mu.nu - Fighting attention deficit disorder wherever it - ooh, shiny!

July 27, 2006

Blogger.com?

Is there a reason that blogger.com is in the blacklist? I would remove it, but with the recent troubles we've been having, I thought I would ask first. Pixy added it to the list in May.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 05:14 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Argggghhhh

I just tried to add Whatsakyer to my blog roll, I got a this server cannot be accessed message and everything below dadvocate disappeared... what happened? Can it be fixed or do I need to re post everything on my sidebar php?

Posted by: GM Roper at 12:40 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 26, 2006

Untouchable Comment Spam

I saw a hit in my sitemeter referrals this morning for an unlikely batch of words, so I checked out the linked post and found a flood of spam. Odd thing is that I got no email notifications of them, and when I go to the edit page (note that categories make that much easier) I don't find them listed for deletion. Can someone help me get at them?

Posted by: triticale at 12:10 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 25, 2006

Again...

I begged people not to play with the blacklist unless they knew what they were doing and were able to undo their mistakes.

Apparently some people won't listen, and continue to believe they have the mad computer skillz when they don't.

For crying out loud.

Maybe this is just a glitch by Pixy as he was trying to fix something, and he'll have it all flowing again smoothly again soon.

But if it isn't-- I'd really like to know who the last person to play with the blacklist was, and why, precisely, he or she believes she's qualified to play with it when he or she has caused yet ANOTHER comments blackout.

Thanks For the Fix. And if it was the Good Pixy Misa trying to fix or improve the site, I thank you, and apologize for impugning your l33t skillz.

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Changelog July 25

I should probably create a new blog to keep this in, but anyway:

25/7/2006

- Changed default cookie duration from session-only to 90 days
- Added automatic tag-balancing to bbCode parser rather than relying on HTML sanitiser
- Fixed bug in caching logic that would cache pages built from alternate templates as though they were the default
- Fixed user login template to go to current Minx instance rather than a hard-coded address
- Added support for session-level tags that are retained between pages
- Updated comment form error checking to use session tags for error messages
- Added template trace and include:once tag
- Added template debugging support: highlight unprocessed tags/view HTML

Current focus

- User interface
- Site statistics
- Performance improvents to comment processing

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:29 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Lovely

Now we're getting crapflooded by Korea.

odals wfqdavjm suvxt qyvlksj omjexv mknufxqw fztcyx jswub hzigre
Don't you have something useful to do, you miserable wankers?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:07 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Minx Update July 25 Edition

So, what's happening in the world of Minx?

Lots of stuff. Not as fast as I'd like, but lots of stuff.

First up, Ace and Rusty are using Minx comments side-by-side with Movable Type. Live. For real. And it's working good. (Not perfect; there are a couple of tweaks I'll be making today to fix minor problems, and then it will be perfect.

Second up, I've been preparing the Minx user interface, so that people can, well, use it. Kind of important. It's not up yet, but the first parts of it will be operational in the next week or so. (Depending on whether anything else decides to blow up and how much time I need to spend configuring the new servers.)

Quick preview:


It's a bit dull, but (a) it's workable and (b) it uses the same templating system as your blog. That is, you can change anything.

Even - if you want to - AJAXulate it. Minx as a processing system is AJAX agnostic. It takes requests and produces pages. It doesn't care whether the pages it generates are HTML or XML or indeed something else; it just does what you tell it to do. If you want to use AJAX for comments or in the user interface, you can do it. (And if we find that some extra functionality in the back end would be useful, I'll add that.)

A Brief Word About Templates

Since the user interface is driven by templates, once I started working on it in earnest I found the templates multiplying like bunnies, and it became hard to keep track of them all.

To fix this, I've created a simple taxonomy of templates.

First, there are page templates. Page templates create pages. That seems obvious enough, but there are other types of templates in Minx. The thing to remember about a page template is that you can call it directly and get back a valid (and hopefully useful) web page.

Next are block templates. Block templates are not complete pages; they represent an element that you want to re-use. For example, the block.post template controls the display of a single post. If you use the [posts:here] tag, it will call the block.post template to format the individual posts. Likewise, block.comment for comments. You can override which template is used by specifying [posts:here template=block.shortpost] or something similar.

