This item is for system problems.  If something on Grex isn't working
right (weird behavior from a program, etc.), this is the place to
announce it.  Except for security holes.  If you find a hole in system
security, mail information about it directly to "staff".

223 responses total.

My browser is telling me grex is unsafe. I told it that slynne and zulu
are  gone but it insisted that I proceed with caution. 

Oh. We need to renew the certificate, probably.

Hi there.
It seems that grex is still using OpenBSD 5.0. That's
too old.
It would be nice to have latest OpenBSD running on
grex, maybe the next 5.9 version.

What exactly are the criteria for "too old?" Seems to be working perfectly
fine...

We've talked about this repeatedly for the last several years.  Our goal
is to migrate to FreeBSD.  That requires more time than staff currently
have to devote. So we are in a holding pattern and leaving what works
alone.  Just updating OpenBSD to a newer version would require more
staff time than we have right now (local applications would likely need
updating).  If we were to do anything we'd rather put that time toward
FreeBSD.

Ok. No problem here. Moving to FreeBSD is also
acceptable, because of simpler incremental binary
upgrades.
As long as the system is running just fine, I think
it doesnt matter how old the os.
Maybe it would be simpler to stick to the old Unix
"if it isn't broken, don't fix it"

The thing is, OpenBSD sucks and actually is kind of broken.
The system panics every now and again because of it.

Damnit Chewie

*RAAAARRRRR*

Grex was inaccessible for at least a day or so (or so it seemed)
due to a UPS failure causing the server Grex exists on to reboot
and then die.  This lead to the dreaded "no route to host"
message when trying to connect.  The issue should be fixed now.

Thank you, Tony!

Grex was up and down a couple times starting with last Friday and into
Sunday evening.  Both times it was the bug in the OpenBSD system that
caused it although it is not clear if anyone has found a way to make it
happen sooner.  The load average was over 150 on Saturday before I lost
my connection.  It was not clear what was causing that sort of load and
top showed a lot of 0% cpu processes.  

Thanks to Tony for coming to the rescue on these issues several
times this weekend!

Grex went comatose again this afternoon/evening.  Thanks to Tony for
the reboot! 

Is a reboot like a smelling salt?

It's like a smack to Otis the Drunk when Andy is having a bad hairday

What happened was we lost our network connection for a while, so Grex
itself was still alive, but a reboot got it connected again after the
box that was handling the network was rebooted.  

(not dead yet, just *very* busy!)

Can someone set up the reverse DNS for grex? Right now it's just the dynamic
address that SBC is handing out. Probably seems kinda nit picky, but it really
helps in e.g. IRC to see @grex.org (or @cyberspace.org, or whatever) when a
user connects.

I can set it up if staff doesn't have time and would like help.

I think we are going to have to wait for Tony to check in. Now that grex is
a virtual machine, reverse DNS may not make sense.

Reverse DNS would be a good idea.

Okay, we had another network issue and OpenBSD decided to check out of
consciousness for a while.  Tony shocked it back to life again.  Thank
you, Tony!

Thanks Tony!

I would like to thank whoever installed Maxima on this machine. I can't
install any math software on my work computer and grex has just saved the day!

Thanks for letting us know you use it!  I think I installed that a while
back.  There are several such applications on Grex, including Octave,
Maxima, FreeMat, and R.  I'm glad it worked for you.

An incomplete list of installed softare on Grex is available at:

   http://grex.org/software.xhtml

Thanks for haskell as well !

resp:16, resp:18:

Unfortunately, it's not possible to get reverse DNS for grex. :( I tried
to do it, but AT&T has a silly limitation where they will only give
reverse DNS for a single domain name. Since it's hosted here, and I have
my own stuff on my network, tonster.com trumps grex.org and
arbornet.org. :) Thus, no reverse DNS. At least, no reverse DNS that
makes any real sense.

In other news, I just finally managed to get the SSL certificate
replaced. No more warnings about how dangerous grex.org is, though I'm
still not convinced that's a good thing. :)

Thanks for investigating all this, Tony. Accessing grex's web page
now goes through without a hitch, as does accessing the RT help desk
pages. 

On the evening of Sept. 23, 2016, Grex started refusing connections.
A reboot fixed the issue.

Thank you, Tony!

good!

Is anybody else able to send email outside of grex?  It seems that anything
I try sending to the spousal unit is silently getting dropped.

Ok, update.  Got this bounce. "550 Local CT IP Reputation Policy".  
...
<jhesse@ieee.org>: host us-smtp-2.mimecast.com[205.139.110.241] said: 550
Local
   CT IP Reputation Policy (Reject) -
   https://community.mimecast.com/docs/DOC-1369#550 (in reply to RCPT TO
   command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; grex.org
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: C545E20396B
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; jhesse@grex.org
Arrival-Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2016 11:07:47 -0500 (EST)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; jhesse@ieee.org
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; us-smtp-2.mimecast.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 Local CT IP Reputation Policy (Reject) -
   https://community.mimecast.com/docs/DOC-1369#550

Yahoo tends to bounce e-mails, maybe other ISPs.  You can thank all
the idiots who send spam from Grex or imitate Grex users when they
send their spam from other places.

This is more than just Yahoo.  The bounces I'm getting from IEEE and
Slumberland indicate their outsourced MTA doesn't like our ip or something
is misconfigured.  (Yahoo's bounce is just kind of broken, like Yahoo in
general)

Is spam from grex a thing?  I'm currently getting slammed by up to 200 spams
a day, and all of it is from botnetted residentials or compromised Word Press
installations.  Finally had to set up procmail, after twenty years.
(Thank you for having procmail here.  Saves a lot of wear on the "d" key...)

You can run spamassassin and get rid of most of the spam.   We've had
users sending thousands of spam e-mails from Grex to other sites and
we usually lock their accounts.  But, some outside spammers spoof our
user addresses and it looks to other sites like Grex is sending the
e-mail when it is not.
 
procmail also helps get rid of spam, as you note.

I did not see a Winter 2017 System Problems.
Grex is currently on the Barracuda Reputations spam list.  I first learned
about this list yesterday when it also blocked SDF outgoing mail.  I use grex
to send mail to Yahoo when SDF is on the yahoo list.  Grex appears not to be
on the Yahoo list.  An administrator should fill out a block removal form for
Barracuda.  Maybe they changed criteria recently.  

Cross. there is user named" imabot or imamachine [dont remmber as i cant open
second window t ochek. he is running some kind of botnet. just check his home
directory and process that he is running

Looks like several instances of a TCP forwarder running under user imarobot,
which may be owned by user huuygt77.

Hmm; doesn't seem to be running anymore. Is it doing something to harm the
system?

He's running socat from his home directory. As we don't want people running
bots and bouncers, he shouldn't be doing that. When he is running his little
network he's using a lot more processes than the normal user, too. I'm not
sure what he's trying to accomplish other than using resources. 

Sure, he's using slots in the process table; but is there any realized effect
on grex? If not, I don't see the harm.

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