Connectivity problems (again)

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omelette
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by omelette »

Yes, it's super-fast now here as well. Soooo, a periodic server-reboot is all that is needed! Interesting.
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Dbug
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Dbug »

omelette wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:43 pm Yes, it's super-fast now here as well. Soooo, a periodic server-reboot is all that is needed! Interesting.
So much for "Linux and Apache can run forever" :)
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coco.oric
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by coco.oric »

Hello DBug, connectivity troubles are back this morning.
Delay for loading pages and errors on my internet browser
coco.oric as DidierV, CEO Member
Historic owner of Oric, Apple II, Atari ST, Amiga
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Dbug
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Dbug »

It seems to be very intermittent, I really need to find the cause.
If anyone has ideas about what could cause that, it's basically a bog standard Ubuntu LTS install with a standard Apache+PHP setup.
Not sure if the're ways to kind of record the cpu/disk/memory usage overtime and see if there are spikes on a graph?
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Symoon
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Symoon »

Could the amount of "visitors" be a cause?
As I'm writing now there are 27 "guests", and I recall a few weeks ago I saw something like 120.

Seems to be a lot for an Oric forum, could these (un-human?)"guests" have an activity that would slow down the server?
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Dbug
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Dbug »

Could be some bots, or some ddos attempts, like automated systems trying to tests phpbb forums for vulnerabilities to exploit.
Interesting, I'll check around :)
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Symoon
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Symoon »

"Most users ever online was 298 on Sun Sep 29, 2019 3:20 am"

I don't belive 298 of Oricians were looking at the forum during the night in Europe (if your server time is set in Europe ;) ), 1 month ago.
Maybe nothing alarming by today's standards, but what are those bots actually doing is a good question!

EDIT: when I posted the message, 21 users were reported. 20 minutes after the message I posted, we are right now at:
"In total there are 98 users online :: 0 registered, 1 hidden and 97 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)"
christian
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by christian »

There is something really weird, the home page says I'm the only registered visitor with more than 200 guests
If I go to a random discussion, I'm with at least 10 guests (even in a post from 2006!) and the response time is very high.

Can you check the log files of Apache and see if some IP addresses are often or always active?

I don't know if it's related but I can't reach the svn repository (svn update ends with timeout)
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Symoon
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Symoon »

About 20 mins ago, I experienced slowdowns, went back to the main page, it displayed "In total there are 240 users online".
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Dbug
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Dbug »

christian wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 7:01 pm There is something really weird, the home page says I'm the only registered visitor with more than 200 guests
If I go to a random discussion, I'm with at least 10 guests (even in a post from 2006!) and the response time is very high.

Can you check the log files of Apache and see if some IP addresses are often or always active?

I don't know if it's related but I can't reach the svn repository (svn update ends with timeout)
Yeah, SVN is using apache with WebDAV, so it's all connected.

Regarding the log files, the really weird thing is that it looks like 92.89% of the visitors (195359 visitors, 363789 hits) are using "Android OS", followed by "Windows 10" (2.15%, 4529 visitors and 30223 hits), I'm wondering if some mis-configured android app just happens to be requests on my server... I guess I need to dig more and see which requests are associated with Android hosts.
omelette
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by omelette »

Dbug wrote: Sun Nov 03, 2019 8:52 am
omelette wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:43 pm Yes, it's super-fast now here as well. Soooo, a periodic server-reboot is all that is needed! Interesting.
So much for "Linux and Apache can run forever" :)
Don't know about Apache, but I've been almost exclusively Linux-based since 2008 and I leave my laptop running 24/7 with Linux (currently, Mint) for months, without having to reboot. What usually forces a reboot - actually a forced turn-off/on - is either Compiz crashing, or a Wine app locking things up (very rare). So yeah, I'm a huge Linux fan, though things about it drive me to distraction - for instance, if a piece of old hardware you've got suffers a driver 'regression', chances are great that it will never work properly again with newer Linux releases. I'm stuck with Mint 17.3 on this laptop 'cos new Linux drivers stopped working with the SSD caddy I have. Same goes for the Canon scanner that I'm scanning the OUM magazines with - some Linux Dev adds a + where a minus should be and suddenly your scanner is unusable! Worse, it's like that on ALL new Linux kernels, or at least when I last checked, which is maddening. Old hardware is just ignored. I'm actually using the scanner on a Win7 box. But no 'slow-downs' like you seem to be experiencing.
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Chema
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Chema »

