The Furry Forums
TFF Central => Suggestions => Questions and Guides => Topic started by: Fuzzpaws on December 02, 2016, 02:21:43 PM
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Just curious,.
It seems the server goes offline at around the same time almost every day, normally around 7:30pm until 9:30pm, which is the prime time for for me to be able to be online.
Wondered if it was a preset time for the server to do updates or something??
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server kicked out again the last 2 nights right at 7:30-7:40 for a while...
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This is a complicated problem to fix and it isn't actually the server going down, rather the server refusing your connection.
The basic reason for this is that we get DDoS'd quite a bit, this is when people spam the website with useless but time consuming requests in order to shut down the site. We have quite advanced anti-Dos protection, but this protection isn't perfect and it sometimes considered legitimate requests as bad and thus refuses to accept your connection. This occurs when you have a 500 error or a "bad gateway" error.
If you're getting a 404 error, then the server has shut down.
This issue is indeed very complicated and finding a good fix for it is quite difficult. If anyone has any suggestion it'd be interesting to hear.
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I always wondered the same, hope something is found one day. Its always fun coming here on the forums.
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I BELIEVE (but will check) that it is a 404 issue. Will screenshot next time.
Thank you for the explanation... and for having the issue in work.
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Most times i gets its 524
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This is a complicated problem to fix and it isn't actually the server going down, rather the server refusing your connection.
The basic reason for this is that we get DDoS'd quite a bit, this is when people spam the website with useless but time consuming requests in order to shut down the site. We have quite advanced anti-Dos protection, but this protection isn't perfect and it sometimes considered legitimate requests as bad and thus refuses to accept your connection. This occurs when you have a 500 error or a "bad gateway" error.
If you're getting a 404 error, then the server has shut down.
This issue is indeed very complicated and finding a good fix for it is quite difficult. If anyone has any suggestion it'd be interesting to hear.
honestly I don't ever get one of those errors it either doesn't connec to SMF gives me some sort of message I will try to screenshot them in the near future.
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it does help a bit at least knowing what it is, and whats causing it - next time it happens I'll get a snapshot of the error.
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Yep, it's a 524 I tried to screen shot it, but it didn't work on the home tower
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524 Timeout Error
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i420/DennyPacificNW/Nonsense%20Photos/error1_zpsm1ov6atc.png)
then I wait a while and try to refresh many times its followed by the
connection error
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i420/DennyPacificNW/Nonsense%20Photos/error2_zpsuj7fyezq.jpg)
it's that way until the forums come back
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Yeah 524 is also a DDoS attack
And since we get DDoS'd from time to time, it's most likely for it to be the cause. Cloudflare itself has a built-in DDoS protection, it's called "I'm Under Attack", and it works by showing a little prompt when the users connect to the servers during a DDoS attack, that prompt asks for the user to wait a few seconds, allowing the server to analyze the user's traffic to see if it actually is a human, and if it is, the user get redirected to the site normally, ignoring all the requests that the server think come from an attacker. Although I don't think it's the one currently in use, because I have never seen the prompt on the site. Maybe it was used before but it didn't work? I can't tell because I only joined in July.
This seems interesting, I didn't know about this system, I'll try talk to tweak to see what he thinks of it. IF it's default to cloudflare it may be something we can implement, but tweak may have reasons for not implementing it. Will keep you guys posted.
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Thank you!
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Thanks, wish something was found that would help
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gotten a different, similar error, is it also part of ddos attacks?
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i420/DennyPacificNW/Nonsense%20Photos/error3_zps8otkshua.jpg)
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gotten a different, similar error, is it also part of ddos attacks?
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i420/DennyPacificNW/Nonsense%20Photos/error3_zps8otkshua.jpg)
Seems to be because of the 500 error
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It did happen right after the 524 error
did wait about 30 minutes before refreshing to see if the forums had come back, instead was greeted with that message.
Not sure how long it lasted, 30 minutes after getting it, I refreshed the forums again all was back to normal
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(http://imgur.com/pmZtJxW)
(https://i.imgur.com/pmZtJxW.png)
This is what I got.
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I just realised, when it was offline for me earlier today, the error was 522.
Not sure if that is the same error I got before the weekend.
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wish there was someone to notify a mod or admin when it does happen
(via email or something similar)
it was offline for most of the day on the 24th
for me was on the 23rd starting around 9pm correction around 10:30 pm and came back for me at 5pm on the 24th
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Same, unable to get online last night or today, until now..
