Arden Wiebe - 2002-10-25

Massive web based attack last night.  Corrupted database.  7:16 am online now for .25 hour database intact.  Source was the personals module that was not set up correctly.  Dump of the database showed 1.5Mb worth of shit in there. 

So I'm coding along and everything is fine and dandy I thought I would really put the icing on the cake as far as the block went and all of sudden shit isn't responding anymore. 

I'm testing at the time with a different user to hammer down the last registered user and in the side block so it worked right and nothing seems proper.

I fire up a system monitor ps -e and would you believe there was like a full page if not more of cron jobs running.  Quanta was chewing resources upwards of 95%.  User log on was at a stand still and had to be interrupted.  I believe this caused some of the database corruption. 

A quick study into mysql CHECK TABLE table_name found most of the damage could be repaired with REPAIR TABLE table_name which I promptly did time and time again after dumping successively the logs until I received no errors. 

Tried accessing the site again nothing but error after error.  So I just kick back and go with the flow, linuxguru is going up and down again like newlyweds at a hedonism resort.  After she comes back up for air again I start really wanting my data back considering I was going to debut the block to the community today.

Anyway I get deleting a few things in the database into and especially the session variables that didn't match any existing users and in the session table and also in the user_blocks and boom calgaryadultplayground.ca is hot wet and ready to play again.  But I didn't put her away yet, not without some hardening.  

I yarded the damn personals module out of there and have resided to the fact that maybe just maybe I'll have to right my own or get with Franky Chestnut and start hacking core more to design what should have been designed in the first implementation from the get go;  that being a fully configurable user sign on with dynamic user data fully customizable by the admin. 

Anyhow I'm hoping I've designed my block along the right guidelines.  It's rough right now and there are still some things that need to be fixed that didn't get that way last night in light of the heretofore previously mentioned circumstances but I'll get there.  I want to swap the block for other meaningful code.  Like for instance if someone had a legitimate personals module. 

So if anyone is interested in a PostNuke Block for phpOpenChat 2.3.0 that preemptively logs the users into the chat using respective pnUserGetVariables and displays relevant chat statistics in the block feel free to sign up at http://calgaryadultplayground.ca and check out the block in action.  I haven’t completed many things on the To Do list like the documentation and haven’t even really fully tested it but so far as I’m concerned I’m calling it a Beta.  If anyone can help me with some code for changing the frameset inside the chat around that would be greatly appreciated;  I want mine to look like the www.trikerchat.de exactly.