316 new of 333 responses total.
Well, in order for an X11 client to work across machines it needs to set up a socket connection between the two. My guess is that the same mechanism which prevents you from telnetting or ftping out from Grex is also preventing you X client from connecting to your X server.
Ahh.
I know this chick from Trenton Michigan that gets asked to open up sockets every week. Her stage name is "Chloe".
Yeah, I used to think she was hot but I'm not sure chicks from downriver.
you're not sure chicks from downriver ? you must be getting hot, marc. it's making your sentence-forming skillz go whack.
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These sentences no verb.
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Ihave done it with a little linux over a nullmodem cable, from DOS.
I've done it quite a bit here at school, running applications on a computer in a lab on the display in my dorm room, now that I have the account on the lab computer (since the computer science club owns the computers and runs the lab). I do this because my local computer is quite slow compared to those. As far as I can tell, X forwarding must be enabled in sshd, and IIRC it isn't by default.
I've done it between computers here, too.
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I just saw this when starting up bbs: warning: libc.so.38.2: minor version >= 3 expected, using it anyway Seems to be working anyway...
That's a known problem, based on a mismatch in shared library versions between what bbs was compiled against vs. what's running on grex now. It's been doing that for quite a while, probably this is just the first time you noticed..
Why does bbs segmentation fault when I scribble a response?
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.. hey! what about email to AOHell ??!!!!!!! <dammit>
hau !
I don't usually get 'you have new mail' messages when I have new mail. Is there something I should be setting in pine, or is this a system setting?
re #36: What do you get when you type "echo $MAIL" (without the surrounding quotes) into a shell?
I think its /usr/local/bin/newmail
/var/mail/keesan
[A friend of mine using AOL tried to find a way to whitelist my address. Would it be worth someone on staff phoning AOL's number below to try to get them to put us on their system-wide whitelist? This is the same AOL that told someone else to clear their hard-disk cache of images when they were short on RAM.] Welcome Carole ... 2:10:27 AM [system.gif] System Connecting to server. Please wait... 2:10:27 AM [system.gif] System Connected to wnaad01o.ops.aol.com 2:10:43 AM [system.gif] System AOLTechHPN has joined this session! 2:10:43 AM [system.gif] System Connected with AOLTechHPN 2:10:53 AM [system.gif] System Hello, Carole. Welcome to Live Technical Support. My name is Gina. 2:10:55 AM [system.gif] System Carole stated the question or problem as: A friend's emails are being blocked by AOL. She asked me to ask AOL to put her on a. 2:10:57 AM [system.gif] System Are you signed on with the same computer that you need assistance with? 2:11:11 AM [customer.gif] You yes 2:11:22 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN Thank you for waiting, I understand that you are having difficulty receiving e-mail from a friend . Do I have that correct? 2:11:37 AM [customer.gif] You yes. 2:11:52 AM [customer.gif] You she asked if I could get AOL to put her on a "white list" 2:12:01 AM [customer.gif] You [opposite of being blacklisted.....] 2:12:06 AM [customer.gif] You is this possible? 2:12:50 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN If there are difficulties sending/receiving the e-mail again, please have the sender contact the Postmaster of their domain (for example: AOL Members would contact 2:12:55 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN postmaster@aol.com). The Postmaster will check for any e-mail gateway problems between the sender's Internet Service Provider (ISP) and America Online. 2:13:12 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN AOL may have received large amounts of junk e-mail from someone using this domain name. Please ask the sender of the e-mail to ask their system administrator or Internet Service Provider to call the AOL® Postmaster Hotline at 1-888-212-5537. 2:13:13 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN The Postmaster Team, which is available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, can work with the ISP to quickly resolve the issue. Additional information is available at the AOL Postmaster Web Site: http://postmaster.info.aol.com/ 2:14:30 AM [customer.gif] You can I email you what she wrote to me re: this problem?? 2:14:55 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN Yes you can send it to me at AOLTechHPN@aol.com. 2:14:58 AM [customer.gif] You she has already tried to resolve it w/her ISP 2:15:06 AM [customer.gif] You ok. one second.... 2:16:00 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN Sure. 2:16:28 AM [customer.gif] You done 2:17:16 AM [customer.gif] You Here are all her email addresses, all of which seem to be having problems getting through AOL's spam protection: 2:17:20 AM [customer.gif] Youkeesan@freeshell.org,keesan@grex.cyberspace.org,keesan@sdf.lonestar.org,kees an@grex.org 2:17:20 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN Thanks , let me check the e-mail. 2:17:25 AM [customer.gif] You ok 2:19:02 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN Thanks for waiting, have you also check your spam control settings? 2:19:44 AM [customer.gif] You Yes I have. 2:20:06 AM [customer.gif] You But I don't see any of her domains listed at all in my "block" settings 2:20:22 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN To bypass your Mail and Spam Controls and possible blocks from AOL's Spam Filters, add the e-mail address to your AOL Address Book. Mail from senders in your Address Book will be delivered to you regardless of the blocks you've set. 2:20:52 AM [customer.gif] You All of her address are and have been in my Address Book. For a long time! 2:21:48 AM [customer.gif] You So obviously, that doesn't work! 2:22:28 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN Let me file a report for you. 2:22:38 AM [customer.gif] You ok. 2:22:43 AM [customer.gif] You what will that do? 2:22:45 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN How long has this been happening? 2:23:26 AM [customer.gif] You I'm not sure how long. At least the past few days, maybe longer? 2:23:49 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN I can only file a report I suggest that you also send an e-mail to POSTMASTER@aol.com to follow up. 2:24:48 AM [customer.gif] You ok. and then what will happen? 2:25:48 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN I personally apologize for the situation. I have completed and entered a report for you. 2:26:10 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN Please contact the AOL® Postmaster Hotline at 1-888-212-5537. 2:26:20 AM [customer.gif] You thank you. but is there any action you can take? 2:26:32 AM [customer.gif] You should i call or email the postmaster? 2:26:33 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN You can verify about the undelivered e-mail. 2:26:41 AM [agent.gif] AOLTechHPN I suggest that you call. Carole - Save the earth; it's the only planet with chocolate.
Mmm..chocolate
I am in the process of trying to deal with AOL myself. They want the bounce error message and our IP address. More later.
Ticket number 1189406 - they are investigating our case and I should hear back within 5 business days. AOL blocks IP addresses which send mail which AOL members report as spam. I told them we blocked outgoing mail to new users 2-3 months ago and to please unblock us if they have not received recent spam. She suggested we set up a 'feedback loop', which means going online and giving them an address to which they forward any spam reported as coming from us. Could staff please do this directly? AOL does not use other blacklists, they said (not SORBS), just their own. Is there any progress on restricting new users to 25 outgoing mails a day so that new users can send outgoing mails and we will have a better chance of keeping interested people? I think perch has given up on us.
I was worried when I couldn't log in, but fortunately I was able to find out from the Grex Status Page that everything was okay. --- Fri Feb 3 23:09:49 EST 2006 Grex is UP! Grex is currently up, after a reboot. --- Thank goodness for that status page!
thanks, goodness !
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Seems like the best an automated test could do would be to report: Grex appears to be down. Don't know why, whether anyone is working on it, or when it will be back up. Have a nice day. Would that really be all that useful?
If it said "The last time Grex was known to be up was <such-and-such-a-time>," it would be useful -- and then staff could edit that to say what was going on if they got to it.