Next are forms. The only one you are likely to see (at least initially) is the comment form. You place the comment form in your comment template simply by using the [form:comment] tag. [include form.comment] is the equivalent generic method to put a form in a page. Forms are not complete pages, but are designed to be placed in a page.

The other types of templates are includes - which are for including, like blocks - and admin pages, which generate the user interface rather than your web site.

One of the things you can do with templates now is include them once, using then [include:once] tag. Let's say you have the page header (the HTML HEAD, your banner, any CSS and JavaScript) set up in one template, called include.header, and your footer (whatever) set up in another. By [include:once]-ing them, you can include any other template, even a whole page, without worrying about that stuff getting duplicated.

Comments For Your Blog

Minx comments are almost ready for you to use. They are working, but I have to tweak the cookies (which are currently only set for the session) and the error reporting (currently doesn't do anything useful).

Basically, you need just two things: A link from your blog to http://minx.cc/?post=<MTEntryID> or and a page.post template. If you don't have a page.post template of your own, Minx will pick up the default one (which isn't very pretty). I'll tidy up the default one and post it here; then all you need to do is create a new index template on your blog, paste the standard one in, and edit it to your liking. With any luck, that will be tomorrow.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:40 AM | Comments (235) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 24, 2006

Blah

Yuri locked up again.

Going as fast as I can on the migration to the new servers. I'll post an update later today.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Three Columns

Can anyone help me set up three columns for http://gmroper.mu.nu? I've tried the code that was given about a month ago, but I can't figure out how to make my blog conform to what I have posted with what I want.... all help greatfully appreaciated... Thank god for backups too.

Posted by: GM Roper at 01:18 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 23, 2006

Missing e-mail

Hi Pixy,

My shoes.mu.nu e-mail doesn't seem to be working. Is this something you can quickly whack with a stick to restart? If not, I'll just set up a gmail account, I know you are busy with Minx. Thanks so much.

Posted by: Nic at 01:24 PM | Comments (99) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Flash Banners

Does any one know if a banner with flash animation can be used instead of the traditional banner (JPEG or what ever it is) on the mt blog publishing platform that we use or on the new and improved Minx platform?

Posted by: GM Roper at 12:08 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 22, 2006

Moving MuNu

Yeah, we're early this year. But after what, four? Five? Outages this week, it's gotten past the point where we need to find a new home.

Hopefully one that will frigging work.

I've ordered two new dual-Opteron servers, each with 2GB of memory, 500GB of disk, 2TB of monthly bandwidth, dual 100mbit ports, DDOS mitigation, and remote reboot and console login.

Our new hosting provider is Softlayer, and they seem to have a far better network setup than DedicatedNow, who have been having some difficulties of late. (To be fair, DedicatedNow have only been responsible for one of the outages in the past week; the others have been the result of spam floods and some strange software problem with Apache that I haven't been able to resolve.)

I was hoping to hold out until Conroe-based servers were available, since they run quite a bit faster, but we can't afford any more downtime and Softlayer's private network allows us to easily add or migrate to new servers at a later date. With DedicatedNow we have a simple crosslink between the two servers, but the Jawa Report is on a separate server, and we couldn't easily add it to the cluster. With Softlayer, all servers are put on dedicated VLANs on the second network port, so if we add another server later it will automatically be included in the cluster.

I expect that we will be moving into our new home in two weeks time, so please bear with us until then.

Update: Just got a phone call from Softlayer. The servers are been set up now, and we should have them soon. Yay!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:23 AM | Comments (133) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 21, 2006

WHY TRACKBACKS ARE NOT WORKING

We have received over three four million trackbacks so far this month.

Of which perhaps a thousand are valid.

If anyone wants their trackbacks, I have a six hundred megabyte logfile. They're in there somewhere. I'm happy to email it to you.

As I mentioned below, trackbacks are very likely to remain disabled until Minx supports them. I'll see what Snark can do with the current lot, but I'm not terribly optimistic.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:30 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Aha!

I've found the cause of the two recent outages - and the third one, which happened just now, but which was mercifully short because I was logged in to the server while it happened.

Trackback spam.

VAST amounts of trackback spam.

So much trackback spam that Apache locked up and wouldn't restart.

Trackbacks are turned off completely until I get it working in Minx. (Minx doesn't depend on Apache in that way, so it should cope.)

Meanwhile, we have accumulated a 250MB error log in three days, mostly from rejected trackback spam.

(For the technically minded, the load average hit 140 - and that's with the new trackback system in place. With standard MT trackbacks, the system would have been vaporized.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:06 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Minx Update... Whatever the hell day it is.

I think I need more sleep.

Anyway, Minx comments are in place here, at Ace of Spades, and at the Jawa Report. Give it a whirl.

Instructions on Minxifying your blog after this break.

...

Zzzzzzz...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:59 AM | Comments (36) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 20, 2006

Ellis Island

Can whoever has the admin keys to Ellis Island turn off old comments when you get a chance? 90% of my Spam issues the last couple of days have been from a post on Ellis Island.

Thanks

Posted by: caltechgirl at 05:00 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

July 19, 2006

Two mu.nus banned in India

Congratulations are in order for The Jawa Report and to Merri Musings for getting banned in India for offending Muslims.

Because if you're not banned in India, you just haven't made it!

Details here.

Posted by: Rusty at 10:07 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Request Re: The Blacklist

If you are not extremely proficient in MT, would you please refrain from making changes to the blacklist? The biweekly comment outages due to inept changes to the blacklist are getting out of hand.

You may mean well, but you are screwing up the site for everyone else. If you don't know how to undo your changes, stop making them.

And if you make a change, test the comments immediately thereafter. Don't just assume you did things correctly and walk away from the computer and leave the system screwed up for everyone else.

Some of you know what you are doing. Some of you only think you know what you are doing. Please take a moment to realistically evaluate your technical skills and categorize yourself correctly.

The blacklist affects everyone, and your errors shut down an important feature of blogging. Please bear that in mind the next time you decide to play around with something you don't entirely understand.

Thank you.

Posted by: Ace at 08:16 PM | Comments (401) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Comment Error

Note: Everything with a | in it was all on one line

Invalid [] range "l-e" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/00rapredittedit.finance4u.us|010.allineare.com|014.guerredellastella.com
|015.ambrato.com|01pgnz1w.itarezzo.info|03.bruciarsi.com|030.allineare.com
|036d250d.com|04.guerredellastella.com|04c94314.com|069.imparilo.com
|07.accettazione.com|095.ambrato.com|09c4a6c0.com|0adult|0cartoon.com
|0casino|0catch.com|0creditcardtoday.com|0hentai|0manga|0printing.com
|0sesso|0sex-toons.com|0sfondi-desktop.com|0sfondi.com|0suonerie.com
|0teen.com|0toons.com|0xxx-cartoon at extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm line 3098.

Got this trying to leave a comment at Alex In Wonderland

I was also told that this error:

Invalid [] range "l-e" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/
http://swimplanet.org/#viagra|-casino|-com.com|-mobile-phones.org
|-online\.com|-online\.net|-replica\.|-site.info|.+diamond.+os.com
|.+shemale.com|.25936.ro|.659459.ro/|.alic2004.org/|.i-shake-u.com/
|.ihateapple.com/|.info/skanah01|.loansmarter.com/lendingtree.php
|.pridezone.org/|.votegrowinggreener.org/|0-poker.biz|0.allineare.com
|00.allineare.com|007.nubibianche.com|007box.de|007google.info|00pro.com
|00rapredittedit.finance4u.us|010.allineare.com|0
at extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm line 3098.

occurred when leaving a comment at Bad Example.

Posted by: Harvey at 06:33 PM | Comments (81) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Oops

OK, the post "Comment Problems" was meant for my blog. Obviously you all know what is going on. D'oh!

I've deleted the post, but it still seems to be there. Maybe it's just a refresh thing.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 05:05 PM | Comments (14709) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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