CFB51 College Football Fan Community

Off Topic Boards => Website Suggestions => Topic started by: betarhoalphadelta on January 04, 2018, 02:52:55 PM

Title: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: betarhoalphadelta on January 04, 2018, 02:52:55 PM
Been getting these more and more frequently lately. Not sure if traffic has gone up or something else. Usually if I just hit F5 to refresh, it'll successfully get there on the next load of the page...


Quote
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator at webmaster@cfb51.com to inform them of the time this error occurred, and the actions you performed just before this error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 04, 2018, 03:38:10 PM
i'm all over it @bwarbiany (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) ... been digging for the cause for hours now.  i updated the page to handle http/2 requests, and there are bugs... a lot of bugs... 

i'm bout to get it ironed out, though... and things should be stable and faster when done. 
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 04, 2018, 07:24:04 PM
@bwarbiany (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) and others, it's over... i think... i hope. 

i always jump to some sort of nefarious actions by someone somewhere when these strange things happen- especially after things were rolling so smoothly for so long. 

i did implement http2 on the server, and i'm trying like hell to get a good cache system up and running... but that wasn't the issue... i only know this after spending hours searching through it- literal hours. 

amazon is an advertiser/affiliate here- and they feed to the site without my screening too much.  they didn't hurt us... exactly, anyway.. also we have affiliate ads from a service- all that junk on the left column... well, i don't worry about them too much either being reputable... but what i didn't anticipate was both of them using the same script at the same time and causing all grades of mayhem... 

that, and ftbobs site is poorly written to today's standards- was fine years ago but not today, as it has all kinds of depreciated commands... and they cause some serious issues.  yesterday, someone was using a brute force effort to bust in, and i had to unplug his site until i can get it rewritten, which ay be a job for the off season... 

anyway, things seem to be under control now... i'll be watching it closely to make sure. 
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 05, 2018, 11:33:44 AM
i stayed with the page until 3am and it was running better than ever.... no errors no burden- i went to bed happy.  got up this morning at around 7 and checked, and.... 300+ errors... and a new member from some foreign land who made two posts of gibberish... so... i found the issue, and it was some nefarious bullsh1t from some jerk off who is now banned from access at the server point of entry level.  

i'm conferring with other users of this forums engine to see if they've encountered a similar attack and how they handled it.  

for what it's worth, the brute force we were having two days ago that was denying service intermittently to regular folks who were just trying to see the posts has been isolated too- so hopefully these things will cease from here out...  

 
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: betarhoalphadelta on January 05, 2018, 03:09:47 PM
I haven't noticed any issues today; so far so good.
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 05, 2018, 03:40:03 PM
you may find this interesting:  

the engine that runs this place has a forum for support. and i was just posting there about this issue, and they crashed. down for the count. somebody has been attacking SMF sites, and it is stout enough to take down the actual engine's serverstack.  that's interesting. and, i think related to what we've been dealing with here.  

fortunately this place is small enough that i can monitor just about every session- and keep things clean... they aren't so lucky.. i'll have to be on my toes, it looks like. 
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: betarhoalphadelta on January 07, 2018, 12:40:55 PM
Are they DoS attacks, or do you think there might be a vector by which they can compromise login info?

If the latter, I would perhaps highlight to people the importance of using unique passwords for every individual website that people join. It's a pain if you don't use a service like Lastpass, but at least I know that if somehow my login was compromised here that this is the only web site they could log in to with those credentials.
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 07, 2018, 12:54:49 PM
about to send you a PM.. i hesitate to disclose how they did it in the clear... 
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: betarhoalphadelta on January 12, 2018, 03:00:50 PM
FYI, it hasn't gone away completely... I just got one. 
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: betarhoalphadelta on January 12, 2018, 03:01:12 PM
And got a second one while attempting to post the above lol...

Another attack?
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 12, 2018, 03:01:58 PM
Could be... 
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: betarhoalphadelta on January 12, 2018, 04:16:17 PM
Just hit this:


Quote
Service Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Additionally, a 503 Service Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 12, 2018, 04:27:28 PM
i'm on it... this one is on me... 

i have a service set up to monitor traffic (because of the thing from last week)... it is pretty hungry.  and.... it triggered.. because i didn't have a memory limit on it, it sucked up almost three quarters of the memory allotted to the serverstack, and ultimately shut down.. so then the cron that monitors services refired it- just for it to reach its limit again... and again... and again this happened.. a cycle that can only be stopped by either turning it off, or, setting a limit.  

right now i'm trying to learn what proper settings are for this thing.  i've no clue.. but- it triggered (and keeps doing so) for a reason, so i'm reluctant to turn it off until i understand what's happening.  
Title: Re: Internal Server Error message becoming frequent...
Post by: Drew4UTk on January 14, 2018, 10:13:52 PM
i just dropped in a script that ought to assist if not eliminate the issues we were having.  it should also speed things up.  we're now relying on peoples own computers to store sessions and cache's... once your computers navigate around the page over the next little while, it will make records and store them- instead of relying on bandwidth to rebuild them, it will pull it from your computers memory.... it will flush pictures once a year, and files once a month...
over the next little while things may seem slow (or as they were) but you should notice a bunch of speed picking up as those volumes populate.