Yes, resp:48 says what I would expect to happen if the idea was implemented in a reasonable manner. How much good does the current status page do?
The hvcn page says 'grex is down' (since Saturday April 8) but I can access the conferences via the web and via telnet. Via ssh there is a very long wait and only once did it ask for my password out of four tries. I had not tried to use telnet or http because the hvcn page said they don't work either. Someone please fix that page (and also figure out why ssh is not behaving).
fix ur brain
I can also dial in now.
I have been unable to connect for a few days too. Now that I can get to the conferences, hopefully I'll be able to ssh in once I get home (where ssh is not blocked).
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You mean more than "Grex was down since April 8 du to a crash; rebooted at approximately 10:20 EDT today"? :-)
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STeve is not able to post anything for a while and maybe the other volunteer staff are too busy.
We don't like you asking questions, Dan Cross. We suggest you lock your doors to-night. Don't forget the deadbolt.
I'm using Backtalk. Whenever I am viewing an item, and go to the View Responses box and enter a range, such as: 80-$ I see responses from 0 to a few from the last response. I used to see responses from 80 to the end, including the response box. It changed a few weeks ago, I guess. It seemed to have changed for both M-Net and Grex at the same time. It's conceivable that coincides with a change in my computer at work, but if so, I don't know why. Is this a Backtalk bug? If so, it's very, very annoying. If I go back and enter 80-$ a 2nd time in View Responses, then I get the list of responses I want.
uhh..this isn't really a problem...more of a question: Why is the 'math' and 'physics' alias linked to the reality cf? Wouldn't it be more suited to be linked to the science cf?
Re #55: I agree, but sometimes the quickest way to get Grex back online is to reboot now, investigate causes later. (I was the rebooter in the two most recent crash instances, and there were no console messages that pointed to any problems.) Re #60: Seems to me I've encountered that problem, or something quite similar, for a long time, using the Backtalk pistachio interface. For me, typing 80-$ gives erratic results similar to jep's when I terminate form entry with the ENTER key, but the correct results when I click the submit button with the mouse. Seems to be a bug in Backtalk's form processing. Re #61: "Reality" conference? I'd forgotten there was such a thing. It's probably quite old. I suspect the reasons for the alises are lost in the mists of time.
It seems like Grex crashes come in pairs. The system crashes, its rebooted, and then it crashes again shortly after. It might be a good idea to turn up some system monitoring and logging after a crash in order get better data on what happens right before the next crash.
As someone who came on the scene after-the-fact, the Reality conference seems to be intended for an intersection of the subjects that would be covered in separate hard science, mathematics, and religion/philosophy conferences -- perhaps because drawing the borders betweent the three is very difficult, and you'd likely get a lot of duplicate and linked items between them.
carson, the fw of the reality cf, hasn't logged in over two years. I'd imagine a new user, wanting to read stuff about physics would be a little confused to see all these pseudoscience and religious topics.
Telnet to grex is failing for me. SSH works fine though.
Telnet has failed for me as well.
That makes 3. This is being entered via backtalk.
Rebooted Grex to fix the telnet problem. This isn't the right solution exactly, but I'm busy getting ready for Penguicon at the moment.
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A hacker changed inetd w/o a kill -1 so it required a reboot. Thanks STeve!
Picospan seems to be segfaulting on me quite frequently -- perhaps every third time I run it? If I'm not missing anything, this is always or nearly always when it's going back to the Ok: prompt after finishing reading the last new item in a conference.
why are all the items in agora new?
resp:73 Because you didnt appreciate them properly the first time you read it so now you are being PUNISHED
Or possibly because the "participation file truncated mysteriously" bug. Take a look at my .profile if you want to see the rather clumsy and hastily written but never the less reasonably effective workaround that I use for this issue.
re74: oh you!
cute :)
I sent a mail to AOL and it has not bounced yet, but they never did get back with me when I phoned asking them to stop blocking grex.
have you been able to confirm (without a bounce) that thje email went through or was simply dropped on the floor?
While dialed in directly, I tried to ssh to another grex account: ssh jdeigert - there is no job control in this shell; I/O stream 2 improperly redirected stty: not a terminal (two copies of each message and one more) Crashed, had to hang up. This never happened to me when I ssh'ed directly after dialing the ISP.
I had something similar happen about half an hour ago when I tried to ssh here; it gave me the "stream 2 improperly redirected" immediately, then gave me the MOTD and bbs.sh opening message in stairstep fashion, followed by the "not a terminal" message. (#80 -- you can always get out of SSH by typing, as the first thing in the input buffer (immediately after Enter), ~. )
I couldn't get in at all from about 1100 to 1400 GMT.
No new items in utne No new items in pfc No new items in backtalk Failed security checkpoint No new items in grexnews No new items in grexohio (What's the security checkpoint?)
I'm sorry but you're obviously not cleared for that information.
Ok: j backtalk2 Failed security checkpoint Browse (item list), Read (new items), Join confname (type "help conf" for a list of conferences), Help (for more help), pine (for e-mail) Quit (to exit) or !change (to change settings). What's so special about backtalk2?
We could tell you, but then we would have to kill you. ;)
Is anyone else getting this : "Last unsuccessful login: Tue Apr 25 10:52:49 on ttypl from 82.200.231.30" .
The pine INBOX list is messed up....messages are not being shown even though they are in the inbox.
How was a hacker able to change inetd in any manner to begin with?
shhhh.....albaugh's using GreX
This isn't really a Grex problem, but after a system upgrade I can no longer connect to grex from my Gentoo box. I think I must have hosed the customized config file that fixed the problem, as I've had it before. I'm mainly hoping that someone else has had this problem and knows how to fix it. When I try to log in from that machine, both SSH and telnet hang. telnet says that it is connected and that the Escape character is (whatever), but then does not bring up a prompt. Running ssh -v prints: OpenSSH_4.2p1-hpn, OpenSSL 0.9.7i 14 Oct 2005 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config debug1: Connecting to grex.org [216.86.77.194] port 22. debug1: Connection established. debug1: identity file /home/jeff/.ssh/identity type -1 debug1: identity file /home/jeff/.ssh/id_rsa type 1 debug1: identity file /home/jeff/.ssh/id_dsa type -1 debug1: Remote protocol version 1.99, remote software version OpenSSH_4.2 debug1: match: OpenSSH_4.2 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.2p1-hpn debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent But again, no prompt is printed.
Any help would be appreciated.
mail now seems to have a bug that i thought was random but has now shown itself to be a consistant pITA. when i edit out the final 3225 lines of html for the 88 chars of text in an email, and save, and po and q, mail ATTACHES two mails together with a >From instead of the From as originally written. yes, i know the idfference between From adn From: and all that. but WHAT is changing the email header which i did NOT touch. v i have lost track of more damns emails that way ... grrrrrrr. i can go back and edit apart the dam things, but they get stuck back together again anyway.
I have a little statically-compiled ssh that should work with any linux - download it from basiclinux 3.40 add-ons site (or it may be at the Basiclinux 1 add-ons site). ssh.gz. chmod +x it. ssh twenex@grex.org, yes.
re #91: possibly a firewall problem? Can you ssh anywhere else?
Yep, EVERYWHERE else is fine, including ssh'ing to grex from other computers on my LAN.
