GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

1. Avatars are not showing - I'll have to investigate this [fixed]2. Forum can't send emails (such as forgot-password email) - postfix is not setup on the new box yet [fixed]3. "OK" appears at the bottom of pages - some Zeroforum weirdness [fixed]4. Time is wrong - ntpd refuses to cooperate [fixed]

also some old attachments before the switch are not working either.

To clarify #3 above this is what i am seeing on the bottom of every page.Quote »OKThe server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@genvibe.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.More information about this error may be available in the server error log.Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat) Server at forums.genvibe.com Port 80

Well, I think the avatars and the files (zerofile links) are "sort of" fixed... I kind of hacked around the problem, although I suspect I will eventually find that zeroforum is designed for an older version of mod_perl and the hack is needed, OR that the hack is needed until the "OK" issue is resolved. Anyway, we're moving forward

Okay, I think the forum software is able to send emails now. Let me know if you see any issues with this. Thanks!Mike K.

Quote, originally posted by mkowdley »Okay, I think the forum software is able to send emails now. Let me know if you see any issues with this. Thanks!Mike K.Great! Maybe hskater26 (this months VOTM winner) will be able to get his password so he can log on now and be able to post in his VOTM thread.

Forgotten Password works

Okay all, I have put a fix in that hopefully will make all the "OK" messages at the bottom of the page go away, without screwing anything else up. It looks like the zeroforum code was written for an older version of mod_perl, and since it's no longer supported, there is no new code for the current versions of mod_perl. I put some fixes directly in the perl scripts to deal with the new calling conventions that mod_perl uses, and it looks like that solved the "OK" problem. Let me know if you see any weirdness.Mike K.

Is there an issue with old threads topping to the top of the Active Topics list even though no one has posted on it ?

if it's a poll it will move to the top because someone voted in the poll they don't need to post in the thread

These haven't been polls though. It will give the update date and time, but no user name. The polls, I believe, update the date and time, but keep the last username that posted.

Could it be that someone deleted a post? That will move a thread to the top.

It looks like there have been some spammers sign up here, and the mods do a good job of deleting their spam and removing them as valid users. I saw a couple of threads show tonight, but by the time I go see what they are the threads are gone and the members are deleted. If you delete the last post in a thread (such as when a spammers pots crap to an older thread) it will still have the date/time of that last post, the one that was removed. That only happens when you delete the last post, not one in the middle. These threads wit the last post deleted show up in the active threads list with no member name in the last post column.Somebody over on matrixowners said the only good thing about genvibe is the lack of spam, and while I disagree strongly, I do feel that the moderators here are very proactive about killing spam and banning spammers, which is good. =================================================A while ago, there was a link along the top for the genvibe wiki, but that link went away. There is still a link to the wiki along the bottom (under the lower ad) but for a while it would take you to a page that says the genvibe wiki is down, now I get the page can not be loaded.. Probably best to just remove the link to it until such time as it is working and you want people to start using it.

Quote, originally posted by joatmon »the only good thingI remember that who was that... and now it's gone to pot... cuz now we are being spammed. Only a matter of time till the porn threads show up. There goes the "g" rated family site.

Our Mods Rock at keeping The Spammers at bay. Recently it seems the spam topics are still in the list even though the content has been removed.It was nicer when All trace of the spam was removed. Is this a new issue with the software?

i dont think anyone is going to escape spam...its going to show up no matter how hard you try to get rid of it.....ever play yahoo games?

Is there an impression then that the amount of spam being received has gone up?It's a pretty tough problem to solve, and I'm also surprised that there are bots out there that target the zeroforum software, since it is pretty old and not widely used.There are a few options we could look into if needed, but if the amount of spam registrations has been roughly consistent, then what we've been doing seems to be working, overall.

Yeah, I was just going to post about the blank spaces on the "last updated (date/time...username is blank on some topics) but *deal with the spam first...it's more of an urgent matter* I had a message say I had an I.M. on M.O. and the subject was spam for that pill...

Ahh the spam! Well good job to the mods for keeping it down as much as possible and deleting the message as quick as they are!!! I haven't even been able to see any of the spam bc they are on top of their game so well!!

Quote, originally posted by mkowdley »Is there an impression then that the amount of spam being received has gone up?It's a pretty tough problem to solve, and I'm also surprised that there are bots out there that target the zeroforum software, since it is pretty old and not widely used.There are a few options we could look into if needed, but if the amount of spam registrations has been roughly consistent, then what we've been doing seems to be working, overall.As one of the people taking care of the spam, I would not say the amount has gone up, no. I'll take this opportunity now to thank you Mike, for your work to keep the site even running so we CAN remove the spam. In any case, there does appear to be something wrong with the forum software installation. For some reason, when a former spam thread is removed it still shows but the posts have all been deleted. If you look more toward the bottom of the page, you can again edit the thread and completely delete it. I just did this with one and it is entirely gone now. If anyone would like to fill me in on any other that may still be hanging out there I'll get rid of them too. Honestly, just a minor bug. For now, we can delete the thread twice but if you CAN figure it out, I don't think any of us MODS would complain. Thanks again, Mike, for saving GVC!