Can't add anything new. Indeed it is strange to have so many guest accounts browsing the forums...
In total there are 263 users online :: 1 registered, 0 hidden and 262 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)
Most users ever online was 298 on Sun Sep 29, 2019 3:20
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Dbug
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Dbug »

After checking the logs, I found out that there's a massive number of accesses from China (massive like 41k entries in today's log)

Code: Select all

113.123.x.x - - [07/Nov/2019:00:06:56 +0100] "GET /ucp.php HTTP/1.1" 200 4292 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0; FRD-AL00 Build/HUAWEIFRD-AL00; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/53.0.2785.49 Mobile MQQBrowser/6.2 TBS/043602 Safari/537.36 MicroMessenger/6.5.16.1120 NetType/WIFI Language/zh_CN"
114.103.x.94  - [07/Nov/2019:00:06:57 +0100] "GET /viewtopic.php HTTP/1.1" 200 7818 "-" "Mozilla/5.0(Linux;Android 5.1.1;OPPO A33 Build/LMY47V;wv) AppleWebKit/537.36(KHTML,link Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/42.0.2311.138 Mobile Safari/537.36 Mb2345Browser/9.0"
159.138.x.x - - [07/Nov/2019:00:06:58 +0100] "GET /viewtopic.php HTTP/1.1" 200 8071 "-" "Mozilla/5.0(Linux;Android 5.1.1;OPPO A33 Build/LMY47V;wv) AppleWebKit/537.36(KHTML,link Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/43.0.2357.121 Mobile Safari/537.36 LieBaoFast/4.51.3"
117.44.x.x -  - [07/Nov/2019:00:06:59 +0100] "GET /viewforum.php HTTP/1.1" 200 4393 "-" "Mozilla/5.0(Linux;U;Android 5.1.1;zh-CN;OPPO A33 Build/LMY47V) AppleWebKit/537.36(KHTML,like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/40.0.2214.89 UCBrowser/11.7.0.953 Mobile Safari/537.36"
113.104.x.x - - [07/Nov/2019:00:07:00 +0100] "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1" 200 7659 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 7.0; FRD-AL00 Build/HUAWEIFRD-AL00; wv) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Chrome/53.0.2785.49 Mobile MQQBrowser/6.2 TBS/043602 Safari/537.36 MicroMessenger/6.5.16.1120 NetType/WIFI Language/zh_CN"
So the question is: What do I do at this point, I could not like this guy:
https://www.johnlarge.co.uk/blocking-ag ... pers-bots/

I don't feel good about banning Chinese (could be done at the router/firewall level as well), but if that ruins the site for everybody, that sucks...
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mikeb
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by mikeb »

A long time ago I started using this :-

http://www.wizcrafts.net/chinese-blocklist.html
(or)
http://www.wizcrafts.net/chinese-iptabl ... klist.html

To stop the endless probing of SMTP server, trying to relay mail/spam through me. It quietened things down no end, and has had no impact on receiving genuine mail.

If hammering the site looking for faults in phpBB, or weaknesses in your computer's security, is making the site unstable for others, maybe it's the answer.
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Symoon
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Re: Connectivity problems (again)

Post by Symoon »

Getting worse the past 24 hours, experienced several timeouts before being able to reach the forum.

Could it be a smart way to censor the internet without practicing censorship officially? => spam the sites you want to censor so they ban IPs from the country? (though I doubt Oric sites represent any subversive content ;) )
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