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Believe me, we tend to know when it goes down. XD Most of us check the site multiple times a day when we can.
At this time there's nothing we can do about it anyway. Hopefully we can get that one suggestion working.
I really don't understand why this site of all furry sites gets DDoSed so much. Seems pointless to me.
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at least it's good to know that mods/admin know that it happens
hopes someday something is found that makes it easier when ddos attacks happen
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WELL THEN
Glad this is over and we can be back online. I couldn't get on the whooe day (24th). Was starting to think it was a bad joke to have us spend more time in real life with our families for Xmas :P
Got three different types of error number messages when I was trying to come online:
502 (morning), 522 and 524 (later in the day), and then they we variating in the evening between one another.
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but why would some one every want to DDOS a furry site?
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There are multiple obvious reasons people would DDoS a furry site. Basically due to a lot of unsavory individuals in the fandom, furries are the internet's buttmonkey (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/main/buttmonkey). Meaning the fandom gets a lot of crap and gets poked fun at and messed with A LOT, and many don't take it well at all, which makes them easy targets for trolls and whatnot. Even if the site or individual people getting messed with aren't necessarily of the 'unsavory' lot, we're kinda considered guilty by association. :P
But yeah, it's gotten so bad my Firefox's screenshot for the forums is almost always one of the various "website is offline" pages. I find it kinda amusing it happened this bad during Christmastime. Was probably intentionally timed for that.
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The downtime over Christmas was due to a file system error; it was fixed as soon as I had the ability to get online but obviously being Christmas I was spending time with family.
I am aware of a few other issues that I am working on rectifying.
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thank you Tweak, for the fix and upcoming fixes, and for giving us an update!
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Didn't know that Tweak, good to hear it
hopes something is found one day
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And last night was not fun. I have throughly attacked the server gremlins and now believe I've found the main cause of the issues.
Keep your fingers crossed this is the final fix.
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And last night was not fun. I have throughly attacked the server gremlins and now believe I've found the main cause of the issues.
Keep your fingers crossed this is the final fix.
Thank you, Tweak. It's appreciated.
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And last night was not fun. I have throughly attacked the server gremlins and now believe I've found the main cause of the issues.
Keep your fingers crossed this is the final fix.
We're all rooting for you Tweak!
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Good luck Tweak
hoping for the best
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Thank you for taking a look at it, Tweak.
As of which, for some reason I couldn't get on the forums on my laptop (error 521) for a couple of hours. I could get on it this morning, and now again, but not in between.
I went to check if the issue was also on my 'main pc'. Result? I could get on with my (desktop) computer. Just not on my laptop.
I didn't do anything prior or after on my laptop that could have changed this. The main difference between my laptop and pc is that the laptop is connected via the wifi, whereas the pc via the cable.
Still, the laptop could reach other websites just fine.
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have notice that sometimes if I use a link from the notification system ("you have a message..") I can get in when trying to go through the front door doesn't work...
Maybe it's just the timing catching a low spot in the attack, or maybe the server sees the link reply differently?
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couple times today been getting the 521 error
web server down
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i420/DennyPacificNW/Nonsense%20Photos/error5_zpsvelukcyb.jpg)
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That was me, I changed over some software to improve performance. Otherwise everything seems to be much more stable.
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thanks Tweak, I had not seen it before that I can remember.
Post Merge: January 01, 2017, 03:43:38 AM
thanks Tweak, I had not seen it before that I can remember.
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I've been monitoring everything today and everything seems a lot more stable.
The root cause of all the previous issues has been found and removed, it should no longer cause a problem.
Also, I changed out the front proxy software, this has now enabled HTTP2 which is significantly faster when loading the forums, this is only in place when using HTTPS connections. I'll continue to make changes where required but we should finally be back in the state we were before all the issues.
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Good to know Tweak, thanks so much for all the hard work you do.
Did get some 524 error a few minutes ago
(I'm guessing an attempted ddos attack)
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Good to know Tweak, thanks so much for all the hard work you do.
Did get some 524 error a few minutes ago
(I'm guessing an attempted ddos attack)
That may of been due to me actually, I made a change to the board structure of the forum (just removing some old, no longer used boards) and there was some stuff with the child boards that it had to sort out. So it may of just been working on that process and lagging with requests for a bit.
