ADA Depot - A Forum To Support Users of ADA Amplification Gear

Miscellaneous => Discussions => Topic started by: rnolan on March 20, 2020, 09:17:12 PM

Title: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rnolan on March 20, 2020, 09:17:12 PM
Hey Dante, great work getting the site back up  :thumb-up:
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: vansinn on March 21, 2020, 01:01:10 AM
Yeah, I was getting worried.
Looking forward to hear what went on..
Good on ya, Dante mate ;)
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: Peter H. Boer on March 21, 2020, 06:53:54 AM
It's BACK   ;D
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: Dante on March 28, 2020, 01:26:13 PM
Hi guys,

Yeah, a week later, I come in here  :facepalm:   I promise, I made sure it was all working before I disappeared for the week.

What happened; Our web host company was bought by some other hosting company. They decided to move all the stuff they bought onto their own servers (understandable), and they sent an email to notify everyone. Well, they sent our email to some long unused email account I haven't checked in ages.

My own fault for not updating my info I guess. Once I figured out what happened, I had to still figure out what the hell my password was for that email account (lol!). Once I got all that, and found their message, I was able to pass along the new parking spot for the Depot to the keeper of our domain.

Whew.

BTW: I am pretty determined to get this whole Depot on my own damn hosting servers so that this doesn't happen again. I have begun the process, but I need to debug some stuff before I can make the switch.
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rabidgerry on March 30, 2020, 09:39:47 AM
Wow glad it's back!  I was worried it was due to lockdown or something  :lol:

I hope everything is ok for all members and you are all well.
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rnolan on March 30, 2020, 10:21:52 PM
Hey RG, doing ok considering.  Glad I took a permanent job last year  :thumb-up: and I can work from home if I have to, many others are not so lucky  :facepalm:   How's things for you?  Entertainment industry here is basically shut down completely.
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: Peter H. Boer on March 31, 2020, 12:02:27 AM
Working from home, so I'm doing fine  :)
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rabidgerry on March 31, 2020, 04:01:51 AM
Hey RG, doing ok considering.  Glad I took a permanent job last year  :thumb-up: and I can work from home if I have to, many others are not so lucky  :facepalm:   How's things for you?  Entertainment industry here is basically shut down completely.

Hey RG, doing ok considering.  Glad I took a permanent job last year  :thumb-up: and I can work from home if I have to, many others are not so lucky  :facepalm:   How's things for you?  Entertainment industry here is basically shut down completely.

Yeah I am also working from home.  I don't like it though.  The setup they have for me to connect into my work computer is a bit rubbish and different little things for doing our day to day work are really stupid.  I guess it could be worse.  Lots of people have lost their job over this.  Hotel workers for example all canned so it really could be worse.  Hell I got paid last week and I even got the bonus we were due!!  Couldn't believe it.  As soon as this is over (if it ever ends  :lol:) I will start looking for a new job.  Only in this one two years but I hate it already.

Doesn't help I'm in the middle of trying to sell my house during all this either.

On the plus side, we managed to get playing in Germany just before this pandemic got really full blown!  First time playing there with the band and hopefully not the last.  Excellent country and we were treated like kings when we played there.  :headbanger:
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: vansinn on March 31, 2020, 12:54:22 PM
Good job, Dante ;)
Was getting worried - reminded me of the days when SAN and I worked like fever when it went up and down (due to hardware issues).
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rnolan on April 01, 2020, 12:28:41 AM
Working from home, so I'm doing fine  :)
Good to hear  :thumb-up:
@ RG, Glad you got a good one in just before it all went to crap  :thumb-up: With the current social distancing rules here you can't have a jam with any more than 1 person.  I get the reasons why but life is going to be quite restrictive for quite a while  :facepalm:   Over 1,000,000 people lost their jobs here... and on the back of the worst fires in my lifetime.
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: Nick Teeuwen on April 24, 2020, 02:57:15 AM
Hi guys,

Yeah, a week later, I come in here  :facepalm:   I promise, I made sure it was all working before I disappeared for the week.

What happened; Our web host company was bought by some other hosting company. They decided to move all the stuff they bought onto their own servers (understandable), and they sent an email to notify everyone. Well, they sent our email to some long unused email account I haven't checked in ages.

