Re: New Files At War Ensemble BBS
By: Nicholas Boel to Rob Swindell on Sun Nov 05 2017 07:22 am

That said, I'm not blaming your software.. but I originally pointed out that these dupes started the day he upgraded to the Oct 31 sources.

The spam/dupes I see in this echo appeared on Oct-3. In some other echoes, they appeared later (e.g. Oct-13), but not Oct-31. <shrug>


digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #77:
Rob Swindell still has dozens of BBS-related magazines in his possession. Norco, CA WX: 69.6oF, 57.0% humidity, 0 mph SSW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs --- SBBSecho 3.02-Win32
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)

Hello Rob,

On Mon Nov 06 2017 12:40:38, Rob Swindell wrote to Nicholas Boel:

That said, I'm not blaming your software.. but I originally pointed
out that these dupes started the day he upgraded to the Oct 31
sources.

The spam/dupes I see in this echo appeared on Oct-3. In some other
echoes, they appeared later (e.g. Oct-13), but not Oct-31. <shrug>

Take another look at the timestamps of said "file report" messages that came from War Ensemble BBS. They were dated from Oct. 1 up until Nov 4th I believe. They were not marked as dupes because they were never (and should not have ever
been) posted here in the first place.

That said, the last I heard from him was it was a little more than a configuration issue, so you may have some config files coming your way.

Regards,
Nick

... "?? ????. ? ????? ?????? ???????."
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20170303
* Origin: thePharcyde_ distribution system (Wisconsin) (1:154/10)

Re: New Files At War Ensemble BBS
By: Nicholas Boel to Rob Swindell on Mon Nov 06 2017 05:52 pm

Hello Rob,

On Mon Nov 06 2017 12:40:38, Rob Swindell wrote to Nicholas Boel:

That said, I'm not blaming your software.. but I originally pointed
out that these dupes started the day he upgraded to the Oct 31
sources.

The spam/dupes I see in this echo appeared on Oct-3. In some other echoes, they appeared later (e.g. Oct-13), but not Oct-31. <shrug>

Take another look at the timestamps of said "file report" messages that came from War Ensemble BBS. They were dated from Oct. 1 up until Nov 4th I believe.

Yes, I see that now:
when_written 59D09271 412C Sun Oct 01 2017 12:00 am EST
when_imported 59F92032 C1E0 Tue Oct 31 2017 06:15 pm PDT

They were not marked as dupes because they were never (and should
not have ever
been) posted here in the first place.

That said, the last I heard from him was it was a little more than a configuration issue, so you may have some config files coming your way.

Yup, it was an SBBSecho bug introduced on Oct-27, unrelated to any new feature usage (now fixed). Apparently DaiTengu runs SBBSecho in a manner that is uncommon (handles both importing and exporting with every invocation) and the problem only occurred in that scenario. So no one else has encountered this issue, thankfully.

digital man

Synchronet/BBS Terminology Definition #58:
XPDEV = Cross-platform Development
Norco, CA WX: 66.8oF, 57.0% humidity, 7 mph E wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs
--- SBBSecho 3.02-Win32
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)

Hello Rob,

On Mon Nov 06 2017 16:56:16, Rob Swindell wrote to Nicholas Boel:

That said, the last I heard from him was it was a little more than
a configuration issue, so you may have some config files coming
your way.

Yup, it was an SBBSecho bug introduced on Oct-27, unrelated to any new feature usage (now fixed). Apparently DaiTengu runs SBBSecho in a
manner that is uncommon (handles both importing and exporting with
every invocation) and the problem only occurred in that scenario. So
no one else has encountered this issue, thankfully.

Looks like Bill just got bit by it too, but glad to see it was found and fixed quickly!

Regards,
Nick

... "?? ????. ? ????? ?????? ???????."
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20170303
* Origin: thePharcyde_ distribution system (Wisconsin) (1:154/10)

Hello There,

. . * _______
__ . __ ____ \ \ , .
\ \ * _____ / /. / _ \ . | |\ \ .
. \ \ . / \ / / / /_\ \ | |/ / .
\ \ / /\ \ / / / ____ \ | /
\ \/ / \ \/ / / /, \ \ | |\ \ a *
. \ / \____/ / / , \__\| / \ \ bad .
\ / . / / |/ . | | ascii
* ' . | / ENSEMBLE BBS \ / production
|/ ` .
. . TELNET/SSH/FTP/HTTP/NNTP/GOPHER .
. warensemble.com . -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Over 130,000 Files online. Here are a few new ones:

[...]

Total 317611 bytes in 1 file(s)

Is this really necessary multiple times a day? <sigh>


Jeff

--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: The Ouija Board (1:282/1031)

On 2017 Nov 01 07:11:16, you wrote to Filey Mcfileface:

[...]