What happens if you temporarily move .ssh to .ssh_inert and then try to connect to Grex via ssh?
same result! :-(
I just telnetted successfully to grex with IE from a computer at the cancer center waiting room that won't let you 'run' any programs of your choice but does have IE. The magazines here are pretty bad. My 6-month checkup will occur within the next hour or so. One little kid already knew the routine - he weighed himself and was going to measure his height (they don't do adult heights) but the nurse made him start over with shoes off. He is bald. There is a fashion catalog of wigs, scarfs, and cancer-related jewelry, and a bunch of bored adults sitting around waiting for checkups or infusions. My BP is 102 over 62, pulse 72. The technician said some people don't like to get their temperature measured in their ear and a few refuse to be weighed.
My doc has a wand he waves over my forehead to measure my temp.
usualy, the liver temp determines time of death ...
What if you have advanced Hep C and are drinking icey cold margeritas?
mmmmmm!
re 102 .. same result re #93 .... teh edited email should have kept the same index number/mesage number .. but it doesnt. system problem!
Re #99: I hope that the results of the check-up
were favorable!
Trying to ssh in, after I enter my username & password, I get: > Server refused to allocate pty This has been happening pretty persistently.
Seems like if the number of ttys can't (won't?) be increased the idle killer should be set to something reasonable...maybe 6 hours? 1:44PM up 19 days, 20:17, 63 users, load averages: 0.55, 0.97, 1.12 USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT is p8 212.154.163.22 Sun01PM 2days lynx is pf 212.154.163.22 Sun08AM 3days lynx is pk 212.154.163.22 Mon04AM 2days lynx is px 212.154.163.22 Sun12PM 3days lynx is pF 212.154.163.22 7:05AM 6:38 lynx
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I have not been able to ftp from my computer to grex with kermit/ftp or wget. After a very long delay, I could ftp to freeshell (the second two files went right away). Maybe I should have waited 1-2 minutes to ftp directly. Nor did a mail I tried to forward to freeshell (because it had filled my mailbox with about 800K) get there in 5 minutes.
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Why is the the system not sweeping these (apparently) dead connections? I mean... 2 & 3 days "idle"? Sounds dead to me.
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is there any reason why an regular user needs any more than two telnet connections going at a time?
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amen.
yes, when there is a limited number of pty's
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Re #s 113 & 114: I sometimes read a response in one window and write my response in another when they are separated by some distance.
Is there an item in which we are supposed to ask for programs to be added to grex? I would like antiword (to convert doc files to text so we can read them here) and an rtf convertor such as rtf2html and pdftotext. People keep sending me stupid formats of email. I got one yesterday with text, html, rtf, doc, and pdf in it. I ftp'ed the files to freeshell to use their programs (but could not find pdftotext there).
You can use the screen program to do multiple things in one telnet session. But I agree with Dan, increase the number of ptys.
screen isn't magical, it requires a pty for every :screen you create.
It's true that it requires ptys but I still think screen is magical.
Screen was magical back in the days of dial-in before PPP or even SLIP, although it still did not measure of up to "uw", a superior windowing program. The chief advantage of uw was that switching between screens didn't require re-sending the entire contents of the new screen, which was a big deal when you only had a 2400 baud modem.
re #122 It's true that it requires ptys but I still think screen is magical. I find the "-h 9000" option magical for scrolling back and cut&paste.
Looks like grex is out of inodes on /var/spool.
Damnit Chloe!
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New users have now been deprived off offsite mail privileges temporarily for just over 4 months. Is anyone actually working on a solution?
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Sindi, I dont know how much the staff is working on this issue but I dont imagine that anyone is currently devoting much time to it. I would rather we were able to offer offsite mail to all newusers and that is ultimately the goal as I understand it. In the mean time, we can probably get staff to restore privileges to an individual if you have a particular user in mind.
I commented because the motd has a message (I think posted by Cross, not sure) about offsite mail privileges temporarily being suspended, dated Jan 11. This does not make grex look very good when someone logs in. If there are no plans to restore mail to new users, say so instead. One new user, perch, went off annoyed after talking about this for a while in coop. He was interested in helping set up a spam filter at grex and knew a lot about spamassassin. We exchanged a few emails. 'restore' is not the correct word for giving mail privileges to a new user who never had them.
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Maybe I should ask bhoward if he has time to work on mail quotas.
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Or we could let Google handle it for us.
Google does pine email from our home accounts here?
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I've notified most of the people in my address book that they should not send me mail here at Grex because, since the move from Sun to PC (which I think coincided with a geographical move), Grex has been down quite a bit. Even when it's up I receive complaints about mail bouncing back to senders with errors such as 'too many SMTP connections'. Perhaps turning off email would free up resources (including staff time) to work on other things?
Google has not offered to do our email for us. There was the story a while back that they had a program to do so for some nonprofit organizations, I don't think Grex would qualify (open newuser), and the story didn't specify whether this would be paid for by GMail-style ads or by the organization. In any case, I haven't heard anything more of it since. While it is true that GMail can be read and sent using some standard utilities, such as pine, fetchmail, and I suspect mutt, and you can access a bare version in links (not lynx as it requires javascript), those are severely limited, making most of the advantages of GMail irrelevant. (For instance, they only use POP3, not IMAP, for connecting. Unless I'm missing something in their documentation, you can't get at your "Archived" mail from a client [like pine], you can't use their "labels" feature, and it doesn't report any mail that you've seen before, so anything you wanted to read again you'd have to continaully mark "unread" to get it to keep showing up.)
warning: libc.so.38.2: minor version >= 3 expected, using it anyway PicoSpan T3.3a; designed by Marcus Watts copyright 1984 NETI; licensed by Unicon Inc.
HACKED BY GNAA LOL JEWS DID WTC LOL
HTTP://WWW.GNAA.US/
I just added the latest vandal to my .cfonce file (pico -w .cfonce). If you don't have a twit filter type 'ignore wilt'. Then if you don't want to page past 147 items with blank entries in them type 'fixseen' but you will also lose responses from other people.
yay keesan
HTTP://WWW.GNAA.US/
yay jesuit !
http://www.jewsdidwtc.com/
Could someone please block the current twit's IP address? I am tired of doing a fixseen every time before I would have read agora. I hope there is less opportunity of vandalism via the web.
The current twit has been logging in from se, de, and ru. Is there some way to put a quota on bbs entries (maybe 20 per hour, 1 per minute?).
I love how freedom of speech goes out the door for some people when it is inconvenient for them. Twits, indeed.
I certainly wouldnt mind something that would either discourage this person or make the aftermath less annoying.
Yes, pty's would (perhaps) solve it. I don't have an issue with a guy feeding foo to bar several times. The problems are when the GD host sees these idjits for a day or more, tying up up connectivity. This screws up ssh and telnet only fixed it with a damned queue: let's fix this or just let grex die an ignominious death - Bog knows the bbs has gone to shit.
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The queue is not so much a problem as having to either wade past 147 blank entries to read whatever has been posted since the last time I logged in, or doing a fixseen and not reading anything. Suing this idiot would be too time-consuming.
A better solution would be to improve the ignore feature in backtalk/fronttalk so that items that have been modified by ignored users do not register as modified unless thay have also been modified by unignored users. That preserves the rights of users to post freely, and preserves the interests of users in being selective about how they spend their time in the conferences.
Suing? Good greif!
