Recent Technical Issues

[FLIP]

Hi all,

First up, I want to make sure my intent in this is taken correctly. I'm not taking a dig at those who run and maintain this forum - they have their own lives and do this on a voluntary basis. This post is merely meant to discuss the technical issues and maybe find a way forward to prevent them in future.

There are a few areas of concern.

One is that the version of PHPBB in use (3.0.9) is almost 9 years old. The v3.0.x family of phpbb is no longer supported, and so any new security holes and bugs won't be fixed. It's probably long overdue an update.

Secondly, the site is sometimes down due to MySQL errors. Looking at the error codes returned, some of this seems to be down do the use of MyISAM as the storage engine. All recent versions of MySQL have moved to use InnoDB as the default as the continued use of MyISAM caused issues. I would recommend that the MySQL system backing the database is updated, and that it is changed to use the InnoDB storage engine.

Without access to the backing systems I can't tell - but I imagine that the versions of PHP and other scripting languages used by the site are probably quite out of date too.

There are also some idiosyncrasies baked into the site from the early ages - I seem to remember that quote chains are limited to 3 quotes so that the forum was viewable on early Blackberrys. Images that are larger than the width of the screen are merely cut off, instead of being made to fit the size available. Some of these probably need to come out.

Now again I appreciate that those who can do this don't have the time to help. I would be willing to give some help with this, and would be willing to share professional credentials etc with Limecat etc in private to show that I'm able to help with this.

Thanks,

FLIP

[Peg Leg]

I would happily donate a paltry monthly sub
If that helps

[Xanthippe]

I would be willing to give some help with this,

I can't offer the sort of support/help offered by Flip but like Peg Leg I would also be prepared to offer help/support in the form of a donation.

[The Doc]

I would be willing to give some help with this,

I can't offer the sort of support/help offered by Flip but like Peg Leg I would also be prepared to offer help/support in the form of a donation.

+1... Patreon or something similar? Or a one off if that was needed

I won't offer to help technically - unless you want the whole place deleted

[John23]

The only technical support I could offer is, if there is anything that needs plugging in or out of a power source I am willing to oblige. Otherwise more than happy to make a donation to the cause.

[Ruckedtobits]

I would be willing to give some help with this,

I can't offer the sort of support/help offered by Flip but like Peg Leg I would also be prepared to offer help/support in the form of a donation.

+1.
And there was me thinking that I was the only one noticing that the system is creaking.

[limecat]

There have been a couple of "small" outages in the last couple of weeks, but usually it's fairly stable.

That said, there are definitely improvements and upgrades that could and should be made around the place.

Thanks for the offer FLIP, but I should have the requisite skills to make any required upgrades, it's mostly the getting up off my fat arse to do them part that holds me back.

[FLIP]

There have been a couple of "small" outages in the last couple of weeks, but usually it's fairly stable.

That said, there are definitely improvements and upgrades that could and should be made around the place.

Thanks for the offer FLIP, but I should have the requisite skills to make any required upgrades, it's mostly the getting up off my fat arse to do them part that holds me back.

No worries - the offer remains available should you change your mind. Given the amount I'm on here it'd only be fair to give back.

[limecat]

Just as an update on this, recent outages were caused by a fairly significant DDOS attack, which has been impacting on many phpbb based forums worldwide over the last few weeks.

Hopefully changes we've now implemented have stopped the attack on our servers, but we'll keep monitoring over the next while.

[The Doc]

Just as an update on this, recent outages were caused by a fairly significant DDOS attack, which has been impacting on many phpbb based forums worldwide over the last few weeks.

Hopefully changes we've now implemented have stopped the attack on our servers, but we'll keep monitoring over the next while.

Thanks

[Ruckedtobits]

Just as an update on this, recent outages were caused by a fairly significant DDOS attack, which has been impacting on many phpbb based forums worldwide over the last few weeks.

Hopefully changes we've now implemented have stopped the attack on our servers, but we'll keep monitoring over the next while.

Thanks Limecat. Have experienced the breakdown a couple of times but as I was travelling (and thus using various host wifi access) I assumed the problem was mine. Great to hear you're on top of it.