I've been adjusting the settings for Apache (our web server) for the duration of our exile from Yuri. Because we're running CPanel, we're sort of stuck on Apache 1.3, which is multi-process but not multi-threaded, and can use LOTS of memory. (Particularly if you have a mix of PHP and CGI apps - which we do.)

On Yuri, Apache was pretty much the only thing running, so it didn't matter if it took over the whole machine. Right now, it does.

I've fairly aggressively trimmed things down to minimize the memory footprint. As a side-effect, you might get a "server busy" message now and then. The alternative, unfortunately, is that the server runs out of memory and it doesn't work for anyone.

So far, it seems to be coping okay, and things are fairly busy right now. I'll keep an eye on it, or if you see a problem, comment and/or email.

(New-born Apache processes weigh in at eight or nine MB. After running a bunch of PHP and CGI apps, a single process can exceed 32MB. We have a maximum 120 Apache processes running. At 8MB each, that's about half the memory used up, which is fine. At 32MB, that's twice as much memory as we actually have, which is a disaster. I've set Apache so that processes have a very limited lifespan. The cost of starting a new processes every ten seconds is far outweighed by the savings in memory.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:13 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I know how much you all love the MT 2.6 comment system and our friend MT Blacklist (cough) but eventually the time comes when you just have to let go.

That time is now a few days from now.

I've pulled the comment routine from the unfinished version of Minx, and the spam filtering logic from Snark, and I'm patching them into a MT sort-of-plugin.

It's fully compatible with existing comments, but much much much much faster. It has automatic retrospective spam filtering, like Snark: It accepts all comments, and then later on comes back and disappears the ones that look like spam. You can even create a template for it in MT, though it's a little different than regular MT templates (read: simpler).

I hope to have a demo version running tomorrow or Monday, and make it available by the end of the week. I'll post more details on how to use it then.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:29 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Test test...

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 03, 2006 02:27 PM

2 Good. I haven't broken it then.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 03, 2006 02:27 PM

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Sorry about the explosions, fires, earthquakes and other catastrophes today.

Yuri, the server that runs most of the blogs, got hit by a denial-of-service attack.

After disconnecting the server from the internet (if I left it connected, it would crash), I started copying all the blogs across to Kei, the other server.

Then Kei ran into a spot of disk trouble, and it crashed too.

If you're reading this, it's a sign that things are almost back to normal. Except that the entire load of mu.nu is now sitting on one server rather than two. So I have to pry everything loose again somehow, hopefully without eight hours of downtime this time around.

Update: All blogs have been moved and should be working now. I need to activate Fluffy, and I'm sure I've forgotten a couple of other things. If you run into problems, leave comments here, or email me at andrew -at- pixymisa -dot- net, or both.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:09 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 ... the blog is back up... but when I go to blog.mu.nu to post, it gives me an error and the page doesn't load...

Posted by: Eric @ at June 03, 2006 11:46 AM

2 Whoops! I had the cgi file bookmarked, so I didn't notice that.

Fixed now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 03, 2006 12:23 PM

3 Just sent you an email about my blog still being down. Thanks for all your hard work Pixy!

Posted by: Teresa @ at June 03, 2006 02:31 PM

4 Sorry Teresa! There must have been a hiccup when CPanel was transferring your account. Should be fixed now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 03, 2006 03:14 PM

5 Don't want to be a bother, but my blog still seems to be splated.

I promise to behave (as much as possible) if'n you'll get it back up and going.

Posted by: phin @ at June 04, 2006 02:03 AM

6 Sorry Phin! You should be up and running again now - though the DNS changes may take a while to propogate.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 04, 2006 05:50 AM

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... howdy neighbors.... I was just informed that this message pops up when certain peeps try to comment...