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I think Eric's suggestion would work.
re #148: > Could someone please block the current twit's IP address? She's using multiple IP addresses. > I am tired of doing a fixseen every time before I would have read agora. And you think the rest of us aren't? re #140: I love how freedom of speech goes out the door for some people when it is inconvenient for them. What this vandal is doing isn't speech. It's the metaphorical equivalent of walking into our living room and taking a crap on the floor. There's no message, except for "look, I made a mess." I see no reason to protect such behavior, nor any threat to speech from suppressing such responses when they are so clearly intended *only* to inconvenience and annoy. As far as I'm concerned freedom of speech is satisfied by leaving the door open to welcome other users who do have something to say -- it does not require that we leave a steaming pile in the middle of the floor and pretend it's art. However, there is the problem of lacking a practical method of suppression. If we assume (as seems justified by the evidence we have seen so far) that the vandal is willing to put a fair amount of effort into their vandalism. Judging by her choice of name she is probably the same person who's been kicked off of at least two other forums that I know of and probably many more that we don't know about. She logs in from different IP address ranges (not just different IP addresses, but notably different ranges) indicating an intention to circumvent IP-address based blocking, and has created multiple accounts to make twit filtering inconvenient: in my opinion improving twit filtering might help in other cases but this person is near pathological and will just create a new login for each wave of postings, requiring twit filter users to keep updating their twit list. I'm open to ideas that people believe will be effective but please try to imagine yourself in the vandal's place before you make a suggestion and consider whether it could be easily circumvented.
Shoot to kill. (keesan for jdeigert)
I encountered this same gnaa lame scripting on some of my web forums and had to turn off guest posting priviledges in order to thwart a full on script which will probably propagate hoodia and viagara to the hilt. Trust me, these are guestbook scripters looking for 1 or 2 suckers out of a few hundred. I recommend simple forensics and complaint email to their open relay/anon providers and hosts. They may be able to track the bouncing IP from a dsl somewhere in the USA. Then we can slap them with some aggressive legal standards like 18USC1030.a5A(i) for transmitting with intention to cause damage to...blah blah.. This all assumes any of the staff on Grex have the motivation for such things.
gnaa.com is obviously a site which exists for the explicit purpose of
inciting and encouraging web forum trolling.
Since even aggressive site-wide blocking would be labor-intensive, slow
and likely ineffective, the simplest approach would be to add more
aggressive user blocking options that each user can easily implement for
themselves.
WHOIS:
Registrant:
Name Administration Inc. (BVI)
Box 10518 A.P.O.
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands B.W.I.
KY
Domain name: GNAA.COM
Administrative Contact:
Domain, Administrator admin@nameadmininc.com
Box 10518 A.P.O.
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands B.W.I.
KY
+1.345.946.6879
Technical Contact:
Domain, Administrator admin@nameadmininc.com
Box 10518 A.P.O.
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands B.W.I.
KY
+1.345.946.6879
Registrar of Record: DomainNameSales
Record last updated on 01-Mar-2006.
Record expires on 07-Jan-2008.
Record created on 07-Jan-2003.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.15X.NET 66.199.187.170
NS2.15X.NET 66.199.187.171
Domain status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Uhh..the person dind't originate from gnaa, they only referenced it.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
we should start suing david blane
Don't give Other more ideas! *snort*
this board is impossible to trlol
this board is impossible to trlol
I recently had a problem that I referred to staff, and received the following automated reply: "This is an automatic reply to tell you that your message to the Grex staff was received. Mail to the (all-volunteer) staff is usually answered only on the weekends, so it may be up to a week before you receive a reply to your message. But your message *is* in the queue and the staff does intend to answer it. If you sent a question about Grex, you may be able to find the answer faster by looking in the list of Frequently Asked Questions about Grex at http://www.cyberspace.org/faq.html "If you asked to have your password reset, please make sure you included the user ID of your Grex account. If you didn't send your user ID, please send another message to staff to tell us your user ID. Do not send your password. "Note that Grex will send out this message only once every 30 days, even if you send mail to staff more often than that. "-The Grex Staff" I certainly understand the problems of volunteer organizations, and appreciate efforts of the volunteer Grex staff. But I do feel it would benefit Grex if inquiries to staff can be addressed more rapidly. We all get frustrated with difficulties in obtaining (or not obtaining, or great delays in obtaining) responses from companies. It would be nice if Grex was more friendly toward users. Perhaps the responsibility for responding within 24 hours could be passed among staff members, say for a week each? Or perhaps mail to staff to go to a non-staff volunteer, who would assist if possible, or pass the inquiry or problems on to a staff member that is "on call" at that time?
this board is impossible to trlol
hi it's me i'm a camwhore
The latest trashing was 3:54 a. m.. I will be reading agora just before bedtime and doing a fixseen in the morning. Would it help to turn off newuser for a while? Or only allow new users to read most items and post in just one item until they prove that they can behave themselves? (And somehow limit new users to 3 postings a day).
Can the r n (read new) command somehow be expanded to read things since a certain time of day? I just tried r n since 4:00 and it did not work.
Re #169: the weekend has come and gone since I wrote to staff on 18 May, but I have had no response. The problem I am trying to solve is that I cannot ftp to the account of a non-profit Grex member whose account I manage, although I can ssh to it. I've also written to the Grex treasurer, who I presume manages accounts, but have not had a response. Any suggestions on how I can solve this problem?
re #174: do you get an error message of some sort? are you trying to connect from a browser or a command-line ftp program? Can you ftp to your own account using the same mechanism as you are trying to use for the mnac account?
No error message - just an immediate disconnect after entering the pw. I am using a command line ftp (via Mac Terminal). I can ftp to my own account with exactly the same procedure.
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i am a not for profit GreXer
Re #174: Have you tried sftp?
That's what I use. SFTP-2, in fact. Sorry I didn't make that clear. I *think* the problem might be because the membership isn't current, or there is a mistake in the membership records; or is a current membership not required to ftp TO an account?
membership isn't required to ftp to an account, AND I checked the groups that that account belongs to: it appears to belong to the member and internet groups..
Re #180: perhaps it's an SSH/SFTP version problem.
Thanks for checking that, Mike. I just went through connecting to both rcurl and mnac via SSH-2, using Terminal's (Mac OSX) Connect-to-Server directly, and both were fine. I then tried the same thing via SFTP-2, and could only connect to rcurl. The error message I got trying the connection to mnac was Connecting to cyberspace.org... mnac@cyberspace.org's password: Connection closed [Process exited - exit code 255] I even wrote out the mnac pw and copied it to paste in, to make sure I wasn't entering it incorrectly. Earlier I had changed the pw, and the new pw is OK to mnac for SSH while SFTP didn't work. Does the above error message provide any clue? Mike, are you staff, and able to change the pw and try it? (Just let me know what you change it to..... 8^}) If you aren't, could a staff member with root please check this out? (The Staff list at the Grex website is from Jan '04.)
I'll give it a try..
Here's what I tried:
1) su'ed to root, then stashed a copy of the mnac
account's password entry so I could restore it
to normal afterward, then changed the password
to a known string. sftp'ed to grex and tried
to log in but saw the same sort of behavior
Rane is reporting:
mcnally@radius:~$ sftp mnac@cyberspace.org
Connecting to cyberspace.org...
mnac@cyberspace.org's password:
Connection closed
To make sure it wasn't just an authentication
error I logged in using the wrong password
intentionally and got prompted to enter the
password again, so if Rane is not seeing such
a message he must be using the right password.
mcnally@radius:~$ sftp mnac@cyberspace.org
mnac@cyberspace.org's password:
Permission denied, please try again.
