Site Downtime

[stryder]

I noticed that the site was suffering a 500 server error message for approximately 6 hours.  

The problem to my knowledge wasn't caused by any attacks (I had a look through the logs) it actually appears that the company I pay for the webspace must have been doing an update to some of the software in the back-end.  

They've done this before and it tends to cause slight but extremely significant changes when it effects the front-end.

After a while I was able to get in and fix what I assume was causing a bug (although it hadn't previously been causing a bug.)

In any event it's back up now.

Update:
It appeared again yesterday, so the above might well not be the reason.
I've analysed the logs further and found one particular spider misbehaving.  It's now banned and if is the cause, shouldn't cause the problem again in the future.  I have an idea as to why it occurred but for security reasons I can't be forthcoming about it.

[stryder]

Apparently I found that something has changed with the server.  It no longer supports the HTTP Code 418.

Admittedly my adaption of the Errorcode is somewhat different from it's initial intension. 
April 1st 1998, the code was implemented in RFC 2324 to make sure that anyone attempting to make coffee would realise they weren't able to since they were accessing a teapot.  It seems "I'm a Toaster" broke the server from Barista's trying to to make coffee with it.

(To put it short, I put it in the background as an easter egg some time back and it didn't throw any errors previously, however some change to the system has literally attempted to tighten any obscure errorcodes resulting in the 500 server error. It's fixed now... although there are still easter eggs)

[stryder]

27/Jul/2016 Downtime

I can't be sure as to what caused the problem, I know it wasn't any settings or alterations I made previously because it was all working fine. It just gave up the ghost at 05:49 AM and stayed that way for a while. It stopped any scripts from running on the server, which in turn meant that most scripts I would use to debug wouldn't run either. It was server wide so wasn't specific to the forum software or domain.

You might had noticed that I stuck up a cheaply created HTML page just to inform you if you tried logging in, however now it's back up and running again. I will have to keep a close eye on it.

[stryder]

Further Update:
The webspace/server provider isn't being too direct about what the fault is, but rather pointed at a bunch of hard limits that they applied at server level as being the root of the problem.  (I still don't actually see how any of those limits were triggered.)

None the less, I've made some alterations to some custom code I wrote for reporting spammer addresses.  I assume the method originally used was either captured by security software as questionable etc, and blocked from it's destination.  In any cause it likely would have caused a process to sit waiting for the maximum duration while not actually getting a confirmation. 

I've also altered some limitations in regards to posting.  While the maximum levels within the forum software are high, there are now moderate limitations that hopefully you won't notice unless it gets real busy.

[stryder]

Further Update:

Looking through the logs, it appears the problem that was occurring hasn't occurred since so the fix I wrote in seems to be doing what I guessed it would. I'll continue to keep an eye on things though with the increase of members, after all I want to keep the forum up and without error as much as I can.

I'm still doing the theme redevelopment on the side, although it's been on hold for a couple of weeks (I should be back to it soon).

I also fixed something that might or might not have been bugging some a while. So if you are seeing stars beakers now, that's why.
(I'd had a fixed star attribution to membership, where as it's suppose to actually alter based upon post number apparently. While it might seem minor, someone brought it up some time back and I didn't consider it until stareing at two starred posts and realising that it didn't truly reflect the content or commitment to this forum by those posters. )

I know it's a small tweak, and isn't the same as buying a round for everyone as a thanks for being here but it will have to suffice for now.

[stryder]

YAU (Yet Another Update):

I mention this for a mixture of my own mnemonics and also to potential aid those webmasters that might have their own site related problems.
I found a bug... yes one little bug in my .htaccess file on one of my other domains, the bug was just one extra flag where it shouldn't of been in a rewrite conditional and this I assume has been causing some rather weird behaviour that could have effected all domains.

It wouldn't have been directly noticeable by normal users, since the conditional was a rule for dealing with "rogue" entities, so only they saw it or triggered the misbehaviour. In any event the bug's swatted now, so the behaviour for the conditional has changed yet again. It should proven interesting to see if those bots/would-be attackers still attempt to trigger it though.