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CodeSlinger

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  1. Actually, the problem is in the Perl install, specifically in File::Spec::rel2abs. You can demonstrate this by putting the following Perl script in your cgi-bin directory under the name "bug1.cgi". It will fail, demonstrating that File::Spec::rel2abs returns an invalid path when passed a valid one. That's broken. >#!/usr/bin/perl -w use CGI qw(header); use File::Spec; print header; my $path = "./bug1.cgi"; if (! -r $path) { print "Unable to access file for testing.\n"; } else { # $path is a valid path, because it is readable. my $apath = File::Spec->rel2abs($path); print "Testing File::Spec::rel2abs on '$path' [$apath]: "; if (! -r $apath) { print "failed\n"; # yet we can't read the path returned by rel2abs. } else { print "succeeded\n"; } }
  2. I have engaged in the battle against the weblog spammers and this is the result of my effort. I now run my weblogs with no trackback or comment throttling without being overwhelmed by spam floods. This allows the legitimate people to get through instead of being throttled. Weblog Defense Grid.
  3. Thanks to TCH, I unthrottled my trackbacks and I am no longer getting complaints about them getting dropped. As part of that effort, I installed some custom anti-spam software. This software maintains a .htaccess file which is updated whenever a junked trackback is recieved to ban the IP address of the host that sent the spam. Addresses are removed when the junk is cleaned up by MovableType, so it's very low maintenance. And since the file is updated on by junk, normal users aren't affected. However, even after 10 days of having this running, I am still getting a few hundred spam trackbacks per day. This a few hundred new IP addresses that are sending spam trackbacks every day. Based on the spam content, it is almost entirely the same spammer. The ban list is at 4225 addresses right now with no sign of the growth slowing. I begin to wonder if this guy can really have that many zombies pumping out the spam attacks. Is it possible that he is spoofing IP addresses? Since trackbacks do not require any data from the server, it is theoretically possible to IP spoof them even via TCP. There are some standard counter measures and I was curious if those are active on TCH servers.
  4. Actually, the path look wrong to me. "/mt/mt-comments.cgi"? Shouldn't there be at least a "cgi-bin" in there somewhere?
  5. Thanks for the detailed response! I'll go try out those settings to see if they have an effect.
  6. I've been getting some complaints about trackback failures to a weblog on server69. The error that is returned to the source weblog is I've looked around at my MT configuration and I don't have any throttling enabled. That and the fact that it's a 403 error indicates that it is being done by the webserver. Checking my MT logs, I'm only getting 20 or so trackbacks per day (including all spam trackbacks), which shouldn't need to be throttled. I tried opening a ticket but the response was not useful. If I get some time, I'll write up a Perl script to test and demonstrate the problem as requested, but what I really wanted to know is What aspect of the webserver configuration generates a 403: Throttled error? Is this configuration on my server, my weblog, the mt-tb script? Is the proximate cause traffic at my website or could some other MT weblog be loading the server? My mt-tb script is in an scgi-bin directory, is that an issue? If I rename the script, would that avoid throttling? Or would that be cheating?
  7. I had a similar problem and one solution you might try is to use Flickr in parallel with your hosting here. I moved all of my images over to Flickr and then hotlinked from the TCH page. Dropped my bandwidth usage by about 80% and solved my problem.
  8. I tried the SQL export / import but that doesn't work either. I get the following error message on a 9M gzipped file: Are there any other recommended procedures for duplicating a database?
  9. Yes, it looks like I will have to do that. I did some more investigating and have determined that PhpMyAdmin 2.6.1-pl2, which is what is in use at TCH, doesn't support copying without creating. However, PhpMyAdmin 2.6.3-pl1 has an extra checkbox labeled "CREATE DATABASE before copying" so that one can disable the database create and copy even with no create privileges. I had used the 2.6.3 version elsewhere, which is what lead to my confusion here.
  10. I don't want to backup / restore, I want to make a duplicate. I want to to have a database B which is an exact copy of database A, so that I can test / check / upgrade software on B while A is still supporting a live website. E.g., I'm upgrading MovableType and I want to verify the successful operation of the new version without taking down the live, operational current version. There is very little documentation on the backup / restore of MySQL from CPanel, but what little I could find described only a restore operation with no provision for putting the data in a different database from whence it came. The "Copy Database To:" operation in PhpMyAdmin would do exactly what I want, if it worked. If I try to dump an SQL dump and upload that, there's a 50M limit which is not really all that big (not to mention the joy of waiting while 50M of data is uploaded).
  11. I'm doing some experimental stuff and I'd like to make an exact copy of an existing database. I tried the "Copy database to:" operation in phpMyAdmin but it doesn't work. If the target database exists, the create fails because the database already exists. If the target database does not exist, the create fails because phpMyAdmin doesn't have permission to create a database. It seems misconfigured for this operation to attempt to create a database. Does this operation simply not work at TCH? If it does work, how is that done? P.S. I know I could do the export / import sequence, but it seems like a lot of work when phpMyAdmin (should) support the operation directly, not to mention the upload / download of all that data over a not completely reliable connection. P.P.S. I found this old discussion but it seemed to indicate that this operation used to work, which is not helpful for my situation.
  12. Or you could try a PERL script like this. Put in a .cgi file in your cgi-bin directory and set the execute permission. Then access it via HTTP. I recommend removing it after you've finished loading the SQL script for security reasons. This assumes that you've already used FTP to get the SQL script on the server. >#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; local $|=1; print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n"; print "<body>\n"; print "<div style='text-align:center;border:1px solid red;margin-bottom:1ex;'>Before SQL statement</div>"; # the following is all on one line until the semicolon my $zret = qx!mysql --silent --html --user="YOUR_DB_USER" --password="YOUR_DB_PASSWORD" YOUR_DB_NAME < YOUR_DB_SCRIPT.sql 2>&1 !; print $zret; print "<div style='text-align:center;border:1px solid red;margin-top:1ex;'>After SQL statement</div>"; print "</body>\n";
  13. There are three problems with a 301 Redirect 1) I don't have that level of control of the webserver. It's another hosting company so I doubt filing a help ticket here would be useful. It's the new site that's hosted at TCH. 2) It's not transparent to users (the W3 spec requires a browser to confirm the redirect with the user). 3) It's critical for deep links to work and there are too many to put a 301 in for all of them. E.g., http://bob.me.com/Q/T/F needs to go to http://bob.com/Q/T/F. I've checked and the other side will put in a DNS CNAME for me, which should do what I want, i.e. have browsers rewrite http://bob.me.com/~~~ to http://bob.com/~~~ . So, unless something goes horribly wrong, it looks like this will actually work.
  14. I spent a couple of hours looking through the piles of subdomain questions, but I think mine is actually new. I have another website, me.com. I set up a website on a subdomain for a friend, bob.me.com. Sadly, he's eating me out of disk and bandwidth. What I want to do is set up a website for him at TCH (bob.com), move his current website there and then park the subdomain on it. The goal would be to have bob.me.com and bob.com be interchangeable to ease the transition (he's got a lot of incoming links I don't want to break). My reading of everything said here is that this is possible and in line with acceptable use policies (it should make no difference to TCH whether I point a domain or a subdomain at my TCH hosted domain). So my questions are: 1) Am I correct about the acceptable use policy? 2) What would I need to do to park the subdomain? Just put in the IP address of the TCH server? P.S. For those confused on why this is different, it is because the website would be hosted at the toplevel domain, not at a subdomain. There would be only one website hosted on a single TCH account, it would just be accessible via both a domain and a subdomain.
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