Total 317611 bytes in 1 file(s)

Is this really necessary multiple times a day? <sigh>

"Filey" is a bot... a misconfigured bot but a bot nonetheless...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it wrong...
... "Tezze Iliniz Yahsi Olsun." - Azeri-Azerbiajan Christmas
---
* Origin: (1:3634/12.73)

Hello Mark,

On 2017 Nov 01 07:11:16, you wrote to Filey Mcfileface:

[...]

Total 317611 bytes in 1 file(s)

Is this really necessary multiple times a day? <sigh>

"Filey" is a bot... a misconfigured bot but a bot nonetheless...

Ya mean I was responding to an imaginary entity??? <g>

My hope (As misplaced as it might be) was that the individual might happen to read some of the echos that his bot spams.

Jeff


--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: The Ouija Board (1:282/1031)

On 11/01/17, Jeff Smith pondered and said...

"Filey" is a bot... a misconfigured bot but a bot nonetheless...

Ya mean I was responding to an imaginary entity??? <g>

My hope (As misplaced as it might be) was that the individual might
happen to read some of the echos that his bot spams.

You and me both - not good - lots of posts in several echos, Fmail got hit
too :(

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A36 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | telnet://agency.bbs.geek.nz (3:770/100)

Hello Jeff,

On Wed Nov 01 2017 07:11:16, Jeff Smith wrote to Filey Mcfileface:

Total 317611 bytes in 1 file(s)

Is this really necessary multiple times a day? <sigh>

If you look at little closer, they were randoms over the past 30 days. Why they
were posted to this echo as well as others where they're not wanted is being looked into.

Regards,
Nick

... "?? ????. ? ????? ?????? ???????."
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20170303
* Origin: thePharcyde_ distribution system (Wisconsin) (1:154/10)

Hello Nicholas ,

Is this really necessary multiple times a day? <sigh>

If you look at little closer, they were randoms over the past 30 days.

Yeah I had noticed that. I also noticed that there often seemed to be several posts during a single day.

Why the were posted to this echo as well as others where they're not wanted

That was the question I had as well.


Jeff


--- BBBS/Li6 v4.10 Toy-3
* Origin: The Ouija Board (1:282/1031)

On 2017 Nov 01 13:33:10, you wrote to me:

On 2017 Nov 01 07:11:16, you wrote to Filey Mcfileface:

[...]

Total 317611 bytes in 1 file(s)

Is this really necessary multiple times a day? <sigh>

"Filey" is a bot... a misconfigured bot but a bot nonetheless...

Ya mean I was responding to an imaginary entity??? <g>

hehehe...

My hope (As misplaced as it might be) was that the individual might
happen to read some of the echos that his bot spams.

yeah, IIRC, it is mike miller's war ensemble bbs... whatever is going on, it seems to maybe be related to new features in sbbsecho...


)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it wrong...
... A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice. - E.E. Howe
---
* Origin: (1:3634/12.73)

Re: New Files At War Ensemble BBS
By: mark lewis to Jeff Smith on Thu Nov 02 2017 01:17 pm

yeah, IIRC, it is mike miller's war ensemble bbs... whatever is going on, it seems to maybe be related to new features in sbbsecho...

How so?

digital man

Synchronet "Real Fact" #10:
The name "DOVE-Net" was suggested by King Drafus (sysop of The Beast's Domain). Norco, CA WX: 68.1oF, 54.0% humidity, 8 mph E wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs
--- SBBSecho 3.01-Win32
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)

On 2017 Nov 04 12:53:32, you wrote to me:

yeah, IIRC, it is mike miller's war ensemble bbs... whatever is going
on, it seems to maybe be related to new features in sbbsecho...

How so?

one slightly educated wild-arsed guess is it is maybe related to the new adding
of unconfigured echos... we haven't seen the code or updated in a few months and we're not sure what mike's configuration is/was on the echo side but it would explain the duplicated 58 messages dumped in various echos on various days if maybe those echos were being newly added to his config... where and why
the 58 duplicated posts are coming from? no clue but obviously somewhere on his
system as they were in order from the first of Oct to the end...

again, it is a slightly educated wild-arsed guess that kinda fits the timeline when the code was available and likely being tested on a live system...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it wrong...
... Tarragon makes it French; garlic makes it good.
---
* Origin: (1:3634/12.73)

Hello Rob,

On Sat Nov 04 2017 12:53:32, Rob Swindell wrote to mark lewis:

yeah, IIRC, it is mike miller's war ensemble bbs... whatever is
going on, it seems to maybe be related to new features in
sbbsecho...

How so?

