| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/19/2012 : 09:58:51 AM
Hi all --
I'm looking for some advice, and I hope that many people are watching this subforum because I think I have to do something drastic
I've spent the past week trying to clean up the server, rearranging email servers, reindex databases, looking at logs and the like and I've come up against a big problem: subscriptions.
I tried to look at "All Subscriptions" (I'm not sure who can see it, so you may not have it on your Forum screen), and got an error explaining that Snitz was buffering output, and that the data exceeded the 4MB limit. After some code fussing, I got it to cough up the subscriptions.
All 17,000 of them.<g>
We're pretty much in a situation wherein if someone says, "Me, too, that happened to me as well," then the Forum server's got to send out up to a thousand or so emails, most of which go to dead accounts and, more often, dead emails. It's meaning that I've got to spend more and more time begging to be removed from a spam list or black hole server, and it's probably gotten my IP address blocked at many routers, to say nothing of how many cycles we're wasting on the server CPU. Many of the subs are forum-wide subs, meaning every little bit of chatter sends off lots of emails.
We gotta do something.
There is no place that I've found in the UI where to delete all existing subscriptions, and clicking on 17,000 subscriptions sounds like a presciption for carpal tunnel, so I'd LIKE to just poke around the Snitz FORUM_SUBSCRIPTIONS table and see if I can just delete all of the records.
To that end, I'd like some thoughts.
1) I really think we can't sustain the current subscriptions. Am I wrong, will this really incovenience someone?
2) Can I wipe the subs and simply not allow new subscriptions? It's a particularly attractive feature for casual visitors, I know... when I post a question on some random forum it's the only way I ever find out that someone's commented. OTOH, is it the case now that the spammers and phishers have doomed ANY server that does any but the most selective mass mailings?
If anyone there is smarter about Snitz and has an idea, please chime in. I'd really like to hear what you folks think. Thanks! |
| 30 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/30/2012 : 2:56:21 PM
I'm with Jazzy on this one. Three SSD's is overkill. I would go with three SATA's in a RAID Zer...uuuuhhh...Five.
JamesNT |
| Jazzy |
Posted - 07/30/2012 : 10:37:04 AM
Are you sure you need that power? For me as a visitor the performance of the site is great now. With the money spend on those disks you could run the forum on a hosted server for two or three years. Would be a cool project though. :) |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/30/2012 : 10:25:56 AM
Hi Jetze -- thanks for the info, it's useful!
Honestly I don't have much money to throw at it... it's just that at this point I don't have the ability to be near my Web server as often as I'd like, and so I'm thinking of taking my company site, the newsletter stuff and the sales and put that on some host that wouldn't cost all that much. My guess is that the Forum traffic is the greater piece of my daily server traffic, which is why I'd host the rest of it. But where to put the Forum? I'm thinking of doing an experiment wherein I get some fairly powerful but inexpensive desktop tower that supports SATA 3, get a couple of 128GB SSDs (our database is about a half gig if I recall... this Web server's been running on three 36 GB SAS drives for years with plenty of extra space) and it'll be interesting to see if we can see what kind of power a Server 2012 Web machine like that could produce.
Thanks! |
| Jazzy |
Posted - 07/29/2012 : 1:13:05 PM
Recently I looked into this for a rather large forum I'm the admin for. I didn't choose to be but when the rest of the team left I had to dive into forums and hosting. The major products phpBB and vBulletin both run on Linux with MySQL and PHP. phpBB is free to use and vBulletin costs a couple of $100s depending on the options you need.
You could run phpBB on Windows but I see no real advantage here. When you're new to Linux the learning curve is a bit steap but I managed to setup a fully functional and secure server from scratch. And if I can do it, I'm sure there are more forum members who can. Anyway, if you choose for phpBB I would offer to help setting up the new server and forumserver and assist with the migration.