Finally, to verify that sftp is working properly
between the two machines, I sftp'ed in as myself
without any problem.
mcnally@radius:~$ sftp mcnally@cyberspace.org
mcnally@cyberspace.org's password:
sftp> quit
One thing that I thought was quite odd is that while
editing the account as root, the password field in the
/etc/passwd entry for mnac is a great deal longer than
for any of the other accounts around it in the password
file. E.g.:
iggy:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:8442:1002::0:0:igor von
heiniken:/a/i/g/iggy:/usr/local/bin/bbssh
marcvh:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:8451:1002::0:0:Marc
VanHeyningen:/c/m/a/marcvh:/bin/bash
fitz:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:8880:1002::0:0:Scotch! Cigars!
Coffee!:/c/f/i/fitz:/bin/csh
gull:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:9062:1002::0:0:David
Brodbeck,Ann Arbor MI:/a/g/u/gull:/bin/bash
mnac:yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy:92
80:1002::0:0:MNAC:/a/m/n/mnac:/bin/tcsh
The other nearby entries in the password file have
encrypted password hashes that are 28 characters long.
The mnac account has a 60-character long password hash.
Can anyone familiar with the password scheme we're using
tell me why that should be the case and/or whether it has
any bearing on the matter at hand?
"if Rane is not seeing such a message he must be using the right password" Yes, I was using the right pw, by this test.
GNAA GNAA GNAAGNAA GNAA GNAAGNAA GNAA GNAAGNAA GNAA GNAAGNAA GNAA GNAAGNAA GNAA GNAA
Why can't these jerks be stopped?
They can, but the methods of doing so are not very comfortable.
re. 188: why don't you respond to every post they make with 'jerk'? it's always worked in the past, hasn't it?
Yes, it has. However I don't think these new jerks read the conferences.
you'll never know until you try.
Re #185: that is *really* weird: the wrong pw gets a message to try again, but the right pw disconnects! Can what happens when using the right pw be logged?
There really dont seem to be any good methods for dealing with this type of vandal. We discussed some ideas at the board meeting but none are likely to be effective. It kind of sucks.
you guys are like the government :(
On the bright side, the GNAA posts make trap look a lot less offensive (unless he's behind the latest them).
Can we discontinue newuser telnet/ssh access for a while, or is it also possible to post 149 copies of trash via the web? Can someone pick up the droppings in such a manner that they don't leave blank spots that appear in all the items for the rest of us (which is the problem with the twit filter).
Is it possible to 'browse new since 17:00' and if so how?
The conspiracy theorist inside of me tells me that the person behind these postings was an advocate for closing newuser on Grex and making it member-only.
rotfl.
re #195 Don't insult the gov't like that! ;)
oups !
I am still cooling my heals while waiting for some action on my problem of not being able to SFTP to mnac. mcnally certainly took some steps on this in #185, but there has been no answer to his question "Can anyone familiar with the password scheme we're using tell me why that should be the case and/or whether it has any bearing on the matter at hand?" It has also been just more than a week since I first sent e-mail to staff about this problem, and received the "form letter" response given in #169. I realize it is very "touchy" to complain about things like this, staff being 100% volunteer, and busy with their own live, etc. But it does seem reasonable to me for a user to get just a little out of sorts over being ignored after going through channels. MNAC, a non-profit charitable environmental organization, has maintained its website on Grex and a membership in Grex in part to help support a fellow charitable non-profit. However they would have to move their website elsewhere if they are unable to manage it here. Is this matter of any importance to Grex? I will repeat my suggestions from #169: "Perhaps the responsibility for responding within 24 hours could be passed among staff members, say for a week each? Or perhaps mail to staff to go to a non-staff volunteer, who would assist if possible, or pass the inquiry or problems on to a staff member that is "on call" at that time?" Does anyone else think this is reasonable?
I dont know Rane. I know I would sure hate for MNAC to move but I could certainly understand it if that were what happens. I would try sending email to the staff again and maybe address it to the board as well. If I knew how to fix your problem I would.
cool your heals ?! huh ? did you mean heels ? and even then ?!
Very astute...now, on the topic?
Re #204: thanks, slynne. You are a board member. As one of my "representatives", would you be interested in taking this issue to the board?
very professorial
does changing the password help ? I dunno if this was suggested before.
Just what I was gonna say. Rane is complaining about a lack of formal response when mcnally told rane very clearly his password was way the hell bigger than any other he'd (mcnally) come across. That sounds like a pretty clear ID of where the solution most likely resides. If rane can't change the password himself, then he should ask staff for assistance. There's certainly no need for an item on the board agenda.
re #210: The length of the password hash isn't a function of the length of the password, so I don't think changing the password will make a difference. I'm also not sure that the weirdness with the password has anything to do with why Rane can't sftp to that account. Since he can apparently log in to the account via ssh, here's what I propose: If Rane will send me a message from the MNAC account asking me to do so I will set things up so that he has permission to edit files in the MNAC web directory. That won't solve the sftp problem directly but it will give him a way to change the files (sftp them to the rcurl account, then copy them to ~mnac) in the meantime until we can figure out why sftp isn't working for mnac. I apologize for the delay in getting back to him but I was busy at work yesterday and my internet service wasn't working when I returned home last night. It's not a perfect solution but it will allow him to make the changes he needs.
Plus if rane has access to the MNAC account he can copy/move the file to his own directory and ftp from there. Temporary solution but should be better than waiting for it to be fixed.
i like that someone who i've never seen post here before came here just to bitch out rane!
I dont mind discussing this with the board, Rane.
Re #s 209 and 210: it is important to pay attention. Yes, I tried changing the password: same result. Besides, the original password had been working fine, and then stopped working for SFTP. Thank you, mcnally and slynne. While my immediate goal is to do the ftp, there is apparently a problem with how "staff" works with the users of the system, for which I put forward some suggestions.
> there is apparently a problem with how "staff" works with the > users of the system I agree, mcnally can't do it all himself. Grex apparently has LOTs of staffers, but nobody has "user support" as one of their areas of responsibility.
Re #211: mcnally's suggestion wiggled a bad connection in my brain and the bulb lit up. After consulting my copy of UNIX for DUMMIES.... I ftp'd the mnac webpage file to my account, and then from the mnac web directory copied it over. (This left a couple of secondary questions, such as why I can't ftp directly to mnac, for which I am consulting further with Mike.)
re #215 Did the SFTP password change? Are you being hacked?
The SFTP and SSH passwords are the same, and the latter works. Also see mcnally's #185 for related tests. Other avenues are being pursued...
I'm sorry, as much as I love Grex, if the amount of racist, bigoted, and repetitive posts continues to increase, I may have to leave Grex permanently. I'm sorry.
We will miss you Cyberpnk.
Been nice knowing you, softy.
It is an unfortunate side effect of that kind of vandalism though.
Its a blip on a radar not worth mentioning unless you want to feed the troll.
Price of doing business.
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On another matter, concerning what might be a problem - or a policy. I put a small .jpg file of the MNAC logo in the mnac web page here, but the link to it from the webpage remains broken. Does the system automatically refuse access to jpegs in the www directory? If so, is this still necessary, with the increased filespace now available?
