Oh boy...

[harshness]

I started programming in HEX, and sometimes in OCTAL, after a brief stint in binary. Taught me to appreciate high order languages.

When I took my first computer class (BASIC programming on a PDP-8/L), we had to "key in" the tape reader bootstrap using paddle switches each morning before loading BASIC from a punched tape on a Teletype Model 33 ASR. The computer had 4K of magnetic core RAM.

One of the eggheads had memorized the entire sequence of switch settings that comprised in the bootstrap.

 

[TRG]

I am SO GLAD I stopped keeping up with this stuff so long ago. 20+ years ago. It’s now a lifestyle.

I started programming in HEX, and sometimes in OCTAL, after a brief stint in binary. Taught me to appreciate high order languages.

"Machine Language."

 

[klang]

IBM Assembler is as deep as I ever got.

I tried doing a self taught course on developing apps for iPhones about 15 years ago. No longer computed.

 

[navychop]

Yes, assembler was what I used a lot. Efficient , but slow to write. I used assembler in links from higher level languages to make things run acceptably. Nice they allowed such calls.

Wayback machine on full.

 

[navychop]

When I took my first computer class (BASIC programming

I am sorry you started with a fatal disease.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Wednesday morning update...

Almost 24 hours since removing http2 from our config and things have been running well. While http2 is faster the page loading is still very snappy and faster than the old server.

Interesting observation is that about 90% of the hack attempts have stopped since turning off http2.

Also noticed something else... yesterday I added more server monitoring with the addition of uptime.satelliteguys.us and the thing I noticed is the server ping check is not as accurate as I would hope it would be. Since PING replies from servers are always the lowest priority on a server there are times where I get a notice that the server did not answer the ping.

On a separate computer, on a different ISP I am also running Ping Plotter that is pinging us and a number of other sites as well. I want to see if the ping failures are real failures (indicating a problem at our host and not with the machine) out just because of the way pings are served.

When we moved to our new server we stayed in the same place... however it appears in a different datacenter as last week they had a 3 hour outage at the datacenter where our old server was. (They finally shut off our old server yesterday as I was still able to access it up until then.) I am REALLY glad we were not down for 3 hours.

I am still closely monitoring things here at work on my 3 monitors, but I am sincerely hoping that our issues are behind us.

 

[navychop]

THREE hou hou…

Oh, THE HORROR!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Just rebooted as the system said I needed to reboot for system updates to apply.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Yes we were down again... and we were down for awhile as I was in the system checking on things and testing things.

The strange part was SatelliteGuys was down while my weather site was still up. (The weather site went down a few minutes later...)

Again the error log was showing the issue being the MaxRequestWorkers setting, which I have raised again.

In our domain error logs I did see errors from one of our Plugins at the time we went down... and that Plugin was recently updated. I am looking into that now.

I am also researching and found some additonal tips and soe suggest this was a DDOS attack Slowloris (computer security) - Wikipedia. I am working on these things now. And this ultimately could be what happened today.

If its not one thing its another.

I am working on it.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I have added the recommended fix to our server config (mod_reqtimeout) for the DDOS attack, which IF that was the issue should prevent it from happening again.

My wife thinks that may be why we have been running good for a number of days and then today boom.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok done tinkering for now...

Will be monitoring.

 

[Radioguy41]

Aren't computers fun? It's threads like this that reaffirm my joy at having retired from the business. The only computers I have to be concerned about these days are the ones sitting on or under the counter (I keep 2 spares ready to plug & play should the need arise). Thanks for all your hard work Scott.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Aren't computers fun? It's threads like this that reaffirm my joy at having retired from the business. The only computers I have to be concerned about these days are the ones sitting on or under the counter (I keep 2 spares ready to plug & play should the need arise). Thanks for all your hard work Scott.

In the old days when ad revenue was good, I use to pay $175 a month just for someone to do all this UNIX stuff.

With ad revenue declining, yet traffic still remaining up I had to take on the task myself.

I don't claim to be an expert and I admit I am always learning new things.

Plus the fact that to me this is like having a sports car, I strive to make it the best and as fast as possible. Speaking of speed... I noticed a few minute ago we didn't have GZIP enabled. This compresses the web pages to send them to you faster (as its a smaller file being transferred to you) It is enabled now. And now the site is a little snappier.

Gzip Is Enabled
Original Size: 318.12 KB
Gzip Size (compressed): 51.36 KB
Compression %: 83.86% is compressed
HTTP Status: 200
Request Time: 0.183 ms
Compression Time: 0.0167 s
Content Type: text/html

Maybe I am like Scotty from Star Trek... "I am giving it all I got Captain!"

 

[thomasjk]

In the old days when ad revenue was good, I use to pay $175 a month just for someone to do all this UNIX stuff.

With ad revenue declining, yet traffic still remaining up I had to take on the task myself.

I don't claim to be an expert and I admit I am always learning new things.

Plus the fact that to me this is like having a sports car, I strive to make it the best and as fast as possible. Speaking of speed... I noticed a few minute ago we didn't have GZIP enabled. This compresses the web pages to send them to you faster (as its a smaller file being transferred to you) It is enabled now. And now the site is a little snappier.

Gzip Is Enabled
Original Size: 318.12 KB
Gzip Size (compressed): 51.36 KB
Compression %: 83.86% is compressed
HTTP Status: 200
Request Time: 0.183 ms
Compression Time: 0.0167 s
Content Type: text/html

Maybe I am like Scotty from Star Trek... "I am giving it all I got Captain!"

Aye Captain. The Warp Core is beginning to melt down.

 

[charlesrshell]

Site seems to be working faster for me.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Me too. But I didn’t want to say anything and jinx it.

 

[Foxbat]

Me too. But I didn’t want to say anything and jinx it.

Yes, we must not invoke Murphy…

 

[harshness]

The most efficient way to minimize a DDOS attack is to identify it and ignore the offending IP addresses. Anything else involves repeated processing of the offending volleys at a relatively high level.

 

[charlesrshell]

Yes, we must not invoke Murphy…

I will, it is what it is. Both my smartphone & laptop are really a lot more snappier using Chrome. Thanks Scott.

 

[Juan]

Not sure if related but found this

FBI Takes Down Massive Global Army of Zombie Computer Devices

(Bloomberg) -- The FBI said it has dismantled what is likely the world’s largest botnet — an army of 19 million infected computers — that was leased to hackers for cybercrimes.Most Read from BloombergWorld’s Largest Nuclear Plant Sits Idle While Energy Needs SoarWarning Signals Are Flashing for...

finance.yahoo.com