Hosting, great idea. The big question is, do you have some $ to spend? Pricing for a Virtual Pricate Server (shared platform, dedicated VM) starts around $10 per month with a quality hosting company.
Anyway, let me know if I can do something. |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/29/2012 : 09:58:35 AM
Wes, the hosting thing's not a bad idea. I know it's annoying for you guys when I get flooded out for a couple of days (he says, as hurricane season approaches...<g>) Or maybe someone's got a big site and space for a little forum.<wink> And either a PHP or ASP option would be nice but of course I'd be happier to see an ASP one.<g>
Let's work on this. |
| Jazzy |
Posted - 07/28/2012 : 05:53:04 AM
Regarding my last question, I didn't read the second page of this topic. :) I maintain a phpBB forum and like how it's widely supported, highly customizable, very flexible and scalable.
There's a migration path through phpBB 2.0 (http://snitz2phpbb.sourceforge.net/) and if neccassery I can help with this. Heck, give me a VM with Snitz becasue I'm bored and see a challenge. :) |
| Jazzy |
Posted - 07/28/2012 : 05:48:10 AM
quote:
Originally posted by DennisMCSE
Never use the Subscribe button. What I usually do when I go to the forum is click on the "Active Topics" button to see what I've missed since I last logged in. It doesn't subscribe me to a topic, but I get to see what has been discussed.
This is exaclty what I do. The only time I use the subscribtion feature is when I open a topic myself.
Mark, are you happy with Snitz? Did you consider to migrate the forum to something more mainstream like phpBB or similar? |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 9:34:27 PM
Alright, just read through the migrating from Snitz topic. Sounds like all the usual Billshyte I always go through when migrating a database from one vendor to another.
Mark, We should talk about this. I'll have Wes set up that RAID 0 in the meantime.
JamesNT |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 9:30:47 PM
Wes,
We really need to work on your alcohol problem. <grin>
Thanks for the links!
JamesNT |
| Pesos |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 9:29:27 PM
Ha still don't drink it :-)
Here are a couple threads about conversion:
http://forums.webwiz.co.uk/migrating-from-snitz-lets-work-this-out_topic16577_page12.html
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=517845 |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 9:28:21 PM
By the way, I'm still thoroughly enjoying these Juniper SRX gateways. I've got 8 of them deployed now.
JamesNT |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 9:27:27 PM
LOL!! Yeah but you're still one of the bestest pals a guy could have!
Beer?
JamesNT |
| Pesos |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 9:23:01 PM
And both VMs should be running on RAID 0 to ensure optimum performance.
God I'm a jerk. |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 9:21:43 PM
The way I would do this is as follows:
First, we recognize that mapping everything out and find our way around both databases is going to take time. Obviously, the forum can't be down that long.
Solution: I would obtain a copy of both databases and set up both forums in VM's. I would then map everything out and program that into a SQL Server Integration Services package. I would do a mock migration. Mark and a few others of his choosing would then log on to both forums and compare. Any bugs or whatnot would be fixed, and another mock migration would occur. Wash, rinse, repeat until all are satisfied. We then schedule the real deal and take the forum down one night or something and, after all obligatory backups are done, do the real migration.
Obviously, there may be other logistical factors to consider, but that's the concept in a nutshell.
JamesNT |
| Pesos |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 8:36:02 PM
WWF is the only ASP-based option I've come across that has (had) a migration path from Snitz. The problem is the migration tool was for an older version, however with all the DB experts on this board that may be a beatable hurdle. If you wanted to, WWF actually has an extremely affordable hosted option so you could shift to that once the DB import was completed... http://www.webwiz.co.uk/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 7:24:11 PM
In that case, why don't you scout around to some type of other forum software you would like, and once you get a few choices gathered up, we'll look at what it would take to migrate.
JamesNT |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/27/2012 : 6:36:28 PM
Any one that'll let us take the last 10 years along (and that someone will help migrate to<g>.) |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/24/2012 : 9:55:09 PM
Mark,
What forum platform would you like to move to?