Grex doesn't allow graphics, but you can get around that by making it a SVG and embedding it into the HTML. :-)
I cannot send mail from grex to grex today - I tried answerig three different people (from three continents). Rane, post the jpeg at some other site and link to it from the grex page.
Use arbornet.org for your webpage.
Does Arbornet allow you to use graphics? I use sdf because they give me a neato multics.org domain. 8-)
Re #229: already did that. How about HVCN for hosting websites? Their conferences seem to have died in 1999, but apparently they still host nonprofit websites. I considered going there for MNAC, but wasn't anxious to change the URL.
A friend is reporting that my mail is bouncing because the ?SMPT server is refusing connections? Anyone know about that?
In the strictest sense it's not *refusing* connections but it doesn't seem to be working properly, either.. I've telnetted to the smtp port and can't get as far as HELO, so I'm going to try resetting the exim process.. mcnally@skookum:~$ telnet grex.org smtp Trying 216.86.77.194... Connected to grex.org. Escape character is '^]'. HELO 554 SMTP synchronization error Connection closed by foreign host.
I try to telnet www.grex.org: Unknown host. I can use web interface and I can telnet to sdf.lonestar.org (Can't try ssh at the moment because it won't work on this computer with this linux, anywhere).
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I know that.. I never got that far..
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I could dial in directly to grex just now. Can other people telnet/ssh? I was testing a lucent modem and maybe it does not like grex.
For AAAGES I hadn't been able to ssh in direct. I had this problem I while ago and got it fixed, but screwed up my ssh config after an upgrade so that it wouldn't work again. For the past few weeks I have been either ssh in direct from a laptop running SuSE, or ssh'ing in to dahmer.vistech.net and then to grex. Today, without thinking, I ssh'ed direct into Grex from my Gentoo box. And it worked.
Re that problem of SFTP-ing to mnac: Changing /lib to /etc for .login and .cshrc source directories fixed it. So it had nothing to do with the pw files per-se. I also solved the jpeg problem for a homepage by putting the jpeg elsewhere and linking to it. But the question remains - does Grex still really need a no jpeg rule for web pages?
Where is the ssh config file? I have somehow copied a newer version of linux on top of my old one without /etc. Got to copy that some time, maybe it will fix the ssh problem. PRNG not seeded.
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I don't see anything related to ssh in /etc. I should read the man page and see what else I may have omitted. Maybe in /root?
Actually, what Rane is reporting is that his csh startup scripts
sourced files (global.cshrc, global.login) that used to live in
/usr/local/lib, apparently.
So there was a line in his (or rather MNAC's) startup files that
read:
source /usr/local/lib/global.cshrc
Since those files now, for some reason, live in /usr/local/etc
the startup script would cause an error when he logged in and
it was this that was apparently affecting his ability to sftp.
Changing the line to:
source /usr/local/etc/global.cshrc
fixed the problem (as would simply commenting out that line..)
I would have said that..... 8^}
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Re resp:194: In the past, vandals like this have eventually gotten bored and left, or sometimes even started to participate intelligently in discussions. I don't think extreme measures like disabling newuser are called for, yet. Furthermore, the more attention you lavish on these jerks the longer it will take for them to get bored with their stunt. Re resp:238: Re the mail problem...It's complaining because you're saying HELO before you get the connection banner. That's not RFC-compliant behavior, so Exim hangs up on the connection. (Hosts are explicitly allowed to delay the banner as a slowdown technique, for example if they're under high CPU load.) I suspect the connect ACL is delaying sending the banner for sites that match spam blacklists, because this is a pretty useful technique against spambots, and I think I suggested it once. Every once in a while you may find a broken host you have to whitelist, though. I have no idea if this is still effective against spam, or if the people who write spambot software have caught on; it's been a few months since I was administering a serious mail server of my own.
damnit ! who the hell filled up /c ?! this used to be the EMPTY partition ! i want the old /c back ! :(
You should've been on /a Sorry!
Please date messages in the motd, including those about email having been fixed.
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Was it not adopted because of policy, or just neglect?
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That sounds like the handwriting is on the wall, when those in charge are practicing neglect.
"Email on Grex has been broken long enough for the
situation to be considered permanent."
http://grex.cyberspace.org/~ball/
Someone might want to help labia out: labiocom ft 137.204.106.65 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.77 Thu10AM 0 - pchihao ft 222.253.76.86 19May06 0 - mbb ft p5491B806.dip0.t 20May06 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.115 Thu10AM 0 - cecep ft 157.95.31.123 4:18AM 0 RETR kaset_3_b.wav labiocom ft 137.204.106.81 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.98 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.83 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.62 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.68 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.88 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.54 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.117 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.107 Thu10AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.72 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.60 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.106 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.85 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.115 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.67 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.103 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.71 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.86 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.109 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.75 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.100 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.111 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.104 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.73 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.114 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.87 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.78 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.80 Thu11AM 0 - labiocom ft 137.204.106.69 Thu11AM 0 -
Could someone please update the motd as regards email problems of last week?
now _this_ really hurts:
& n
Message 64:
From xxxx@yyyyy.com Sat Jun 03 22:48:00 2006
Envelope-to: tsty@cyberspace.org
Delivery-date: Sat, 03 Jun 2006 22:48:00 -0400
Reply-To: <xxxxx@yyyyy.com>
From: "another AACS officer" <xxx@yyy.com>
To: "'TS Taylor'" <tsty@cyberspace.org>
Subject: RE: Web site
Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 21:46:07 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0004_01C8757.20071F40"
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11
In-Reply-To: <002a01c6865c$dbeaf0$6a1e1e0a@yyyyy>
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2869
Thread-Index: AcaGW62keyTyYLloSxuUxrAUphJwAAMmSQAEcCZiA=
X-ArGoMail-Authenticated: xxxx@yyyyyyyy.com
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_0004_01C68757.20071F40
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="US-ASCII"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
TS - you have a problem with your email server. It keeps complaining about
too many concurrent SMTP connections. Do you have an account at a more
reliable email host?
_____
jalopy.org
Perhaps staff should eliminate the connection delays. What worked well on the medium-sized email server I used to administer may be ill-advised for the volume of mail Grex handles.
Having some problem with my web interface to the BBS. Some articles don't show up eg: in agora 184, 189, 177 178 and many more. Any idea why? AM i doing something wrong? I use Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Win2K.
Err ignore #262 Solved.. I needed to check "All items" Perhaps that could be made more obvious!
... but that would remove the thrill of finding NewStuff (tm) every time you login ... <g>!
Re 261 re 259: I see this all the time - mail to cyberspace.org hangs in the queue for hours to days, often generating warnings after 4 hours. If I connect to the SMTP port, I see that "too many concurrent SMTP connections" message, & an immediate disconnect. And I've also gotten complaints about mail to my Grex address not getting through; & this is much more of a problem for Grace, who has no other email address. But is this really a problem with the delay? It seems to me that the delay must be really, really, REALLY long if this is the case; when I see the too-many-connections message the disconnect is *immediate*. What is the maximum allowable number of SMTP connections (or processes) set to? Can this be bumped up, if it realistically is much too low? I realize that the limit is set to keep mail from completely busying out the system. But that doesn't mean that the default limit (if that's what it is) is reasonable for Grex. If the limit is inherited somehow from the previous hardware, it's even less likely to be reasonable. (But that seems a bit unlikely, given that we went from a hacked sendmail to something else at that time.)
