Board outages this last week

[MM 6,562]

For the last 7 or 8 days, the board server has been down for periods of 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hours...most recently this morning about noon, local time. Last night at 11pm it was also down for about 1.5 hours. I had to leave FLB and return to fix it.

So, what's going on? Well, it appears there is a hacker attacking the server by uploading a script that takes up all the CPU cycles on the server. We have taken some steps to alleviate the problem, but it might not be enough. I'm sorry for any inconvenience, and please bear with us until this is resolved.

[Braveheart 0]

For the last 7 or 8 days, the board server has been down for periods of 1/2 hour to 1 1/2 hours...most recently this morning about noon, local time. Last night at 11pm it was also down for about 1.5 hours. I had to leave FLB and return to fix it.

So, what's going on? Well, it appears there is a hacker attacking the server by uploading a script that takes up all the CPU cycles on the server. We have taken some steps to alleviate the problem, but it might not be enough. I'm sorry for any inconvenience, and please bear with us until this is resolved.

Thanks for your efforts and for keeping us up to date Martin.

[probe 11]

Thanks for the info. I was concerned the server was under some kind of attack by the error message I received. Hope it's sorted out soon.

[robbo 13]

Hi MM

 

Thanks for the info thought it was my pc.

[MM 6,562]

It happened again at about 1:15am here in Thailand. I was in TQ2 about to ST a cutie who I had bought numerous drinks for...and get SMS messages from local guys that the board is down. Interrupting my drinking and hunting session to come home at 1:45am was a bit of a pain.

 

Anyway, enough of that. I live here and should be able to find another one tomorrow night or afternoon even.

 

What I have done is shut down pattayapics.com to see if the hacker is coming in through that site. So, any pictures hosted on pattaypics.com (many of Hammer's bar crawl pics, for example), will be unavailable until I can determine if the attack originates from there. If so, I will upgrade some of the software and bring it back on line.

 

But, now I'm going to bed alone and a little mao.

 

Once again, sorry for the inconvenience...fucking Albanian hackers. Don't they have better things to do?

[MM 6,562]

Another outage around 11am today local time. I have put pattayapics back online since that doesn't seem to be the source of the problem.

Now the hotel review link has been disabled (you'll get a missing page when you click on Hotels or Accomodations on pattayapages). Let's see if that helps.

Damned hackers.

[MM 6,562]

A new attack took place about 2pm local time where hundreds of "Guest" users started viewing the board. You can see the evidence of this by looking at the Maximum Number of Users logged on...499. The system was saved by only allowing 499 users on at once.

 

I am going to reset this fictitious number and recompute it.

 

Someone has really got it in for this site.

[ruskiehat 0]

Cheers Martin, I thought it was just me when i trying to upload my trip report with all the pic's

[MM 6,562]

Another outage at around 11:30am local time lasted 1 hour.

 

Support staff are looking for the problem (again).

[MM 6,562]

Yes, it happened again today about 11:15am local time. I didn't get the system back up until about 12:30pm local time. My support guy at the server farm says I might need to add more memory to our server. Ouch. First hackers, then system overload.

It does appear that the last 3 days' outages are not related to hacker activity, but excess load on the board, but that's just what they tell me, I don't know for sure at this point.

What I do know is that I'm not getting enough sleep. Home late, then check system and work for a couple of hours because it's crashed.

[Kev 178]

Hi Martin,

 

Not being a smart arse or anything and appreciate this board heaps, but that is usually the story with software upgrades, they then need more hardware or memory to run the suckers.

 

Anyway get some sleep, no ST tonight and relax.

 

Kev