The actual server

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

Due to a few unexpected software updates and changes on the server and the firewall (resulting in the server being slowed down to a crawl and almost inaccessible), I quickly backed up the server yesterday evening and reloaded both the firewall and server for better performance with less clutter. Apologies for any inconvenience that this may have caused last night. A quick check through the forum and all looks OK.

Enjoy!

Darryl

P.S. Please email or PM me if there is anything that is out of the ordinary that would need attending to that I may have missed.

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

After a scheduled software upgrade of the firewall over what would be a long weekend for most people, the firewall hardware seemed to give out at the most inopportune time and a backup plan was needed to keep the forum going. Fortunately the problem was recognised at around 20:00 yesterday evening and the forum was back online between 22:00 and 22:30. The original firewall will be scrutinised and where needed, "new" (ie working) hardware will be sourced, tested and fitted to restore it to a state for backup purposes. Thanking one and all for their patience during the downtime.

Darryl

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

Due to browser and add-on compatibility experiences, the animated tag cloud (ball of blue words that rotated when you moved your mouse/cursor over it) has been changed for a static tag cloud that also loads quicker (that is located at the bottom of the forum main page). Below is an example of what it looks like on the forum:-

Tag Cloud.png

Please feel to submit comments and/or suggestions (preferably on the back of R200,00 notes in triplicate ).

Darryl

[cliddell]

Hi Darryl,
Never seen a R200 note but tried (unsuccessfully) to submit comment on a 5c coin instead...

I am always happy to hear of any measure to cut down on unproductive time on PC and still give us almost the same information like this static tag.

Thanks for the continued attention to detail you give to our forum!

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

From the general concensus and the PM's I got, it would be safe to say that we can stick to the tag cloud that is on the server. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvements. I am still working on the Thanks for posts issue and haven't found anything to replace it yet. So far thanks to Clive, Jan and Frans for your inputs.

Darryl

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

I think this picture paints a thousand words:-

graph_image.php.png

This shows the power supply in the Potchefstroom municipal area for a 24 hour period. This is the same monitoring software that was used on the old server, that is now running on a dedicated server just for this purpose.

Darryl

P.S. For those who want to see the graphs, go here and the username/password is guest/guest. Click on the plus next to Default Tree and then click on Host:pfSense. Two sets of graphs will appear. Clicking on each graph in turn, will show graphs of the same original graph, with different time frames though.

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

Earlier today Potchefstroom experienced a thunderstorm that fortunately knocked out only a surge protector, but also in the process scrambled a few CPU's. After a systematic restart of the firewall, web server, ftp server and email server, everything was back on track. Here is a picture of the logs from the graphing server to indicate the outage for a 30 minute period:-

Potch Thunderstorm.png

Thanks for your patience and understanding of the circumstances.

Darryl

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

A change in the IP address allocation for the ADSL line used at home to host the forum, caused a delay in the availability of the forum for an undetermined period of time this afternoon. How it all works is as follows:-

Telkom dynamic ADSL IP address => dynamic DNS for dynamic IP address (ActiveDNS) => Alias to gps-users-forum.co.za (ehost.co.za) => Actual forum.

So a break or update in one of the above has a knock-on effect.

Hope this helps

Darryl

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

A quick visit to the forum's firewall revealed that the Snort application had blocked 9 hosts launching attacks against the forum in less than a 30 minute period from around 15:30 to 16:00 this afternoon. In this case I think a picture paints a thousand words:-

Snort Blocked Hosts.png

Hope this proves informational.

Darryl

[Jan Horn]

A quick check showed that at least 3 of those are local. The others are form Seattle, Austin, Canada and others.
Al firewalls block .exe files as malicious. Something to remember if you want to legitimally download something to the forum.