Grex's mail config sucks, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about exim to fix it. The maillog shows we're dropping connections on the floor pretty much constantly, but I'm not sure how to fix that. I have a hypothesis that it may be due to our policy of introducing a 30s delay for any host listed in one of several RBLs, which I think causes a lot of tied up exim processes, but my attempts to reduce that delay to 1s by tweaking the exim.conf file have probably not been successful.
Several people report that they can never send me mail, including from mindspring/earthlink, which is impatient so it always times out.
Re #267: That's what prompted me to post what I did on my Web site. It's pointless people trying to send me email on Grex unless they happen to be another local user here.
I see what people mean about a problem with e-mail. I had sent a message here a few days ago that arrived within minutes, but last night I sent one that has still not arrived after nearly 12 hours.
ssh did not work just now but telnet does. Please someone remove the email not working message from last week (motd).
My unscientific observation is that my incoming and outgoing mail have stopped working for approximately the last 24 hours. I realize that some of this is still my fault for not having moved to a modern mail platform.
I have received some mail dated today, but not what I sent yesterday. Has it gone into a black hole?
I got three mails from AOL today (they have fixed the problem of refusing to accept mails from us too).
sdf.lonestar.org is working now, but freeshell.org is not, and the disk quotas all set themselves to 0 (with 400MB free) and I had to 'tweak' them - I wonder what people do who have not paid for the use of 'tweak'. I posted this info for people who signed up at freeshell.org for more reliable email than grex, which has been astonishingly reliable recently.
After a few days with no spam, the dam broke this morning and 21 spam messages poured in. But the message I sent two days ago has not. Where is it?
Your message must have drowned in the flood of spam.
I also am seeing much more spam. OTOH, SMTP connections are not being closed (or much, much less frequently) with that too-many-smtp-connections message. I suspect no mere coincidence.
In an attempt to end the backlogs that were causing many valid messages to be dropped, I disabled two of the three spam blacklist checks to see whether that would improve mail delivery. Apparently it hasn't had any affect on the delay problems people are complaining about, only facilitated the delivery of more spam. I'll put back the copy of the exim configuration I kept from before my changes, restoring the status ante. I apologize for the extra spam; it was an experiment to see whether some tuning of the system would help the situation; unfortunately I don't know enough about exim to figure out how to increase the number of simultaneous connections it will accept. I *do* know that the mail log is full of dropped connections, constantly, and it would be nice if whoever committed us to exim would look at them.
Mike, could you set up some simple script that would let people use spamassassin? I have never ever had a false positive (I only require three points to dump suspected mail) but still sometimes get false negatives. Spamassassin with 3 points was getting at least 3/4 of my spam. (I added some more filters on top of it). Unfortunately it puts some large files into a ./.spamassassin directory but they could be deleted automatically at login.
Re #278 - so my message to me here was killed by a Grex spam filter? From a UM server address? Why would any of those be in a spam blacklist?
In case you are unaware, some ISPs, etc, filter HARD on umich.edu. I know from experience because several times in the last year or so I've had that problem with another ISP I use blocking the umich mail. There reasons were quite understandable. Apparently, a lot of spam or other problems involve umich.edu addresses. I was once told it had to do with all the freebies the students download using their umich accounts (presumably a reference to the hidden "zombieware" some freebies contain) though I don't know the details. In any case, if you haven't learned already, be warned now: a umich.edu address is apt to be filtered by any number if ISPs for any number of reasons. I'd suggest an alternate address for time-critical communications.
I cannot send mail from grex or even postpone it.
Sdf.lonestar.org is also inaccessible again. When I try to telnet it gets stuck - how do I exit from the attempt (in DOS, Ctrl-C does not work)?
I've never used telnet under DOS, but in UNIX if you enter Control-] you should get a prompt. Enter q and press enter and you should quit. If you don't get the prompt then I have no idea.
Thanks. First time today sdf at freeshell was 'down', an hour later it had been up for over 3 days. ???
I'm not able to get any mail at all into Grex.
Ctrl-] works when I am ssh'ed to grex, but what I need is a way to end a telnet attempt FROM grex to freeshell/lonestar.
re #280: > so my message to me here was killed by a Grex spam filter? I have no way of knowing that, but probably not. Delaying messages from sites that are believed to be spam sites potentially affects delivery of messages from all sites. Let's say that Grex is configured to support N simultaneous mail connections at any given time. Now imagine a whole bunch of sites that are listed in these RBLs connect and attempt to deliver messages. Because they're listed in the RBLs their connections are intentionally delayed to slow down spam delivery. What happens if N of these sites are being kept waiting while your non-blacklisted mail site attempts to make the N+1th connection? If I understand the system properly your connection, the N+1th, is rejected because the mail server is busy and it's assumed that the host trying to deliver it will reconnect later when the Grex server isn't busy. But from what I see in the log files I think we're being more or less constantly bombarded with connections from other hosts and there's never a time when Grex's server is not busy and dropping connections from other hosts that want to connect. I really hope I'm misunderstanding something fundamental here but whether I am or not something is clearly very wrong with mail delivery.
Grex is not accepting mail for the last day or two, and yesterday (and probably today) was not sending mail either. What is the problem and is anyone working on it? I have a couple of craigslist ads listing my grex address, because freeshell was broken at the time.
fastmail.fm offers 10MB webmail without ads. Login at least 8 characters.
When are we going to get e-mail back on Grex? Or is now the time to "jump ship" from using Grex for e-mail?
Some of us "jumped ship" a long time ago.
As much as I hate to say this, I dont think that grex currently has the staff needed to maintain email up to the standards we all would like. This is especially true since there are so many excellent free email services out there (like gmail).
I tried to offer a gmail invitation to Grace. They supposedly sent her email containing the invitation. But since mail to Grex isn't going through, she never got it. AFAICS Grex is just plain not accepting mail at present. Always that same too-many-SMTP-connections message.
Last I knew grex was not sending outgoing email either. I don't know any other place besides freeshell to get a shell account that will let us use non webmail with mail, mutt, or pine, and set up spamassassin and procmail. Is anyone working on this problem?
Rane in resp:291 :: It was probably time to leave Grex's email service about a year ago. I'm still doing too much mail here, unsuccessfully, too. Dave in resp:294 on Gmail invites: Have grace get a hotmail account, then send the Gmail invite to the hotmail account? Sindi in resp:295 :: There are probably good reasons there are very few public shell accounts with e-mail any more. Email has become a very difficult and hostile environment. There is little reason to expect volunteers to work like beavers to give you reliable 1985-style e-mail any more.
Here's the deal. I'm out of town, on the first vacation I've had in quite a while. As much as it annoys me (I conduct most of my personal e-mail through Grex and there's no telling what I'm missing, same as many of the rest of you..) I'm not planning on spending my vacation learning how to administer exim properly and fixing Grex's e-mail. Unfortunately nobody else from staff seems to be responding to, or possibly even reading this conference posts. When I get back I'm willing to take a shot at getting a mail configuration working on Grex, but if I do it I'd prefer to use postfix, a mailer I'm more familiar with. Also, there may be a period when mail doesn't work at all while things are swapped over. If people can live with that I'll give it a try when I get home.