My own fault for not updating my info I guess. Once I figured out what happened, I had to still figure out what the hell my password was for that email account (lol!). Once I got all that, and found their message, I was able to pass along the new parking spot for the Depot to the keeper of our domain.

Whew.

BTW: I am pretty determined to get this whole Depot on my own damn hosting servers so that this doesn't happen again. I have begun the process, but I need to debug some stuff before I can make the switch.

If you don't have real servers, you can use a (old) computer. You can install Ubuntu or CentOS and PHP 7.3. The only problem is: Pointing the domain to the webserver.

You can also follow this guide for UBUNTU 18.04: https://www.linode.com/docs/websites/hosting-a-website-ubuntu-18-04/ (https://www.linode.com/docs/websites/hosting-a-website-ubuntu-18-04/)

And a little thing: Why is there no SSL certificate on the adadepot website? You can request it free...

Nick
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rnolan on April 24, 2020, 04:57:18 AM
Hey Nick, yes that is one way to do it, although in the current interweb, not necessarily the best way (BTW my current gig is Systems Security and PSec Engineer for BAE Systems, just to give you some context of my thoughts).  The history (and construct) of this site is very different to the original depot that your dad set up.  As I understand it (Dante correct me if I'm wrong) Dante had been involved in a ada Faceb**k thing and had a craving for what we had (forum wise) when your dad ran it all. So he used SMF and set up the current forum using his hosting mob.  Initially it was a subdomain under his Graphics business site.  It's not a huge problem to point the domain any where we need it (though takes a little time as San owns/pays for the domain name).  The recent problem was because Dante's hosting mob sold a bunch of it's customers to another hosting mob.  Once San moved the IP address to the new mobs nameserver(s), all was good again.
I have no issue with someone setting up a computer to run it all (like your dad did, & as you suggest), but then it needs to be maintained, patched, protected etc as it will be attacked constantly.  We all do this in our "spare" time.  The reason registrations are disabled is because I/we don't have time to keep the miscreants and internet arse holes off the site (I used to spend 3 to 4 hours a night after work every day cleaning up the shit they post/leave etc, mostly to get their google score up).  Moreover having a SSL/TLS cert won't stop any of that.
Now making the site https is somethings Dante and I (and even Van before he deleted himself) were discussing.  My motivation for it is that browsers are starting to insist on it.  This is a public site so tunneling posts through TLS (I assume you know SSL is now deprecated) is of little relevance to us.  As a http site, users passwords are however, in the clear and susceptible to Man in the middle (MITM) attack.  How much do we care ? There is no reason to care about posts, they are public, passwords is an issue (that does worry me), but the main driver would be browser functionality, we are getting closer to browsers not letting you connect to anything that doesn't have a valid TLS cert.  I'm not sure a free TLS cert is a good option, they are routinely abused. But we have been talking about making the site https.  Ideally we would use TLS 1.3 as TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are now deprecated (SSL is a thing of the past as are MD5 hashes).
Unless someone wants to do all the effort of hosting the site on their own equipment (and ISP bandwidth), using a hosting mob is an easier and, in most ways, a more secure way to go.  They do the security patches to the virtual servers and backups etc and provide some protection from DDoS and hopefully provide some basic IDS & IPS capability.
The original depot site was in a different time.  Internet connection was via 56kbs (if you were lucky) modems.  Yeah there were bad guys, but nothing like today.
Dante has done the backend hard yards for us, well it's really his site, he set it all up and he pays for it (albeit, more recently, we did get some donations to help him), also we don't allow adds and we have no affiliations, if there's no $'s involved, we are less a target.
Cheers R
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rabidgerry on May 02, 2020, 08:16:20 AM
Just mentioning this has been the first day that I have been able to access the Depot all week.  What's been up?  Had server error 403 messages and a message about "storage reached it limit".

What's been happening?
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: Dante on May 04, 2020, 02:14:05 PM
RG

I wish I knew - the new hosting company blows. I am beyond pissed about it.  >:(
Title: Re: Depot Unavialable
Post by: rabidgerry on May 05, 2020, 01:47:21 AM
RG

I wish I knew - the new hosting company blows. I am beyond pissed about it.  >:(

That's ok man, I was just getting worried it was someone blocking me or something  :lol: