Buyer's Remorse

Well, this hosting provider appears to be a loser.  This time around, I'm not mentioning names, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out who they are.

Their ftp server seems to be out in the weeds.  The List is supposed to be updated every hour... as long as there's an ftp server on the other end.  Right now, it's been almost three hours since the List was updated.

I send a SYN for the three-way TCP handshake and nothing comes back.  They assure me there is no issue on their end.  Then, if you do some troubleshooting on your end, like scanning port 21 to see if it's open, they block your IP.  I'm not kidding.

In fact, I've taken to viewing my own List over one of the many fine Glype proxies out there (NoScript and Ad Block enabled) just to keep my connection count down with their servers.

This does solve the problem of list scrapers, which I never really considered a problem.  If you snarf the whole list down with a wget script, you'll exceed their limits and they'll block your IP.

Jesus.

So right now Wireshark's been running, collecting data on every update run.

It doesn't look good.

To be fair(-ish), these folks have had serious DDoS issues in the past, so they're in paranoid overkill mode on the security side.  But the result is they're DoS'ing their own customers.  Very strange business model.

I have some options, but I expect the same results.  I didn't mess with them over the weekend because, for one, they kept blocking my IP, and two, I was preoccupied with rebuilding my system, which died right after I started bringing the site back (moving XP to another physical box—without reinstalling—is always fun).

Anyway, I can live with the failed updates for a few weeks while I look for another provider.  The collection process runs as it always has, so I have the data, even if you don't.

I'm open to suggestions, but I'm leaning toward BlueHost.

EXP5 Down Temporarily

I've had some hard luck on the hardware front and have taken EXP5 offline while I use it for data recovery.  At this point I'm not sure how long that will take.

BOT House is up.


BOT House Twitter feeds have been down for some time.  I think they finally fixed that Android hack I've been using to get around their new security policies.  It was fun while it lasted.

Anyway, I've been considering getting out of the UT99 business.  It's been eight wonderful years, but I don't play as much as I used to and these catastrophic hardware failures are starting to wear thin on my nerves.

So much for THAT theory...

And now for something completely different.

I had set up netconsole to monitor BH's problem remotely. Netconsole sends debugging messages across the network to another system so you can see what's happening up to the moment of a crash.

And here we have it:

hda: ide_dma_sff_timer_expiry: DMA status (0x20)
hda: DMA timeout retryhda: timeout waiting for DMA
hda: DMA timeout: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: possibly failed opcode: 0x35
hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
hda: possibly failed opcode: 0x35
hda: drive not ready for command
ide0: reset: success

It's not a NIC driver issue after all. It's the drive hanging. Or rather, some kind of DMA issue with the drive and the controller.

So it's back to the drawing board.

But right now I have shut off DMA on the drive manually, so I expect things to be OK while I re-hack the kernel.

Microsoft Security Essentials Sucks

Microsoft's latest foray into consumer security, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), does not live up to Microsoft's advertising fluff.

If you read the LARGE PRINT on the MSE download page, you will see, quite plainly stated, that the product offers "automatic updates".

As it turns out, this is not the case.

If you install this software you will notice your virus & spyware definitions (under the "Update" tab of the application) are often days out of date.

If you look at the Update tab closer, you will find this sentence:

"You should always keep these definitions up to date to help protect your computer against the latest threats."

WH-WH-WHAT?

I have to do this? What happened to the "Automatic Updates"?

Not surprisingly, I'm not the only Microsoft customer who's pissed off about this state of affairs. See this thread at Microsoft Answers for a good laugh.

You can't trust Microsoft to do anything right and you definitely can't trust their advertising bullshit.

RESOLVED: EXP4 is Experimental

Well, shucks, folks. It turns out my custom-built Linux kernel (based on version 2.6.28.7) was completely fux0r3d.

After fucking around with grub for way too long, during which I found a longstanding Bug That I Should Have Known ABout But Didn't, I set the box back to the stock Debian kernel ("2.6.18-6-amd64") and rebooted. Then I jumped in for a few quick rounds at Bitch House, since EXP4 is currently running on the "new" iPaq (which I have rechristened "iPunk").

The son of a bitch ran like it should. No little red network doobie flashing, no more getting killed by bots that aren't even pointing at me.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, me maxima culpa.

Fuck. Me.

Right now UT is the only thing that is running right on that box. The old kernel killed X/Windows outright, but at least ssh still works so I can get in & twiddle the bits (it runs headless on DinkNet - no vid, no keyboard).

Iptables is also fucked, or so I assume. You have to compile it against your running kernel, so right now its functionality is suspect. Ban-O-Matic is probably fucked. The latest incarnation of BOM relied on ipset, which doesn't come stock on the older kernels. Instead of using ipset, I'll fall back to the old method of letting the iptables rules grow. And grow. This is how it's set up on iPunk right now. Thank you StinkFly for helping test it out (poor schmuck, he's coming in to get banned on a third IP address as I write this).

BOT House runs an earlier kernel, v2.6.28.5, so it was not affected. And OF COURSE at the moment we're between releases for the Next Big Thing™. Kernel 2.6.30 is "stable" (right) but 2.6.31 is supposed to cure cancer (among other things) when it finally comes out.

Not that BOT House doesn't have its own problems. I discovered just before we left town to go to Rinky Dink's wedding that it doesn't work with those little gspca USB webcams I'm so fond of, but that's a minor issue at this point.

So I have all these issues to work out but right now I find myself with a severe shortage of Free Time™. Work has been a serious bitch for the last couple of weeks. I'll blog about that when I have some time to get get pissed off, but I have to keep reminding myself I'm lucky to have a job in this crappy economy.

I will probably leave EXP4 on iPunk for the time being, since both BITCH House and Classic3 get little traffic. That means if the power goes out here (so far we've been very lucky on that front), EXP4 goes down until I do something about it. BITCH & C3 will go up and down as I work on the new kernel. There's no sense sticking with the stable release so I'll hack away at one of the 2.6.31 Release Candidates until I get it just right.