Well, I'm at least reading this item. Don't know that I'll have time to work on exim either. (Mail server configuration is in general something I haven't had a lot of experience with.) As I recall the history, we're using exim because a staff member at the time we were transitioning to openbsd was intimately familiar with it from work and volunteered to set it up. Unfortunately, for reasons that I think were beyond his control, he's no longer an active staff member, so we no longer have a resident exim expert. I think that if you're willing to work on mail configuration and nobody else is, the mail software we use should be your call, so I would support switching to something you'd be more comfortable with.
Thanks Mike and John. Perhaps I should start an agora item in which we can post messages for other grexers. In the meantime I won't use the grex email address for craigslist postings.
what on earth would sindii post on craigslist ? does she write about GreX twits in the rants & raves section ?
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The number of simultaneous connections is governed by the 'smtp_accept_max' variable. Unfortunately the Exim documentation doesn't mention what the default setting of this variable is. A couple other suggestions to streamline the process: - Currently you wait up to 30 seconds for an ident response. This happens during the connect phase. I'd shorten that. Set "rfc_1413_query_timeout" to something in the 10 second range, if you absolutely can't live without it. I find ident isn't very useful these days, so I tend to disable that lookup entirely. - You have 'deliver_queue_load_max' set to 1.0, which means you aren't doing any deliveries when the load average is above that value. I might bump that up to 2.0, since Grex seems to run pretty high load averages at times. This may be part of the reason you aren't getting much mail through. This is a tricky one; you're potentially trading off system responsiveness for getting more mail through. If you've got more people who are familiar with postfix, switching might be a good idea. MTAs are funny that way; they're complex programs and people who know one generally find any others to be incomprehensible. For example, I know Exim reasonably well, but I'd be lost with Postfix, and I can just barely get Sendmail going.
I'm familiar with exchange, but not out of choice.
I could never get mail from earthlink/mindspring, it always timed out (they did not wait long enough). Is that related to the previous response?
re #302: I tried bumping up the load average limits for queueing and delivering mail to 2.5 or 3 or something like that before I also tried cutting out several of the RBL checks. It didn't appear to make any significant improvement in delivery or in the number of messages dropped. If you're knowledgable about exim configs you could have a look at the configs, suggest specific changes (maybe edit a copy, I'll look at the diffs, and apply them) if you have the time..
Re 297 (way back): Mike, I certainly didn't mean to be dumping on you. My experience over the years has been that you're willing to help people whenever you can, & I'm confident that you approach staff stuff the same way. I know I wasn't the only one complaining; but I for one wasn't pointing any fingers. Meanwhile, it sure looks like someone did *something*. The dozen queued-up messages that had been trying to go to Grex for several days now seem to have suddenly vanished from the queue - & as I haven's gotten any bounce messages, I think they must have gone through. But a new message I just sent seems to be hanging there. Dunno.
I just tried to send myself a mail with pine. I did not get the usual error messages but it took a long time to go from 0% to 100% sent and then got stuck at 100%. Ctrl-C exited pine and told me I had sent the mail (after I waited a few minutes for the prompt) but the mail has not arrived.
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finger root -- Charlie Root, mail last read June 12, logged in from msu.edu, running sh which is using 14% of CPU, causing load average to be around 8. Amazing that I can still see what I am typing. sh is a shell.
sh is now up to 16% of CPU time. It was 13% when I first looked. Another hole to be plugged? 166 processes, of which 1 is running and the rest are stopped.
Make that the rest are idle or zombie, 1 on processor, and sh is 15%.
Charlie Root has been running ssh since approximately 5:47. jp2 has been logged on since 5:38 and is running 'j p 2'. The rest of us are running bbs, party, lynx, bash, and the like.
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True, it's much better to log in as someone else and the su to root. OpenBSD doesn't nag about it just to be contrary. ;)
I just got my first mail sent to grex in about a week, and was able to answer it (I hope) in under 30 sec, but I still never got the mail I sent myself earlier. Thanks if someone fixed something.
Load average is back down from 9 to .4. How would we mortals figure out what is causing the load average to go up so we can report it to staff?
One of the things which is causing mail failures, I believe, (but not the only one) is that periodically /var/spool runs out of free inodes. It runs out of free inodes because there's a totally absurd number of files in several subdirectories of /var/spool/exim which never, ever seem to get cleared out. Can someone who's familiar with exim tell me what purpose the various subdirectories of /var/spool/exim serve and how files in there are supposed to be purged? Because we don't seem to be doing it properly..
I am still getting mail from June 8 - better late than never. Thanks again STeve et al.
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I was able to reply to a few June 7 mails that just showed up but now I am getting an STMP greeting failure when I try to send mail. We picked the wrong week to try to sell a car. Turns out lots of people were interested a week ago.
Today I have been getting mail progressively from June 9, June 8, June 7 and now June 6. I wondered why people had stopped writing. Thanks again.
In among the June 7 I just got a May 23 mail! Rane was saying it took up to 12 days to get mail at grex, but this is about 21 days. How does the mail manage to get so bogged down? Can exim be instructed to deliver the oldest mails first instead of the newest ones?
There are some old pieces of mail in the queue which I think will now get liberated. Exim is likely going to get a little more tweaking before this is all over. But mails are moving fairly quickly now. It took about 1.5 minutes for mail to get from msu.edu to grex, and faster than that the other way around.
Wow! The e-mail dam has burst. But, thanks!
Re resp:317: I don't have the permissions to see what's in /var/spool/exim here, but on my own machine I see four directories. db/ - This only has four files in it, on my system. I think it contains Exim's retry database. input/ - This holds the message queue. If I remember right there are two files per message, one containing just the headers and one containing the message body. If you've got a lot of crap in there, you need to figure out why messages are stacking up in the queue. A common culprit is undeliverable bounce messages, which Exim "freezes" and keeps in the queue until the time set in the "ignore_bounce_errors_after" option is reached. You want this time *short* because undeliverable bounces are almost always the worthless backscatter from spam runs. Right now Grex has this set to 2 days, which I'd say is on the long side. msglog/ - This holds log information about messages that are in transit. The files here (one per message) are normally deleted once the message is delivered, although sometimes they get missed and linger. Again, if this is full, it might be because you have a long queue. This information is duplicated in the main log, so it's safe to say "message_logs=false" in the beginning part of exim.conf and delete the contents of this directory. This should help the inode problem. scan/ - This is a temporary directory where messages are unpacked while they're scanned by external software like ClamAV or SpamAssassin. I don't think Grex is running either of those programs, so there shouldn't be anything in there.
The msglog directory has tens, or possibly hundreds, of thousands of files, some of them dating back to 2004. I presume those aren't from messages Grex is still attempting to deliver..
Remember that Grex crashed a lot, for a while. Most likely Exim never got to delete those files due to a crash, or perhaps there's a bug that causes them to occasionally escape deletion. Like I said, they're safe to delete, and if you set "message_logs=false" you shouldn't have to deal with them anymore. They're really only useful for troubleshooting delivery problems, and the same info can be gleaned from the other logs with a bit of effort.
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I'm not arguing with that. I've got four old message log files on my own small server, and I have no idea why. Frankly, I think the whole individual-message-log thing is a misfeature that should be removed, or turned off by default. UNIX software in general doesn't seem to clean up after itself very well. If it did there wouldn't be a need for periodic /tmp cleaning scripts to get rid of old, stale lockfiles and the like.
its officially summer
I could not dial either number just now and connect - they both just rang.
what ! m-net seems to be down :(
:( plz fix
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