PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Bug Report: the View Site Leaders link (off of the forum 'front page') goes to https://forum.defcon.org/showgroups.php -- which appears from my current instance to be a blank page. Intentional, broken, or a bug with my configuration?

This appears to be a bug in the source of the forum software. I've identified the offending line and made it "work" for now, but I will need to see why this line is causing problems. It may be because the variable being used is not a 2d array, or it may be because of problems with content of variables being used.

Thanks for the report.

This reminds me that I need to add leaders/organizers to the newly created forums for DC20. I'll try to do that some time today.

[I did not get to it on Monday. I'll get to this soon.]

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Bug Report: the View Site Leaders link (off of the forum 'front page') goes to https://forum.defcon.org/showgroups.php -- which appears from my current instance to be a blank page. Intentional, broken, or a bug with my configuration?

It is a bug on this side. (HTTP error 500) I'm looking into it now. Thanks for the report!

[bluknight]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Bug Report: the View Site Leaders link (off of the forum 'front page') goes to https://forum.defcon.org/showgroups.php -- which appears from my current instance to be a blank page. Intentional, broken, or a bug with my configuration?

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Received word from BluKnight that an update to the description of the forum. Altered SkyTalks forum to add a site link:

http://skytalks.info/

Anyone else have any updates, please let me know!

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

New forums made for Defcon 20:


Due to votes by users last year, we are opening the Ride & Room
Sharing forum earlier than usual:
https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=26



Neil, the Defcon website goon/staff, artwork goon/guy and more
has said that there will be an Artwork Contest this year, but does
not yet have the details. I have made a forum for this, for when he
is ready:
https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=641
Neil, Twitter: https://twitter.com/14311



BBox says he has heard the Wall of Sheep (WoS) will return to DC20:
Forum: https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=642
Site: http://www.wallofsheep.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wallofsheep



BBox also says Capture the Packet (CTP) will return to DC20:
Forum: https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=646
OLD signup: https://www.ariessecurity.com/ctp_signup.html
(Not sure if this sign-up will be used for DC20)



Kallahar says PreDefcon party is a Go for DC20.
Forum: https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=643
Site: http://predefcon.org/



DaKahuna says that the status of the Wireless village depends on
his attendance to Defcon 20. For now, I have made a forum
based on an assumption that it might happen, and will post
this condition and a provide a link to his announcement on
intention based on this dependency.
Forum: https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=644


Myrcurial says Hacker Pyramid (AKA, 10,000 cent hacker Pyramid)
will return to DC 20.
Forum: https://forum.defcon.org/forumdisplay.php?f=645
Site: http://hackerpyramid.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HackerPyramid

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Late Saturday night, Jeff disabled a mail server that was causing trouble with mail for real users. This broke email from the forums, pics and TEW. The new smtp server config was added to forums, pics and TEW, but outbound host filtering rules need to be updated.

Service outage expected tonight at around 8:00pm, and should last from 5 to 10 minutes.

If email is still not working from forums, pics and TEW after these host changes, then changes to a firewall and/or smtp server for allowed relay hosts will be needed.

A second round of work was required for forums, pics, and testforums.

Now TamperEvidentWiki.com, forums, testforums and pics appear to have functioning email.

I just asked the forums to send out an email message to all users that have accounts with unconfirmed email addresses.

Total time email messages were not flowing was around 48 hours.

Please report if you see email is not working as you expect.

Thanks!
-Cot

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Late Saturday night, Jeff disabled a mail server that was causing trouble with mail for real users. This broke email from the forums, pics and TEW. The new smtp server config was added to forums, pics and TEW, but outbound host filtering rules need to be updated.

Service outage expected tonight at around 8:00pm, and should last from 5 to 10 minutes.

If email is still not working from forums, pics and TEW after these host changes, then changes to a firewall and/or smtp server for allowed relay hosts will be needed.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Service should be restored to all public servers that were down for maintenance at 4:37 pm pacific time. Please report if otherwise.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Forums going down for maintenance.
Other services going down: pics, testforum, tamperevidentwiki. Should be back later this evening.

Sorry about the last minute notice.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

As of now, I think all service software used by forums software has been upgraded and maintenance has been completed. if you see new problems with any of these services, please report them:
* TamperEvidentWiki.com
* forum.defcon.org
* pics.defcon.org
* testforums

Thanks!

I do not expect any of these upgrades would have fixed the problem that shrdlu is seeing.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

DB maintenance is complete. Service should be restored for those servers using that DB. Future maintenance is required for each service that was down. That will begin at around 6:00pm running through, up to 8:00pm pacific time as each is brought down, serviced and brought up, in serial.

Between now and then, I'll be copying large files. If the server becomes non-responsive, it is probably because an old bug was encountered, with respect to, copying large files. :-/

Finished this round of maintenance quickly. Average down-time per service for this non-DB upgrade was about 20 seconds.

Next up, tamperevidentwiki DB needs work. It will be down for about an hour while I work on the DB that serves it and other non-public servers.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

DB maintenance is complete. Service should be restored for those servers using that DB. Future maintenance is required for each service that was down. That will begin at around 6:00pm running through, up to 8:00pm pacific time as each is brought down, serviced and brought up, in serial.

Between now and then, I'll be copying large files. If the server becomes non-responsive, it is probably because an old bug was encountered, with respect to, copying large files. :-/

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Expecting to start work at 3:00pm pacific time today on DB. Down time could be as little as 1 hour. This down-time will impact all services that share this DB: pics, forums, testforums. The TamperEvidentWiki's DB will be worked on later.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

In addition to other problems with authentication, when I attempted to refresh the page via chrome, after I'd logged out via Firefox, it got very weird, and very messy. If you're honestly checking whether an account is logged out, and then somehow changing a setting on the account, something is not working right. It somehow decided that the Chrome browser had logged out too (I hadn't), and then wouldn't take me to a page where I could log back in until I hit refresh a couple of times. This may simply be due to Chrome (did I say I LOATHE Chrome? I do.).

Shared cookies between browsers? Try this with another site, and see if you are logged-in with chrome after loggin-in with firefox.

I'm making this additional post in an effort to see if it happens without FF being logged in.

[Edit] Nope. It really seems to have been related to my being logged in twice, from two browsers, on the same machine.

Thanks for the reports. I have not given up, but also have not been able to duplicate these reports on my own. I'll keep trying.

Speaking of cookies... in other (unrelated) news, another maintenance cycle coming soon for: TamperevidentWiki, Forums, testforums, pics. Major upgrade of software used to support the forums.

[shrdlu]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

In addition to other problems with authentication, when I attempted to refresh the page via chrome, after I'd logged out via Firefox, it got very weird, and very messy. If you're honestly checking whether an account is logged out, and then somehow changing a setting on the account, something is not working right. It somehow decided that the Chrome browser had logged out too (I hadn't), and then wouldn't take me to a page where I could log back in until I hit refresh a couple of times. This may simply be due to Chrome (did I say I LOATHE Chrome? I do.).

I'm making this additional post in an effort to see if it happens without FF being logged in.

[Edit] Nope. It really seems to have been related to my being logged in twice, from two browsers, on the same machine.