Does IPB have a conflict with Mac OS 10.8?


Recommended Posts

Since September 3, I've been unable to access ObjectivistLiving from any of our home computers.

They are all Macintoshes running Mountain Lion (OS 10.8.1).

My office computer is a Macintosh running Lion (Os 10.7.4). I haven't gone with Mountain Lion at the office because my printer was made by a company that has been notably tardy updating its Mac OS print drivers, and it only recently caught up with Lion.

The problem's not with the browser (same version of Google Chrome in all cases), or I wouldn't be able to post now. Besides, I can't access OL using Firefox or Safari from home.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just tried proxify from my desktop and I can see OL that way, but I can't log on. The problem has to be that either my IP address is blocked at the OL end, or OL is being blocked by my ISP. The first seems more likely, it's not like I live in Iran.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ND,

Interesting.

Mac OS and IOS are still very different animals, but there could be some problematic feature they share.

If need be, I can bug the tech support people at the ISP for our home machines, and see whether for some reason they've blocked OL. The other way 'round does seem unlikely.

All I can get, after repeated attempts from a home machine, is a cached copy of OL from Google. And that's only a shot of the home page, no live links, usually several hours old.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Try proxify. I'm curious if that has an effect in your case. I only posted on this thread because it's difficult to do anything on the iPhone, so starting my own thread was not going to happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Both Dennis and Robert,

Here is a message I got back:

The members who cannot login may have been blocked by the firewall.

Please ask them to visit http:/ip.ipslink.com with a computer that cannot reach the site, then pass to us the IP Address it gives them. We will check the server.

I mistakenly said you cannot login. I should have said you cannot access the site at all. (I actually said that, but I was not very clear.)

Anyway, please do as he says and send me the IP numbers by private message or at my email: mikellyusabr@yahoo.com

Here is the link again: http:/ip.ipslink

After I receive your IP's, I will send them to him.

Thanks,

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Robert and Dennis,

This is resolved. The IP's were blocked by error on the IPB side.

If you have any further problems, please let me know.

I wanted to know what the problem was, so I asked. Here is the message I got from support:

I believe they were flagged in error, actually. Those were part of a block of IP's the firewall caught when there was another issue with the server. But they didn't do anything wrong that I can see.

If anyone else is having this kind of trouble, please contact me.

Sorry for the inconvenience. But that's one of the prices we sometimes have to pay for great security. (I vastly prefer this to being hacked--like once happened.)

Michael

EDIT: Dennis, our posts crossed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BTW I thought it was that the site was down for a few days. So anyone else having the same problem might give up thinking the site is toast. Brought down and cast into the abyss by a concerted denial of service attack staged by enraged Peikovians.

Actually I think seymourblogger was behind this. Her and her confederates in Brazil and London and Timbuktu...oh yeah, it was that loony bitch, now I'm sure of it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dennis,

It's a surge in access. OL is on shared hosting.

Sometimes there is a sudden spike in traffic (often spammers or bots, but sometimes real user traffic), and after a point, to protect the performance of the other sites on the same server, the service simply locks up. At the top of the hour, it turns back on.

I don't like this solution IPB uses, but that's what they do to people on our hosting bracket.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sometimes there is a sudden spike in traffic (often spammers or bots, but sometimes real user traffic), and after a point, to protect the performance of the other sites on the same server, the service simply locks up. At the top of the hour, it turns back on.

Seems like this is happening a lot more lately.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I looked at the IP's.

The majority is some kind of swarm from China.

If this keeps up for a few more days, I'm going to talk to IPB and see if it is possible to limit the number of IP's from China that can access OL. I don't want to ban China altogether, but I will if I have to until I can change the hosting bracket.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The majority is some kind of swarm from China.

It’s seymourblogger’s fanbase. They’ll do anything for her, in exchange for her latest insights on Cosmopolis. They’re all sitting there hitting “refresh” on the on the main page, all day and all night. Creepy, huh?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IPB gave me some instructions.

I just blocked a whole bunch of bots from China, Russia, etc. that are known to have bad behavior in

consuming resources. From what I saw in looking at IP's, the bots from China (Baidu) were the culprit.

And I reduced the crawl rate for all spiders.

Let's see if this works.

I might do a few other tweaks IPB suggested.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A few minutes before 11:00 AM (my time), I couldn't see the updated OL pages any more, and I got notices from the ISP that some resource limit had been exceeded.

Promptly at 11:00 AM, I got access again.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I looked at the stats just now and I think I finally nailed it.

I kinda screwed it up the first time.

I used a wildcat in a CIDR string for an IP range.

And I even figured out what the problem was on my own. Well... not figured out like thinking and getting it right before doing it-type figured out. I suspected, then changed it and pushed the button to see what would happen. It worked.

btw - If that thing (wildcat in a CIDR string for an IP range) sounds nasty, like a bikini-clad feline on a stove-top, that's because it is. :smile:

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now