An error occurred:

Invalid [] range "f-b" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/(babes|porn|boobs)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(cialis|meridia\b)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(diet|penis)[\w\-_.]*(pills|enlargement)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(free)[_.\-]?sex([\w\-_.]+)?\.[a-z]2,|(levitra|lolita|phentermine|viagra|vig-?rx|zyban|valtex|xenical|adipex|meridia\b)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(magazine)[\w\-_.]*(finder|netfirms)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(mike)[\w\-_.]*apartment[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(milf)[\w\-_.]*(hunter|moms|fucking)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(online)[\w\-_ at extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm line 3098.

... any ideas?....

Posted by: Eric at 09:55 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Everytime I try to comment on a munu blog today I get this:
"An error occurred:

Invalid [] range "f-b" in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/(babes|porn|boobs)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(cialis|meridia\b)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|
(diet|penis)[\w\-_.]*(pills|enlargement)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(free)[_.\-]?sex
([\w\-_.]+)?\.[a-z]2,|(levitra|lolita|phentermine|viagra|vig-?rx|zyban|valtex|
xenical|adipex|meridia\b)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(magazine)[\w\-_.]*(finder|netfirms)
[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(mike)[\w\-_.]*apartment[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(milf)[\w\-_.]*
(hunter|moms|fucking)[\w\-_.]*\.[a-z]2,|(online)[\w\-_at extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm line 3098.

(broken up in lines so it all fits on the post)

Can we just set up a system so that only people who know how NOT to ban the entire english language are the only ones who can mess with the blacklist, please? I don't care who did it, I'm just tired of this happening.

I have never had occasion to mess with it, personally. I don't see why most of us ever would. I know there are more than a few who know how not to f*ck this up.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 06:46 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hi,

When did, "ways" become questionable content for a comment?

How am I meant to sing to hannabella in her comments if WAYS is questionable!?! I know my singing is, but the lyrics are sound!

Thanks!
Tilesey

Posted by: Tris at 01:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ok, so this morning I noticed that I could not access my blog, my friends MuNu blog or even Munuviana. Then this afternoon all seemed to be better... WRONG!

It seems that something has changed my blog. In that my stylesheet seems to be a VERY OLD version.

Did someone do a restore on a server? I have a copy and I can restore it, but I want to make sure that the problem is solved.

Thanks,

SR

Posted by: Sacramento Republicrat at 12:49 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Usually I can search through the Blacklist when weird things are blocked, find the error and fix it. This time, however, I'm stumped. I'm guessing it's in the wildcard sections which I just can't quite figure out. Right now the following is blocked from comments:

alliat
org/ar

Pixy? Help?

(And there's one other I found earlier...oh yeah

us com

Posted by: Ogre at 11:46 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I know there is furious scrambling (or anime watching) to fix the comments, but Trey Givens over at treygivens.mu.nu asked me to pass along a message to the shiny, happy peoples of Munuviana about his new favorite thing. (The guy has an ego, doesn't he?)

My new favorite thing is the way that my comments prevent me from entering my own name when posting a comment. I have to enter "ey Givens" and then go back to correct it. Otherwise, it tells me that the offensive words I have entered are "com Tr." Apparently, "com Tr" is a new pill for erectile dysfunction, low mortgage rates, and Asian hairless cats or something.

So, there you have it. Trey Givens would like us all to know that his new favorite thing is the his blog is blocking him from commenting. I'll bet he (and the rest of the world) would really love it if it blocked him from posting, but wishes aren't horses, although Christmas is a few short months away. You all know what to buy him.

Posted by: Flibbertigibbet at 01:20 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 The whole com.tr domain got blocked. Unfortunately, the . matches any letter, so...

I've fixed it to com\.tr, which only matches com.tr.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 01, 2006 06:28 PM

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One of the other Munuvians sent me an email and asked if we are experiencing problems with the MT Blacklist. So I when there and this is what I got too:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@blog.mu.nu and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.36 Server at www.blog.mu.nu Port 80

We need our fearless leader (Pixy, that's you)!

Posted by: Sacramento Republicrat at 09:22 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

You know Minx, the always jam tomorrow, never jam today, ultimate super blogging system that I never have time to develop?

I think I might have found someone who'll pay me to write it. Under terms that would let us use it for munu.

Fingers crossed!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:16 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Yay! Good luck!

Posted by: Nick @ at May 30, 2006 07:20 AM

2 Sweet!

Posted by: caltechgirl @ at May 30, 2006 07:27 PM

3 Coolness! Yay, Maximum Leader!

Posted by: RP @ at May 30, 2006 09:06 PM

4 Do they have any more money they need to pay people to goof off?

Posted by: Ogre @ at May 31, 2006 11:57 AM

5 Good luck!

All hail Emperor Pixy.

Posted by: phin @ at June 01, 2006 10:04 PM

6 Had a promising talk with the people today. One of them wants to start immediately; the other wants to see a high-level spec first.

Looking good.

mu.nu would be a test site for new releases of the software, so we'd get all the cool toys first. We'd also have full access to everything, where the commercial version would probably have different levels of accounts - Beginner, Standard, Pro, etc, with different feature sets.

If it goes ahead, it could be the best of all worlds. I get to work full time on software for mu.nu and get paid for it and don't have to worry about making mu.nu commercially viable. And make more money than I do now.

Posted by: Pixy Misa @ at June 02, 2006 04:29 AM

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Is anyone else getting error messages when they attempt a search at their blog? We've been getting them for about a week now.

Here's what we see:

An error occurred:

Can't call method "id" on an undefined value at lib/MT/App/Search.pm line 173.

MT::App::Search=HASH(0x82c7e54) DBD::mysql::st execute failed: MySQL client ran out of memory at lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI.pm line 43.
MT::App::Search=HASH(0x82c7e54) DBD::mysql::st bind_columns failed: Statement has no result columns to bind (perhaps you need to successfully call execute first) at lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI.pm line 44.
MT::App::Search=HASH(0x82c7e54) DBD::mysql::st fetch failed: fetch() without execute() at lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI.pm line 46.
MT::App::Search=HASH(0x82c7e54) DBD::mysql::st execute failed: Lost connection to MySQL server during query at lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI.pm line 78.

************

Blog is at: http://colossus.mu.nu

Thanks in advance,
Rhodey

Posted by: Rhodey at 07:11 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I didn't thank him when I got accepted into the site. I'm always so busy in my mind I forget simple stuff like that. So once again, thanks Warren getting me into the site.

Posted by: Matthew at 01:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Does anyone know of a method/technique to keep assknobs from hotlinking images from my archives?

I know that I can change the image URL individually, but other than putting all of my images into another folder or changing the archive folder name, is there a global method to keep this from happening?

I'm finding that a lot of my images are being picked up/hotlinked via Google and it's almost exclusively from assknobs using MySpace.

Posted by: Mad Mikey at 09:44 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I got my old gmroper.com moved to godaddy.com per Pixy's recommendation. I'm trying to set up gmroper@gmroper.com on OUTLOOK 2003 is this a pop3 account or perhaps a different one such as IMAP. either way, what are the proper mail/smtp or imap codes to use?

Thanks

Posted by: GM Roper at 04:09 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Hey, when did the comments windows start remembering personal info? That's cool!

Posted by: annika at 02:12 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

I noticed some unwanted pingers have left landmines on my blog, but forgot how to access the blacklist so as to rid of them. See what happens when you get old?

Posted by: Tiger at 01:26 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Is it possible to use the Stylecatcher program on my blog? or do you have to manually change the style of your template yourself?

Posted by: Matthew at 10:53 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Snark, the munu trackback filter, is six months old today. In that time, it has blocked 5.2 million trackbacks. Another 1.5 million were blocked this month alone using the IP blacklist that Snark generates.

To celebrate, I've renamed the trackback script. It's now trackback [dot] cgi. This should automatically update in your blog the next time you post or get a comment, but right now we have three hunded incoming spams per minute and all of them are getting the old 404.

Hahaha!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

New version of Apache out. As always, the CPanel updatey script broke everything.

Bah.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:55 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)