whole thing can go tits up. If webby needs any tips he`s more than welcome to ask Amethyst or myself for lessons :flypig:

Not sure the management would be too happy though.

[strangewayofsavin]

Re: Site Problem

so let me get it right before i write something I should not!!
even though Cags problems are mighty similar to the problems we had this and last week, it is not a DDos attack?

[Nattie]

Re: Site Problem

CAG have a problem caused by an upgrade of their debt forum which has caused their problem. That problem is not DDOS.

Legal Beagles has been hit for the second weekend running with DDOS. Not an upgrade of a forum, server or even colour.

Hope that clarifies it.

Is that too many problems on the first sentence

[Tools]

Re: Site Problem

Just an update for everyone

Amethyst and myself have monitored the statistics over the last 24 hours and it seems (fingers crossed) we have managed to completely stop the latest DoS attack to LB .

We were of the impression earlier today that the attack was maybe still underway as the figures for a particular page were still quite high. After reviewing the figures more in depth, the higher than average stats for that page today can be accredited to higher traffic from genuine guests to the forum and not the dos script that began on Saturday.

I have to be completely honest and say that last weeks attack was the first time we have had to deal with a DoS and we were complete novices with how to first recognise and then deal with it.

Apart from losing the server for a few hours, due to the provider insisting it be turned off so as not to affect its other customers,we managed to stave off the 1st one last Saturday/Sunday relatively quickly. This was largely due to Amethysts quick response to the rapid chain of events. Measures we took throughout the night meant that the site was back online for the following day without too much loss of service to our members.

The second one that started yesterday was again quickly identified and measures we had implemented during the previous weeks attack were easily put into place meaning no loss of server whatsoever. The only downtime was to the VIP chatbox but as we also have the chatroom for instant messaging this wasn`t such a problem.

The downtime last night was caused by a table error in the database , more than likely to do with me re-writing the page script under DoS attack. It affected the main forum homepage and each time someone tried to view it, it threw up a database error. In order to identify the problem and stop it affecting other pages the forum was briefly turned off, again the chatroom was still accessible if needed.

This goes to show that one small error in the script of one page can seriously affect the whole forum. Many people are assuming that CAG is under a similar attack, from what I have seen they are not. There are no mass DoS attacks happening to other bank related forums so the conspiracy theorists among us (briefly me too) have nothing to worry about. Cag`s site problems are an error that has occurred during the re-organisation/upgrading of the layout and nothing more. Webmaster/Dave/Marc will have made an error somewhere resulting in it affecting the whole forum.

It is easily done, as I managed to do last night, but can take time to identify why and correct.

Its good to see a few others from CAG have ventured over here while the builders are in, we welcome any helpful contributions.

We thank our members and guests for their continued support throughout the recent downtime.

Tools

[quartz]

Re: Site Problem

I would like to say a very BIG to Amethyst & Tools, for all your hard work in getting the forum back to full working order soooo quickly, & not forgetting anyone else who were there supporting them at the time, by just keeping everyone up to date during it all, mainly Nattie.

:cheer2:

[Nattie]

Re: Site Problem

Thanks quartz but I think, my role is very small while amethyst and tools have had the BIG job to do to keep the forum going.

[Amethyst]

Re: Site Problem

Apologies for any difficulty users have had accessing the site today. This seems to have been cause by the guest functions and we have repaired the relevant tables. We do not know the precise cause of the errors. We do not believe it is related to the recent DOS attacks.

We have now purchased a dedicated server and the site will be transferred to the new server in the next week. This should solve a lot of these problems.

[Amethyst]

Re: Site Problem

Apologies for site being down last night - officially from 10pm till about 1am I think.

I went to bed.

Anyway it wasn't anything we could do anything about. The server company had a fault with their mysql1042 and were fixing it. So was just a case of waiting.

Gave everyone chance to watch newsnight anyway