[Coco] forums restore

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 08 July 2009, Roger Taylor wrote:
>At 03:15 PM 7/8/2009, you wrote:
>>Yup, that's the one I saw.
>>I wish slow deaths upon such spammers!
>
>I can see who's in the forums and what they're doing and their
>information.  3 spammers were just deleted. 3 servers that were
>browsing the forums wildly and attempting to post were just
>banned.  This cleared up the activity log and took a load off the
>site.  One spammer's IP was changing (the last 2 numbers) so I just
>blocked their IP as such #.#.*.* and they're gone right now.
>
>The bad part.. when the 7/5 backup is restored, I'll have to do this
>again, as I'm working with a site image originally from 2008 with a
>handful of new posts added yesterday and today.
>
>I also blocked all *.ru e-mail addresses.  Soon to follow (sorry,
>guys) will probably be gmail, and maybe yahoo.  I don't use anybody's
>e-mail address for anything so there's no need for anybody to hide
>them.  They don't appear in any posts, either.
>
>I think a more defensive action in the sign-up process will help a
>Lot.  However, this can discourage some new visitors from joining the gang.
>
>We always snap back after mishaps like this so I expect things to be
>back to normal within a week or two, but I'll have to spend more time
>blocking known spammer IPs.  The huge list I added that kept the site
>fairly clean for a long time is no longer there, so I'll do that
>again and keep a better eye on things.  Thankfully, Robert Gault has
>notified me when somebody posted spam and it was usually a real
>person who signed up and posed as a CoCo user.
>
>Again, this is just typical stuff we have to deal with occasionally,
>but it's painful for the admin to waste days of time at the keyboard
>trying to repair what a trasher did.  I still don't know how the PHP
>and MySQL folks just can't get it right after all these years.  With
>each new upgrade, we have new vunerabilities, and since they're
>posted on the web for all to see, the spammers go right for it.
>
>Microsoft should also be ashamed at robbing the entire planet and
>causing more grief than any company has ever even come close to.  Now
>they're pushing Windows 7 at the worst economical times since the
>Great Depression, and offering 50% off if you preorder.  No thank
>ya.  Face lifts just don't qualify for an upgrade these days.  That's
>why I gave up on Money years ago when I saw no difference between
>upgrades, just more HTTP ads and links in the software's "home page"
>which they seem to push into every new program now.  I did try out
>their newest Money title (trial) but it deleted my paid copy of Money
>2006 and now I can't recover it, so they stole my software and I have
>no way to access my money files now.
>
>Folks, it's just a huge mess we have and nobody is immune to being
>screwed at any given time.  You'll wake up tomorrow and your hard
>drive will just quit working or your web site will be on the blitz by
>a bunch of commies.  Your $1,000 laptop will become a $5 rummage sale
>item, with nobody at fault and nobody to "pay you back".  It's
>getting worse.  And Google pretty much owns the web now.  There's
>nothing on the planet that can stop them now, I'm afraid.  Get used
>to it.  If you deal with Google, nothing is private about your life,
>and they know what you're doing and what you like.  Because of this,
>they know where you're going and what you'll be doing.  Since they
>own MySpace, and the entire planet is advertising their life and
>every thought and more, we're all screwed and our friends as well.
>
>Just some thoughts.

Roger, your site doesn't have to run on a winderz box you know.  And with 
amanda making nightly backups without any attention from you other than 
reading the mail report it sends you once its all setup, there isn't a really 
good excuse to not being able to restore it to yesterdays, or even this 
mornings image.  I could lose my main drive 10 minutes from now, and be back 
to a fully functional machine about 4 hours after getting back from town with 
a fresh drive.  This Fedora 10 box has 95 Gbytes of stuff on its / drive.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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