spam block broke site?

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Sat May 03, 2008 10:12 pm

I recently upgraded to 1.3.1 and install spam protector. I think it might be creating some problems.

The site and admin went blank. At some point, I managed to remove spam protector in the DB and somehow the site came back -- it led me to think that spam protector is causing the problem.

I reinstalled spam protector again, I get to the settings screen, but when I hit save -- it goes to the blank screen.

Now when I go back to the spam protector settings screen, it goes blank.

I basically also want to disable the comments (too much spam happening immediately). Anyone got an idea?

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Sat May 03, 2008 10:19 pm

I managed to rename the plugin directory then in the admin plugin list it reports it as an error entry so i was able to remove spam block... now my site works fine.

has anyone encountered this?

also -- how can i turn of commenting? too much spam coming in!!!

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Sat May 03, 2008 11:46 pm

upon further investigations, i wonder if the captchas is causing the problems. Everytime I install spam protector the site would broke. but when i see the spam protector settings page, the captchas at the bottom is NOT showing, but instead, the word "CAPTCHA", once I click on the work, a broken image appear.

My site is flooded with trackbacks spam... i don't know how to disable them completely. I tried to add $serendipity['noautodiscovery'] = true; to the config.local file but didn't help.

I have been using s9y for years and it has been working good, all hell broke lose after this upgrade! Hope someone can help me!!!

Post by **Don Chambers** » Sun May 04, 2008 1:11 am

What version did you upgrade from? How are you retrieving the plugin - from spartacus, or ftp? What other event plugins do you have installed, and in what order?

One of the users here wrote in his own blog a method to help stop trackback spam using this in his .htaccess file:

Code: Select all

# BEGIN ANTI SPAM
<Files comment.php>
 # short 403 error-message
 ErrorDocument 403 "403 Forbidden
 
 # Mark bots whose user agent name is starting with "TrackBack" as SPAM
 BrowserMatch ^TrackBack is_trackback_spammer
 # Mark bots don't sending a user agent name at all as SPAM
 BrowserMatch ^$ is_trackback_spammer
 
 # Lock them out
 Order Allow,Deny
 Allow from all
 deny from env=is_trackback_spammer
</Files>
# END ANTI SPAM

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Sun May 04, 2008 2:45 am

I upgraded from 1.0.3 --> 1.3.1

My order of event plugins are:

# [C] Markup: Serendipity version: 1.3
# [C] Markup: Emoticate version: 1.6
# [C] Markup: NL2BR version: 1.7
# [C] Markup: Track exits version: 1.9
# [C] Highlight search queries version: 1.4
# Livesearch version: 1.4
# Browser Compatibility version: 1.1
# [C] Announce entries version: 1.07
# [C] Spartacus version: 2.15
# [C] Tagging of entries version: 2.63
# Link List version: 1.8
# [C] Creative Commons License version: 1.4
# [C] Polls version: 2.09
# [C] Backup Interface version: 0.7
# [C] Extended properties for entries version: 1.15

I did try to uninstall and install the plugin again - through spartacus. I even remove the plugin dir via FTP and re-upload from the source package.

Unfortunately the .htaccess doesn't work. Spam trackbacks keep pouring in. Do u know where I can disable the code for the trackbacks? I removed the trackbacks portion in entries.tpl but I suppose that's not really the place it is.

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Sun May 04, 2008 3:01 am

Hmm just found this... maybe this sheds a light???

Code: Select all

[Sat May 03 16:53:16 2008] [error] [client 208.120.212.11] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 311296 bytes) in /home/dennis/cailun.info/html/plugins/serendipity_event_spamblock/serendipity_event_spamblock.php on line 984, referer: http://cailun.info/serendipity_admin.php

Post by **Don Chambers** » Sun May 04, 2008 3:36 am

littlerabbit wrote:I tried to add $serendipity['noautodiscovery'] = true; to the config.local file but didn't help.

You sure you added that to serendipity_config_local.inc.php?????

Another option is to edit the comment.php file and insert this:

Code: Select all

if ($_REQUEST['type'] == 'trackback') {
  die('Disabled');
}

The spam protector plugin has an emergency comment shutdown option, but clearly you cannot get that to work... might be the server does not have sufficient memory, but those with more server experience than I will have to provide better input.

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Sun May 04, 2008 5:30 am

Ok so this seems to have stopped the spamming flood -- thanks Don!

Code: Select all

if ($_REQUEST['type'] == 'trackback') {
  die('Disabled');
}

Right now I don't have spam blocker and of course, I'd want to have it back on. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this.

Post by **Don Chambers** » Sun May 04, 2008 6:49 am

You are very welcome - glad it worked. Hopefully the more talented server people will step in and offer better advice - I was just trying to help you place a bandage on the problem until more qualified advice is available.

I saw you posted a message on your site that suggested you wanted to "up"grade to wordpress...... IMHO that is more of a "down"grade, but if it works for you, go for it.

judebert · Post by **judebert** » Mon May 05, 2008 4:53 pm

That memory error is exactly the problem. You're only allowed 8MB for any PHP script to run in; often image processing will overrun that limit, especially for large images. (The JPEG compressed size is not the memory size! To find memory size, multiply width x height x 4.)

There can also be problems when manipulating large lists, such as plugin lists or black hole lists.

The memory can be increased in your php.ini (which is located where only your hosting service can tell you). I'd recommend 32MB. If you need more than that, you can increase it farther.

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Mon May 05, 2008 8:15 pm

Great I will try to increase the memory -- will post the results here. But it looks like more memory is needed for the new version, is that possible? Because I have been running the last one for a while now and it was ok.

For the time being, for those who are interested...

I have modified index.php & commentform.tpl to implement a custom captcha so that I can receive comments.

I included a session check before the header in index.php and the custom captcha image in commentform.tpl.

This is the script I used: http://www.white-hat-web-design.co.uk/a ... aptcha.php

littlerabbit · Post by **littlerabbit** » Mon May 05, 2008 9:06 pm

Glad to report that increasing memory limit to 32M works. The first sign was that captchas finally show in the plugin settings screen.

Thank you all! Forum power!

judebert · Post by **judebert** » Tue May 06, 2008 2:21 pm

Glad it works!

And you're right: it looks like the new version requires more memory. Rather than image processing memory, it could simply be that the plugin itself is bigger, with more options or more code. It all takes up the same memory.

We try to keep things as tight as possible, but we also have to keep the number of plugins down. It's a balancing act. Sorry you got caught in this one. We'll examine the code and see if it can be optimized any farther.