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thanks Anoni, shouldn't go blaming all 524 errors on ddos attackers ^_^
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Uhhhh, I finally was able to get on and there's a bunch of people who's been having trouble getting on as well.
It would appear that trying to connect by http will fail (resulting in a cloudflare 502) but https works perfectly fine. Shouldn't there at least be some sort of redirect or something in place to prevent this from happening?
Most browsers (both the latest version of Chrome and Firefox) will try to connect using http by default, so any link or bookmark that does not specify https will most likely try to use http (and thus fail to connect).
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This happens to me too, it would be ideal if we forced any connection of the site to be under https if they're attempting to connect over http.
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HTTP should now redirect correctly to HTTPS. I hadn't realized it wasn't.
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Seems to work for me, thanks Tweak!
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I can't access TFF from my 3DS, as it says it can't create an SSL connection. I know this is very low priority since I can access it from my laptop just fine. I don't necessarily need it fixed, I would just like to know why.
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Yeah, then it's better off leaving it as is. Like said, I was only interested in the reason why and I see it's something that probably shouldn't even be fixed. I was just curious.
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awesome work ya'all! thanks so much.
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Keep in mind this thread is mainly for lag/website outtages/can't connect at all. For specific issues it might be better to create your own thread
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Going to the home page (thefurryforum.com) these last couple of days gives me an error message, but when I go to the forum part (thefurryforum.com/forums) then there is no problem.
And I know from at least one other person they have this issue as well.
(Not sure if this was a Technical Server issue, or something separate, so I hope it's ok I posted this in here.)
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not sure if it was admins or ddos, there was a bit of outtage not too long ago, lasted about 2 minutes - 524 message
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For the sake of mentioning it here too:
The forums were down for me for a bit over a minute to two minutes just now, before posting this.
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Same here.. The forum was down for about 5 mins..
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looks like there was 524 error not to long ago, lasted about 30 minutes
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For the last 4 or so days, around the same time the forums keep going down - not sure if its a DDOS attack or some changes the mods been doing
happens around the same time and lasts about 30 minutes
happened again today (at least in my time zone - Pacific) from 7:41pm to around 8:00pm came back then went back down again at 8:04pm for about 30 seconds
started as the 524 error then the 'Connection Problem' error
Post Merge: January 23, 2017, 04:09:40 AM
For the last 4 or so days, around the same time the forums keep going down - not sure if its a DDOS attack or some changes the mods been doing
happens around the same time and lasts about 30 minutes
happened again today (at least in my time zone - Pacific) from 7:41pm to around 8:00pm came back then went back down again at 8:04pm for about 30 seconds
started as the 524 error then the 'Connection Problem' error
again from 8:07pm to around 8:11pm
with Ray ID: 325860766cc42a01 • 2017-01-23 04:08:46 UTC
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There appears to be an issue with one of the services that I've just become aware of, I'm investigating it but it may take some time to fully fix.
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thanks Tweak for all your hard work on it
(did went down for a while today again)
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I believe this issue is now fixed.
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I just experienced an error today that lasted about 20 mins
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170126/29aa374ae8d662e3b684daad811c7daa.jpg)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Forums were down for almost 7 hours
Hope it wasn't a ddos attack
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I don't think it was... I didn't make a screenshot, but it said 'Error 521: web server is down' for me.
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For me it gave me the same error and then loaded a previous (outdated) version of the site..
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All i got was the 524 error and the other one saying "connection problems"
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Gotten the 521 Server down error couple times
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Not to long ago gotten a different error:
(http://i1092.photobucket.com/albums/i420/DennyPacificNW/Nonsense%20Photos/error6_zpscmjr08et.jpg)
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Seems that most of yesterday March 21 to most of today March 22 - the forums where down for almost 24 hours with the
521 Server Down
and then happened again March 22 for almost an hour
could this be ddos attack or some other error?
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I don't know if it is just me but the other day I tried to open furryforums and cloudflare said that the host had a bad connection or something? Then, another day I tried again and it just wouldnt load because it couldnt establish a connection?
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Yes this is a known issue. Theres a topic about server issues ^^ https://www.thefurryforum.com/forums/index.php?topic=35062.0 (https://www.thefurryforum.com/forums/index.php?topic=35062.0)
Next time this happens when you get back to the forums you can report it there ^-^