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turtle777 · Nov 2, 2007, 04:38 PM

I'm getting a lot of "Hampstor is out to lunch" errors lately.

Is there anything special going on ?
Anyone looking into it ?

-t

brassplayersrock² · Nov 2, 2007, 07:40 PM

nothing happening here. haven't seen any server is busy messages.

seanc · Nov 2, 2007, 07:58 PM

Originally Posted by brassplayersrock²

nothing happening here. haven't seen any server is busy messages.

I get them constantly.

gradient · Nov 2, 2007, 09:21 PM

I got it for about a full hour yesterday.

0157988944 · Nov 2, 2007, 09:37 PM

Ditto that.

C.A.T.S. CEO · Nov 2, 2007, 10:01 PM

I keep getting them, and they are starting to annoy me.

Laminar · Nov 2, 2007, 11:11 PM

Same here.

shifuimam · Nov 2, 2007, 11:45 PM

I got it off and on all day, but my work connection is behind a load balanced proxy with four actual proxies...if I switched between them, the message went away.

Demonhood · Nov 3, 2007, 06:52 AM

hmm, haven't gotten any. the server likes me.

OreoCookie · Nov 3, 2007, 07:13 AM

I've gotten a few. Perhaps someone should take a look under the hood?

Oisín · Nov 3, 2007, 07:39 AM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

I've gotten a few. Perhaps someone should take a look under the hood?

Yeah, ’Hood, you’re sitting on the cables again, hop over already!

(I’ve been getting them constantly the past four or five days, too)

reader50 · Nov 3, 2007, 12:41 PM

I've been seeing them. The most recent bout was last night. 1 AM Pacific (4 AM Eastern) while I was trying to clean out some spam in iPod/iPhone. I'm pretty sure the server wasn't all that busy, but the spam stayed until ghporter got it this morning.

Busy ... busy ... busy ... busy

theDreamer · Nov 3, 2007, 12:59 PM

I have been getting a few on and off for the last few days.
I figured it was just some server maintenance at first, routine stuff, but maybe not since it keeps happening.

residentEvil · Nov 3, 2007, 01:08 PM

i too; between 5am and 6am Eastern.

Kevin · Nov 3, 2007, 01:11 PM

I get them here AND over at Appleinsider. Both during the same times. Hosted on the same computer?

C.A.T.S. CEO · Nov 3, 2007, 01:47 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin

I get them here AND over at Appleinsider. Both during the same times. Hosted on the same computer?

Yeah, I believe they are hosted on the same server.

besson3c · Nov 3, 2007, 04:32 PM

I hope you guys don't mind my unsolicited advice here...

What I would do is grep your Apache logs for user IPs and sort them:

Code:
cat logfile | awk {'print $1'} | sort | uniq -c | sort -n | tail -40

(where logfile is the path to your Apache log file). This will tell you who is connecting to your web server the most, and by doing a host lookup on this IP you can determine where the user is coming from.

We run a cluster of web servers that gets hammered all day, and there are many attempts to script logins and spam attempts for spam bots controlled by bot nets. In many cases, we suspect that Kerberos passwords are obtained by on-campus keystroke loggers. In your case, since vBulletin is such a popular web app it is likely that there are many prewritten scripts for creating users, logging in, and attempting to spam. I'm sure the spam threads we see from time to time are the result of this very thing.

If you are getting hundreds/thousands of connection attempts from IPs from non English speaking countries, I would suggest putting these IP addresses in a block list. This list could automatically turn over after a while, basically turning this list into a "penalty box", or you could make these blocks permanent. The chances of blocking legitimate IPs are very low, because you should find that these connections occur far more than even your most active forum user.

I would then create a script/cronjob to write these IPs into a database or flat file, and have this information populate ipfw, which I'm assuming is running on your FreeBSD servers?

This kind of infrastructure is good to have in place anyway, if not so already... You never know when the main macnn.com site might be subject to a denial of service attack.

Again, I hope that my ideas are welcome and are well received. Please let me know if they aren't, and I'll cease

turtle777 · Nov 3, 2007, 09:15 PM

Nice suggestions, besson.

Albeit, I have no clue what you were talking about

-t

pinenuts · Nov 4, 2007, 05:49 PM

besson, send them a bill

besson3c · Nov 4, 2007, 05:57 PM

Originally Posted by pinenuts

besson, send them a bill

I've tried that before, but the post office keeps on returning letters addressed to "forums.macnn.com", even though I remembered to put a stamp on the envelope!

MacosNerd · Nov 5, 2007, 09:13 AM

I was getting the server busy error constantly this morning and this weekend

Kevin · Nov 5, 2007, 09:26 AM

Originally Posted by C.A.T.S. CEO

Yeah, I believe they are hosted on the same server.

Ah, I thought someone recently told me that they really had nothing to do with each other anymore.

Dakarʒ · Nov 5, 2007, 01:17 PM

I go tthis several times as I checked in over the course of two hours:

Fatal error: Memcache is not installed in /includes/class_datastore.php on line 271

shifuimam · Nov 5, 2007, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ

I go tthis several times as I checked in over the course of two hours:

Fatal error: Memcache is not installed in /includes/class_datastore.php on line 271

Ditto. 'NN hates us.

brassplayersrock² · Nov 5, 2007, 01:28 PM

update:

i'm still not getting any of these problems.

theDreamer · Nov 5, 2007, 05:59 PM

Server problem....

So I went to reply, but it put my post above who I was replying to, more than once (three times to be correct).

reader50 · Nov 5, 2007, 06:48 PM

That usually means the server's clock has been modified. Like perhaps the time change was applied 36 hours late.

Railroader · Nov 5, 2007, 07:44 PM

Originally Posted by reader50

That usually means the server's clock has been modified. Like perhaps the time change was applied 36 hours late.

"Sounds like someone is having a case of the Mondays."

brassplayersrock² · Nov 5, 2007, 08:10 PM

the time is now 6:10PM eastern

edit: sweeeeeet

residentEvil · Nov 7, 2007, 11:23 AM

happened again this morning; server too busy. happened around 6:35 - 6:45 EST

Kevin · Nov 7, 2007, 11:25 AM

I've been getting "server busy" msgs for the past 4 days or so myself.

shifuimam · Nov 7, 2007, 12:15 PM

any chance an admin could weigh in on this?

Demonhood · Nov 7, 2007, 01:17 PM

well, i haven't seen this at all recently. but i'll try to figure out what's going on.

brassplayersrock² · Nov 7, 2007, 02:13 PM

alrighty, i've been getting them off and on today.

Big Mac · Nov 7, 2007, 02:58 PM

Me too. However, I've never gotten the memcache error - just server busy.

Railroader · Nov 7, 2007, 04:19 PM

Not getting them. I am one lucky guy.

Kevin · Nov 13, 2007, 04:22 PM

The forum is being very very slow right now...

C.A.T.S. CEO · Nov 13, 2007, 06:03 PM

Originally Posted by Kevin

The forum is being very very slow right now...

Not for me, quite fast.

Kevin · Nov 13, 2007, 06:42 PM

Well NOW it's decently fast. That was 2 hours ago.