stblogs.org

That is, I'm making progress in defending the site against comment spammers. Even if few of their attempted spams succeed in getting posted, the load their automated attempts generate is a burden. Something had to be done to reduce it.

I have a job in place on the server now that tests the load every few minutes, and if necessary, adds additional access rules to stop comment-spammers from submitting their junk to the web server.

The results are pretty good: when the job ran at 06:40 GMT, the load average was 76; and one minute after the blocking rules were updated, the load fell to 24. Three minutes later, when I logged in to check, the load had dropped to under 6, on the way down to the normal (under 1).

Not bad!

If you've read blogs from stblogs.org for some time, you may have noticed occasional performance outages, when the system stops responding, or is extremely slow in accepting comments -- or, for authors, in accepting new blog entries. Today we had a case of that phenomenon around 9 a.m. Eastern time, and I'm researching what was behind it.

When I succeeded in logging in -- which isn't always possible during these episodes -- a host in Taiwan was trying to post comments into the system. It made 400 attempts in just a few minutes. I assume it was a spammer's system gone haywire. Since two other hosts from the same ISP have shown the same behavior in the recent past, I've blocked all comments from that ISP. That may help reduce the occurrences of such problem, but I'm sure other spammer-systems at other internet locations will misbehave as wildly. I'll look for some further measures to hold off the effect of such comment-onslaughts.

I found that some users were being blocked from commenting by part of the anti-spam system. If you've had trouble with commenting, please give it a try again. I expect the change I've put in this morning will liberate more than one of you from comment Purgatory. :-)

--RC

Thanks, readers, for your patience during the system maintenance Friday evening.

I upgraded the blog software to Movable Type 4.3 a few weeks ago, and would like to take a moment to remind folks of how to deal with any problems with commenting.

If you haven't logged in to the web site, every blog entry page will have this notice at the bottom:

Leave a comment
Sign in to comment on this entry, or comment anonymously.

1. If those two links don't appear, or
2. If clicking the "comment anonymously" link doesn't give you an empty comment form,

flush the browser cache, delete all cookies for the web site mt.stblogs.org, and refresh the page in your browser. (You might find it easier to delete all cookies, if you like.)

3. If you want to authenticate, click the "sign in" link. which takes you to a login form. You can use an OpenID identifier, or a LiveJournal or Typepad username. You can also log in with a username you've created on our Movable Type system, if you have gone through the process of creating one and acting on the confirmation e-mail. (If you created a username but didn't see a confirmation e-mail in response, check your spam folder.)

If the measures above don't resolve your difficulties, try using a different browser (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari).

Hi, readers--

Recently some commenters on the various weblogs here have reported troubles trying to log in to the Movable Type system with a username they've created.

This usually happens because the person's username never completed the registration process. When someone creates a username, the system sends a confirmation e-mail message immediately to verify that the e-mail address given by the person is valid. If the person doesn't see the message or doesn't click the link in it, the username never becomes "enabled" for posting comments.

In some cases, the confirmation e-mails may be mistaken for spam by a user's e-mail system, so the user may not see them.

The e-mails will have the subject "Movable Type Account Confirmation". Users can search their mail (including the spam folder) for that subject line and find any old confirmations they haven't acted on. Once you do that, your username will be enabled, and you should be able to comment with joy.

First Friday arrived for August the other day, and with it a new blog here at stblogs.org: Sr. Cora Lombardo has started the site Caritas Christi to share the depths of the love of God which are to be found in the Heart of Christ. Sr. Cora is a member of the religious community The Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and serves as the DRE at St. Paul Parish in West Haven, CT.