Site issues today

Sorry, folks, we had another database issue that seems resolved. I'll do some more digging around to see what the root cause is. Anyway, the site seems good at the moment, let me know if you see anything odd. It is possible any pending posts or PMs might have been dropped, so check to see if any of yours needs reposting.

Cheers,
Tom

Hi Tom,

I was getting database errors yesterday as I started going through the giant "use of x-ray film" thread. Today it just says that page isn't working. Has it reached some critical mass? ;-)

Best,
Jay

Can you post a link to that thread & I'll check it out. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by Tom Westbrook

Can you post a link to that thread & I'll check it out. Thanks.

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Here it is:

https://www.largeformatphotography.i...example-images

I am not seeing any images on any image thread, unless it is an outside link (eg Flickr).

it might be in your personalized settings
top of page > "settings". then "general settings" then "visible display options" you'll see a show images button .. see if it says "show images" &C ..

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Originally Posted by Tom Westbrook

Sorry, folks, we had another database issue that seems resolved. I'll do some more digging around to see what the root cause is. Anyway, the site seems good at the moment, let me know if you see anything odd. It is possible any pending posts or PMs might have been dropped, so check to see if any of yours needs reposting.

Cheers,
Tom

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Could it be that the forum wasn’t working properly today? Not sure if it was just me or if something happened with your database.

I have been a regular visitor to the site for 8 or 9 years but in recent months the site has become unbearably slow, is there a major issue? I visit upwards of a dozen or more forums on a daily basis without any issues so please try and sort this out.

The largeformatphotography.info server has been experiencing a low-level DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service). I was joking with Tom about it and suggested that maybe the attack was coming from the Minox Users Forum. If there is such a thing. There is no way to trace the source of a distributed attack (which is why people perpetrate them).
I have increased the capacity of our server from 75 simultaneous connections to 200. We shall see if that has any effect.

In looking around the Forum pages just now, I saw the below data, which suggests that increasing the limit to 200 simultaneous connections will not help much.
Attachment 261003
(If the attachment fails, it says there are 14,000 “guest users” connected.

I am a server and system software person; I don't know anything about VBulletin. But unless guest users are important, I think that configuring VBulletin to reject guest user connection attempts would be a lasting solution to the performance problems. I figure that sooner or later Tom or QT will read this thread. I think that both of them understand VBulletin.

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Originally Posted by bkreid

I am a server and system software person; I don't know anything about VBulletin. But unless guest users are important, I think that configuring VBulletin to reject guest user connection attempts would be a lasting solution to the performance problems. I figure that sooner or later Tom or QT will read this thread. I think that both of them understand VBulletin.

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Brian - thanks for weighing in. We have an ongoing thread in the private Moderators subforum where we have been working through diagnostic questions and possible remedial actions.

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Originally Posted by Oren Grad

Brian - thanks for weighing in. We have an ongoing thread in the private Moderators subforum where we have been working through diagnostic questions and possible remedial actions.

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I, for one, would be fine with rejecting guest user connections.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bkreid

The largeformatphotography.info server has been experiencing a low-level DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service). I was joking with Tom about it and suggested that maybe the attack was coming from the Minox Users Forum. If there is such a thing.

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I think that be "the sub club". ;)

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Originally Posted by paulbarden

I, for one, would be fine with rejecting guest user connections.

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+1

Right now (9:40pm US Eastern time) there are almost 20,000 guest users connected, and as a result the server is very slow.
Attachment 261008

I just heard today that Kodak sales were up, they aren't kidding ! ;)

Thanks Brian. Mostly bots, I'd guess. I don't think it's possible to block each subnet they are coming from. I block the egregious ones, but it's a losing battle.

Do you know anything about the Cloudfare free version? Seems to have DDOS mitigation but would to proxy all the DNS queries (at a minimum) to their DNS servers.

Entirely bots.
I’ve used Cloudflare’s commercial services and they wouldn’t offer much protection against this kind of attack. I don’t know a thing about their free version. I know who to ask, though.

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Originally Posted by bkreid

But unless guest users are important, I think that configuring VBulletin to reject guest user connection attempts would be a lasting solution to the performance problems.

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We need the Guest logins for legit crawlers to index the site (VBulletin's native search function stinks) and we probably have casual people looking for info who don't want to register. I don't think we'd want to deny access to those sorts of users.

The past 2-3 weeks have been painfully slow.
Today it's pretty fast

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Originally Posted by Chuck1

The past 2-3 weeks have been painfully slow.
Today it's pretty fast

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Same.

Can vBulletin enforce a limit on connection time of a guest connection?

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Originally Posted by bkreid

Can vBulletin enforce a limit on connection time of a guest connection?

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The Forum Permissions Manager, where permissions for the various Usergroups are set, includes no timing parameter.