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

[AlxRogan]

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

Forums, pics, and main site were unavailable today for a brief window because network equipment maintenance.
Forums and pics remained up and running but were not available.
I didn't know about it until it happened.
Sorry it wasn't announced.

I did not see an approved Change Request for this maintenance, I'm afraid this is going in your HR file.

[TheCotMan]

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

I did not see an approved Change Request for this maintenance, I'm afraid this is going in your HR file.

Not my permanent record!

Maintenance coming up this Friday night at around 9pm lasting for 1 or 2 hours.

[TheCotMan]

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

Not my permanent record!

Maintenance coming up this Friday night at around 9pm lasting for 1 or 2 hours.

Maintenance cycle postponed to Saturday night at around 7pm.

[TheCotMan]

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

Maintenance cycle postponed to Saturday night at around 7pm.

Maintenance cycle complete. Please report problems, especially with blogs and projects.

Thanks!

[The Dark Tangent]

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

Looks like there is an on-going network issue in the Seattle area, has been ongoing for a week or more. Tonight Qwest and Covad will try to replace a "y-cable" and see if that helps. If it does everyone will re-converge their routes and all will be dandy.

The reason I noticed is because there is a very high number of timestamp mismatches and reset connections with mis-matched sequence numbers. I thought it might be a strange attack, but then when my own IP started showing up I realized it was a larger issue. Apparently the local and only LEC is Qwest, and they are working (silently) to fix it.

Sorry for any connectivity issues!

[The Dark Tangent]

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

Looks like the forums will be down again on and off for the next couple hours as I run a hardware diagnostic tool to see if bad memory is to blame for random network issues.

[TheCotMan]

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

As described in the thread that contains this post we'll be moving the forums off of http and exclusively to https.

I'm planning to provide a redirector from http to https with notice about this in case people still type http instead of https.

This will take place today after 4:00pm pacific time, or tomorrow really late.

[TheCotMan]

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

Defcon 16 is now in the archive of past defcon content, and all those defcon 16 forums are closed from posting.

Threads related to Defcon 17 that I found in the Defcon 16 space have been either moved, or copied to their respective locations in the DC17 space.

[edit:]
Added Forum Leader/Organizer from dc16 contests/events of last year. Please let me know if you see problems with security being too restrictive.

In one week, or this weekend, will be going through and hiding dc17 contests/events unless I've seen confirmation in some form from the organizers/leaders about the contest or event happening at dc17. I have a small list, I just need to compare it to what is present.

[TheCotMan]

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

As described in the thread that contains this post we'll be moving the forums off of http and exclusively to https.

I'm planning to provide a redirector from http to https with notice about this in case people still type http instead of https.

This will take place today after 4:00pm pacific time, or tomorrow really late.

Delays postponed this. We're looking at this happening tomorrow evening during scheduled down-time.

Another scheduled down-time event may be coming soon as DT looks to flush log information from the firewall and re-scan for hardware problems. He may have more on this later.

[TheCotMan]

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

Delays postponed this. We're looking at this happening tomorrow evening during scheduled down-time.

Another scheduled down-time event may be coming soon as DT looks to flush log information from the firewall and re-scan for hardware problems. He may have more on this later.

This begins ~9pm pacific time.

[TheCotMan]

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

This begins ~9pm pacific time.

Migration to have pics and forums use only https, and not http has been completed with the first round.

There is a no-frills, un-fancy, utilitarian redirection page in the http space that dynamically generates links to the same relative https space as the http request. This page includes a short description of why the user is seeing it, and a 30 second head&META refresh to request your web browser to automatically go on to the https page, if it exists. The user can click a link to skip the 30 second waiting period. Waiting time may be changed later. Look and feel of redirection page may also change.

If this works, then we will no longer need the dynamic URL rewrite for served content, and then re-enable gzip content compression for browsers that claim to support it.

One more down-period for the forum will start at 9:30pm and should last only a few minutes.

[TheCotMan]

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

One more down-period for the forum will start at 9:30pm and should last only a few minutes.

DT got an upgrade to the forum blogs which allow more customization to user blog appearance.

If you notice anything is broken as a result of all of this maintenance, please reply here or contact us by email at defconforums@gmail.com or send me a PM.

Thanks!

Maintenance cycle is complete tonight.

[Edit:]
DT may still need to do some firewall work leading to forums, pics and the main site being unavailable. He or I may not be available to announce it here, so consider this a notice of downtime that may appear in the next week or two.

[The Dark Tangent]

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

Looking good Cot!

Results for: https://forum.defcon.org/index.php
Web page compressed? Yes
Compression type? gzip
Size, Markup (bytes) 44,250
Size, Compressed (bytes) 8,850
Compression % 80.0

and

File Size Comparison (in bytes):
Original size: 45451 bytes
Compressed size: 9054 bytes
Savings in bytes: 36397 bytes
Percentage saved by compression: 81.0%
Transfer speed improvement: 5.0 X

Looks faster to me!

DT

DT got an upgrade to the forum blogs which allow more customization to user blog appearance.

If you notice anything is broken as a result of all of this maintenance, please reply here or contact us by email at defconforums@gmail.com or send me a PM.

Thanks!

Maintenance cycle is complete tonight.

[Edit:]
DT may still need to do some firewall work leading to forums, pics and the main site being unavailable. He or I may not be available to announce it here, so consider this a notice of downtime that may appear in the next week or two.

[TheCotMan]

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

Looking good Cot!

Results for: https://forum.defcon.org/index.php
Web page compressed? Yes
Compression type? gzip
Size, Markup (bytes) 44,250
Size, Compressed (bytes) 8,850
Compression % 80.0

and

File Size Comparison (in bytes):
Original size: 45451 bytes
Compressed size: 9054 bytes
Savings in bytes: 36397 bytes
Percentage saved by compression: 81.0%
Transfer speed improvement: 5.0 X

Looks faster to me!

DT

I'll need to revisit the present compression settings, as something may be missing with pics or the forums. I'll give this a week as is and if there are no problems with the new https-only, I'll see if any other items were removed from compression. (Like css.)

[TheCotMan]

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

Fake "Hi! I'm New!" forum added t hat points to blogs.
Re-added search by replacing the http/https switch image at the top.
This supports 2 searches:
Google (top, with pull-down selection for scope)
Forum (lower, this is the forum search of threads)


Feedback welcome.