JamesNT |
| sixdoubleo |
Posted - 07/24/2012 : 9:28:07 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Minasi
I would LOVE to leave Snitz... if there were a way to migrate the existing topics. It'd be a shame to lose ten years.
I agree. I'm not sure what platform you'd prefer to be on, but I have seen Snitz--->phpBB converters. |
| JSCLMEDAVE |
Posted - 07/24/2012 : 10:36:40 AM
Well,,, I for one used the subscriptions to keep track of the scum bag spammers... I am just now getting caught up on emails and realized that there was nothing from the mother ship. <g>
@Mark, please get a-hold of Mike Ferguson and/or Chris Betzer. They will be more than happy to alleviate some of the IT duties tied to the forum including use of a Data Center... |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/23/2012 : 4:47:34 PM
I would LOVE to leave Snitz... if there were a way to migrate the existing topics. It'd be a shame to lose ten years. |
| Pesos |
Posted - 07/23/2012 : 12:18:14 PM
+1 for tapatalk!! |
| sixdoubleo |
Posted - 07/23/2012 : 12:13:35 PM
I use subscriptions to find out if somebody replied but could do without them. Some forums software has a feature whereby you can't subscribe to threads unless you have 50 posts or something. Would that help weed out the casual lookers and/or the spammers?
Also, how tied are you to Snitz? It sure would be nice to use Tapatalk with this forum. ;) |
| JamesNT |
Posted - 07/23/2012 : 11:37:33 AM
Mark,
I'm pretty sure I can still whip something up using Windows' built-in task scheduler and oSQL.exe.
JamesNT |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/23/2012 : 07:51:58 AM
Thanks, Jim, I will! For now it's just a matter of getting my world class ISP to do their frickin' job.
It's kind of hilarious that of the 168 hours in a week, Cox Cable's crack team of anti-abuse people are on call for 40 of them. Good thing Internet criminals only keep banker's hours.<g> |
| jadgate |
Posted - 07/23/2012 : 06:06:26 AM
Mark-
If you want to run any of the many automated and semi-automated vulnerability discovery tools against the forum/your site once you've got things in pretty good shape, give me a shout offline. I can point you in the right direction.
Later,
Jim |
| Pesos |
Posted - 07/22/2012 : 4:38:48 PM
Hope you get that guy shut down soon!
Email notifications are working again, w00t |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/22/2012 : 4:36:26 PM
Yuh, we should have upgraded a while back, but we'll probably do THAT when we move from 32-bit 2003 Server.
Trouble is, Wes, we've only got one IT guy, and he's busy.<g>
The good news is that fighting the bad guys recently has forced him to get REALLY smart about T-SQL.<g>
Seriously, thanks for putting up with all this, guys. In the past few weeks we've weathered a couple of DDOS attacks and a wave of attempted SQL injection attacks. No problems so far, but I've been doing a bunch of programming to batten down the hatches. It'll be a fun story one day, but for now, my consolation is that I suspect that we'll be putting the bastard who's doing it behind bars some time soon.
... I hope you're listening, pal... you're costing me some time NOW, but there's no big guys named Bubba waiting to make me his girlfriend. Heh heh heh heh... |
| Pesos |
Posted - 07/22/2012 : 2:49:13 PM
Lol!
Is MSDE still current? SQL express is free and doesn't have all that much in the way of limitations... |
| Mark Minasi |
Posted - 07/22/2012 : 12:26:45 PM
OK, update...
1) Verified that email config is working (registered a user and validated the account)
2) wiped the subscriptions
And, um they don't seem to have come back. I'm working on that, but I'm a LITTLE more concerned by a jerk who's been running SQL injection attacks on my class registration system.
I mean, I'm not THAT concerned because the "database" is a CSV-driven tool that I built myself 13 years ago.<g> (Have a nice time, jerkoff!) But it's probably time to double-check the sanitizing on other forms. |
