Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Why was this site unconnectable a few hours ago?

Why was this site unconnectable a few hours ago?

fusso - 5-6-2023 at 06:30

@Polverone

Admagistr - 5-6-2023 at 07:56

@Polverone

I have the same experience,for a long time I could not connect to SM,and I got an automatic response that there is no valid security certificate,could be a hacker attack??

Rainwater - 5-6-2023 at 08:49

It was down for me aswell.
error message said the site wasnt responding fast enough.
I actually had to read the local news this morning, still nauseated.

[Edited on 5-6-2023 by Rainwater]

Admagistr - 5-6-2023 at 09:35

I actually had to read the local news this morning, still nauseated.
[Edited on 5-6-2023 by Rainwater][/rquote]

Yes!

Organikum - 5-6-2023 at 18:56

Sometimes the site does suddenly dislike the the server of my VPN and refuses to connect or tells me I have no rights to this resource.

Then I switch to another server and it works again. Nothing personal.
Like just two minutes ago the German server of Nord VPN fell into disgrace so I switched to the USA server which works just fine.

hope this helps.

Tsjerk - 5-6-2023 at 23:49

SM was really down for some time, maybe an expired certificate or something. That would be nice, because that would mean Polverone still keeps an eye out.

BromicAcid - 6-6-2023 at 03:42

Considering our leader hasn't logged into the site in about 11 months chances are he won't see this.

Tsjerk - 6-6-2023 at 04:16

I don't think he has read anything for the last two years. When SM was down I was afraid it would be down for a lot longer than it actually was.

[Edited on 6-6-2023 by Tsjerk]

ItalianChemist - 6-6-2023 at 04:40

I had the same problem yesterday! Luckily it only lasted few hours!

Tsjerk - 6-6-2023 at 07:40

Let me just put this here while we are at it, why not?

@Polverone: There is an XMB update to version 1.9.12 --> all kinds of nice stuff like registration with reCAPTCHA

Also @Polverone: I really love what you did two decades ago; creating this forum, and I'm not the only one loving it. I understand you don't have time and or feel like checking in, but maybe you could give login credentials to a second person? Just to be sure?

@AnyoneWithContactInfoOfPolverone: Maybe, if you didn't already, send him a message (again) with the question either to share credentials or let us know he is not the only one with keys? Or maybe let us know he does indeed check the health of SM now and then, so we only have to hope he doesn't get incapacitated?

[Edited on 6-6-2023 by Tsjerk]

Rainwater - 6-6-2023 at 08:57

A patron page would be nice to. This type of site isnt free or easyto maintain
As useful as it is, and ad free. I will happily pledge.

Admagistr - 6-6-2023 at 09:23

You are right,SM should be more insured!So we don't end up like the great German Chemical Forum Versuchechemie.de,there were some nice things there and some of them can't be traced even in the archives,too bad!

Texium - 6-6-2023 at 12:20

Quote: Originally posted by Tsjerk

Also @Polverone: I really love what you did two decades ago; creating this forum, and I'm not the only one loving it. I understand you don't have time and or feel like checking in, but maybe you could give login credentials to a second person? Just to be sure?

@AnyoneWithContactInfoOfPolverone: Maybe, if you didn't already, send him a message (again) with the question either to share credentials or let us know he is not the only one with keys? Or maybe let us know he does indeed check the health of SM now and then, so we only have to hope he doesn't get incapacitated?

I can try contacting him, but I probably have as much chance of getting through to him as any of y'all. As far as I know, nobody besides Polverone has full access. I do not volunteer myself, because I don't have the technical knowledge that would be required. I would nominate woelen, because I know that he does.

Quote: Originally posted by Rainwater

A patron page would be nice to. This type of site isnt free or easyto maintain
As useful as it is, and ad free. I will happily pledge.

This has been proposed many times. Donations used to be accepted, but some years ago Polverone insisted that donations were no longer necessary, as he could afford to maintain the site without financial assistance.

SplendidAcylation - 6-6-2023 at 13:15

Does this contingency plan still apply?
https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=12...

At the time, Polverone seemed to think that being absent for 30 days classified as vanishing, now he's been absent for 10x as long, I hope he is okay!

BromicAcid - 6-6-2023 at 18:22

I just dropped him an email from our last conversation just checking to see if he was doing alright. Will report in if he replies. Wow, it's been about 10 years since we were talking via email though.

Tsjerk - 7-6-2023 at 00:50

SM was down again, someone DDOSing maybe?

Keras - 7-6-2023 at 00:54

As a former system engineer and UNIX native speaker

I could volunteer to maintain the site on any Linux (although I prefer BSD) machine.
But I think the whole site needs an overhaul. The UI is antiquated. It deserves a whole makeover from the ground up.

Parakeet - 7-6-2023 at 01:47

I also had a similar issue twice: today and yesterday.

Question to those who are familiar with website maintenance :
It seems that this website have an SSL certificate that was renewed recently. Is this process done manually by the admin? Or is it renewed automatically?

BromicAcid - 7-6-2023 at 03:45

Quote: Originally posted by Keras

As a former system engineer and UNIX native speaker

It's been awhile since someone tried up upgrade the software, apparently there were issues:

https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=18...

Keras - 7-6-2023 at 11:37

Quote: Originally posted by BromicAcid

It's been awhile since someone tried up upgrade the software, apparently there were issues:

https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=18...

It’s easy to dredge some rough figures:

Code:

Pro > curl -v http://sciencemadness.org
*   Trying 74.207.252.200:80...
* Connected to sciencemadness.org (74.207.252.200) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: sciencemadness.org
> User-Agent: curl/7.87.0
> Accept: */*
> 
* Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2023 19:29:48 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu)

Apache 2.4.18 was released in 2015. So the server has probably not been updated since, and is likely to run a 2015 Linux kernel.

Now if you try the home page of the forum…

Code:

Pro > curl -v http://sciencemadness.org/whisper/
*   Trying 74.207.252.200:80...
* Connected to sciencemadness.org (74.207.252.200) port 80 (#0)
[…]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<!-- Powered by XMB 1.9.11   -->
<!-- Build: 20120202 -->
<!-- The XMB Group -->
<head>

So yeah, this is an XMB version from 2012. Note that the encoding is not even UTF-8, which is ubiquitous nowadays.

The problem is not that the site doesn’t work. But the chance it is hacked increases by the day. Vulnerabilities for ancient code is public info, and it’s easy to find snippets that will run the entire contents havoc.

[Edited on 7-6-2023 by Keras]

Tsjerk - 7-6-2023 at 12:22

Yes, it is old, the last thing Polverone did was setting up https. XMB 1.9.11 is from 2011. Version 1.9.12 came out more than 10 years later, most notably coming with reCaptcha.

But having this old PHP and Apache is just waiting for accidents to happen.

Admagistr - 7-6-2023 at 14:35

Quote: Originally posted by Tsjerk

Yes, it is old, the last thing Polverone did was setting up https. XMB 1.9.11 is from 2011. Version 1.9.12 came out more than 10 years later, most notably coming with reCaptcha.

But having this old PHP and Apache is just waiting for accidents to happen.

So what are we going to do if we can't contact Polverone for a long time?It doesn't look good at all

Should SM move with the whole content to another safe site?We have some experts here...

[Edited on 7-6-2023 by Admagistr]

Rainwater - 7-6-2023 at 17:28

Backup copies are the #1 need.
Then a detailed review of the server log to discover what problem is occurring.
No panic required

khlor - 25-6-2023 at 13:10

I'm just glad it is back