Quote, originally posted by Sputnik »Could it be that someone deleted a post? That will move a thread to the top.actually when a member makes a post and then delets it their post is gone but their name date and time posted stay up. with these new ones there is a blank space where the name would be.

Quote, originally posted by NascarXprt »actually when a member makes a post and then delets it their post is gone but their name date and time posted stay up. with these new ones there is a blank space where the name would be.Yes, but in this case that appears not to be what's happening. Or better to say it's happening far more often than would SUGGEST that is what is happening.

the random spammage seems to be coming from users with member id=0 (or member id not defined) so maybe it is an automated spam thing. Seems to be fairly disruptive though, I trust those that can are looking for ways to stop it. Aside from someone named Vincent Precourt who signed up for three accounts, most of the last 20 new members are very likely bogus, have locations not in north america, and/or have home page links in their profile to places like cheapsoftware online, or bestnetpharmacy, or other typical spam bastage and/or have ridiculous full names, like dusJedprusy. ParpBiatagree from Hungary has two accounts. Nouttbowhouts's home page is an online cigarrette shop (supposedly, I'm not following the links) hedeFlueshy from the Bahamas has a home page in russia with "pornfoto" in the urlCould it be these bogus users generating the spam?Maybe ban those, then put a manual review in the new member sign up, or perhaps one of those "type in the non-OCR letters" bot preventers in the new member sign up.

joatmon I think you may be onto something...I keep getting "invalid user" when I try to do anything with their accounts.

don't know if the zero platform can support http://www.captcha.net/I know most bots can get around it now in the new forums but it may help a bit.

None of the registered spam users have posted though, and the spammers apparently aren't registered, so the captcha would have to be on the post itself...and would only work if it's a bot.

Quote, originally posted by Kari » and the spammers apparently aren't registered, how is that even possible... one needs an account to log in to, to post... how do they not have accounts?thats weird

The "exgirlfriends undressed" seemed promising but there is nothing there!

Quote, originally posted by keithvibe »how is that even possible... one needs an account to log in to, to post... how do they not have accounts?thats weirdI agree, that's what we're trying to figure out.

The previous "OK" message at the bottom has returned!

Yes OK is DEF welcomed over the spam!! It was nice this morning hoping on genvibe first thing and no spam!! Great job to everyone who has been working on the issue!!

the OK is gone but still no spam, so it looks like Mike's got that figured out Now, when can we talk about the home page?

Well, Dell has no explanation for why the server quit behaving this weekend, I can really only say that it took a few reboots and then it was behaving normally. I could have done that myself, but I spent a good amount of time with Dell Tech Support hoping they could figure out what the deal was. Everything should be back and running now, and I'm going to do a few tests when I go to the datacenter in May to see if it's as solid as I'd like to believe it is.

Quote, originally posted by mkowdley »Well, Dell has no explanation for why the server quit behaving this weekend, I can really only say that it took a few reboots and then it was behaving normally. I could have done that myself, but I spent a good amount of time with Dell Tech Support hoping they could figure out what the deal was. Everything should be back and running now, and I'm going to do a few tests when I go to the datacenter in May to see if it's as solid as I'd like to believe it is.Thanks for the update!!And more importantly Thank You For all your hard work in keeping this ship afloat!!

well at least it's working now. Thanks for the updates!

while the site was down I was browsing through the gallery -- noticed most of the comments are spam....ex:http://www.genvibe.com/gallery/votm1206 ... I/DSC02340

HAHAHA talk about filling up pages and pages with crudvery good catch..

WOW! Good catch, Bull!

I cleaned up a bunch of the comment spam and upgraded the gallery software to the latest version of Menalto Gallery 1.

sorry for the treadsurrection, seemed like a good thread to post in since it might date back to the rehostingused to be inactive threads in the asylum, for sale, and testing forums got pruned after some period of inactivity, but that doesn't seem to be happening anymore. It's not a problem for me, so this isn't a conplaint. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't seem to be that way anymore in case you still wanted autopurge and hadn't noticed it was broken.It might date back to the upheaval of a year ago, because the oldest testing and asylum threads are from Feb 09, the oldest For Sale threads go back to october 08, (For Sale used to have a longer timeout than Asylum and testing)

Looks like that job didn't get migrated from the old servers back in February or whatever it was. Anyway, I think it's all working correctly now, job is running as I type.