Server Downtime - May 13th-16th, 2025

[vdeane]

Has the way the login works changed?  When I signed in earlier, the "stay signed in for 1 hour" thing oddly still had me signed in after an hour.

[kphoger]

So many 'Loading' hangups now.  Almost every time I go to quote a post, it fails to populate the quoted text and just throws a 'Loading' banner at the top of the screen instead.  Refreshing the page and trying again works sometimes, but other times it takes several attempts and few mild profanities.

This issue has gone away lately.  I'm not seeing it anymore.

[kphoger]

Has the way the login works changed?  When I signed in earlier, the "stay signed in for 1 hour" thing oddly still had me signed in after an hour.

All I've noticed is that either the default changed, or else the list itself changed.  I only know this because I try to use the keyboard instead of the mouse as much as possible, and I used to select 'Forever' by simply hitting Tab Up-arrow Tab Enter or something like that (my fingers know, not my brain).  I did that earlier, apparently that now means '1 hour', and then I wondered by I got booted out a little while later.

[Rothman]

Just experienced a hang-up loading a thread.

[rickmastfan67]

Has the way the login works changed?  When I signed in earlier, the "stay signed in for 1 hour" thing oddly still had me signed in after an hour.

I tweaked that setting to 1 day now by default.

[Alex]

UPDATE: my host says all the requests are coming from a single ip, 166.194.200.53, which is an ATT/Cingular ip in Allen, Texas. Is that consistent with the attack source on AARoads, or is my situation separate and unrelated?

I downloaded log files from May 13 to May 16 and the ip 166.194.200.53 did not show up.
However as an example, three IP's from Brazil showed up 1,530 times on May 13.

Similar to you, long term traffic overall for AARoads has decreased or been flat, so this surge in bot traffic has been surprising. And the number of bots remains at ridiculously high levels: 5,800 guests and 13 users as of this post.

Just experienced a hang-up loading a thread.

Checking the memory usage, the trend has been that the server tops out after 6 PM nightly. Which helps explain why the Forum may spool or hang-up.

I have the cron job restarting the server daily at 2 AM. May have to consider adding a second restart to offset the memory usage until this bot activity decreases (if it ever does).

Alex:  Do you ever feel like you're playing Whack-A-Mole with a Band-Aid?

Absolutely! When I think I have things covered, I turn around and the SMF error log is populated with something new.

[Rothman]

All things considered, seems to be running pretty smoothly now, despite the surprising Russsian spam account showing up.

[1995hoo]

All things considered, seems to be running pretty smoothly now, despite the surprising Russsian spam account showing up.

As the guy who services our HVAC always writes on the post-service ticket, "System operates properly at this time."