It may not be the program itself, but the dupe bombs began happening the day he
upgraded to the latest sbbsecho sources (Oct 31 I believe). While I can't blame
sbbsecho since it doesn't actually post those messages, smbutil does.. So there
are a couple options:

1) Whatever utility (I assume smbutil) he's using to post his file reports to Fidonet wasn't setup correctly (ie: wrong command line options), or those file reports were never deleted when they were originally sent, and after the upgrade, it started resending them all out over again..

2) Something in his configuration is wrong, seeing as though these posts have gone out to multiple echos across the network, via 2 different links.

What happens with smbutil when you don't specify an areatag to post in? MYSTIC,
FMAIL_HELP, some German echo, and a few others have all been flooded with these
reports, so maybe they were rescanned out by sbbsecho after he upgraded? I'm clueless as to what actually happened, and am only taking wild guesses here, but I had to pause his feed from here until it's figured out and fixed.

Regards,
Nick

... "?? ????. ? ????? ?????? ???????."
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20170303
* Origin: thePharcyde_ distribution system (Wisconsin) (1:154/10)

Re: New Files At War Ensemble BBS
By: mark lewis to Rob Swindell on Sat Nov 04 2017 06:51 pm

On 2017 Nov 04 12:53:32, you wrote to me:

yeah, IIRC, it is mike miller's war ensemble bbs... whatever is going
on, it seems to maybe be related to new features in sbbsecho...

How so?

one slightly educated wild-arsed guess is it is maybe related to the new adding
of unconfigured echos...

That feature is disabled by default and I don't think anyone but me has used it. How it would magically export some auto-generated new file listing I couldn't possibly imagine.

we haven't seen the code or updated in a few months
and we're not sure what mike's configuration is/was on the echo side but it would explain the duplicated 58 messages dumped in various echos on various days if maybe those echos were being newly added to his config...

No, it doesn't really explain it.

where and
why
the 58 duplicated posts are coming from? no clue but obviously somewhere on his
system as they were in order from the first of Oct to the end...

again, it is a slightly educated wild-arsed guess that kinda fits the timeline when the code was available and likely being tested on a live system...

I seriously doubt there is any correlation.

digital man

Synchronet/BBS Terminology Definition #16:
DOVE = Domain/Vertrauen
Norco, CA WX: 56.5oF, 86.0% humidity, 0 mph SW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs
--- SBBSecho 3.01-Win32
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)

Re: New Files At War Ensemble BBS
By: Nicholas Boel to Rob Swindell on Sat Nov 04 2017 06:12 pm

What happens with smbutil when you don't specify an areatag to post in? MYSTIC,
FMAIL_HELP, some German echo, and a few others have all been flooded with these
reports, so maybe they were rescanned out by sbbsecho after he upgraded? I'm clueless as to what actually happened, and am only taking wild guesses here, but I had to pause his feed from here until it's figured out and fixed.

smbutil only posts msgs to local sub-boards, and only one msg per invocation of smbutil (you pass a sub's internal code, not an areatag). It's the job of something else (e.g. SBBSecho) to export local msgs into FTN echoes via packets and bundles, etc. It's possible the sysop has a single local sub connected with multiple echoes via his areas.bbs file. But that's just a guess. I only chimed in here because someone was pointing the finger at my software and I wanted to know why.

digital man

This Is Spinal Tap quote #21:
So when you're playing you feel like a preserved moose on stage?
Norco, CA WX: 56.5oF, 86.0% humidity, 0 mph SW wind, 0.00 inches rain/24hrs
--- SBBSecho 3.01-Win32
* Origin: Vertrauen - [vert/cvs/bbs].synchro.net (1:103/705)

Hello mark,

On Sat Nov 04 2017 18:51:50, mark lewis wrote to Rob Swindell:

one slightly educated wild-arsed guess is it is maybe related to the
new adding of unconfigured echos... we haven't seen the code or
updated in a few months and we're not sure what mike's configuration is/was on the echo side but it would explain the duplicated 58
messages dumped in various echos on various days if maybe those echos
were being newly added to his config... where and why the 58
duplicated posts are coming from? no clue but obviously somewhere on
his system as they were in order from the first of Oct to the end...

Only 58 made it through? Well, I suppose it's a lot better than the 10,000+ my system stopped here and didn't send on (anything over 30 days old, which was a lot). ;)

Otherwise, I didn't check to see if any of the ones that actually went through were posted with new MSGIDs from their original or not, which is also possible.

Regards,
Nick

... "?? ????. ? ????? ?????? ???????."
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20170303
* Origin: thePharcyde_ distribution system (Wisconsin) (1:154/10)

Hello Rob,

On Sun Nov 05 2017 01:32:40, Rob Swindell wrote to Nicholas Boel:

smbutil only posts msgs to local sub-boards, and only one msg per invocation of smbutil (you pass a sub's internal code, not an
areatag). It's the job of something else (e.g. SBBSecho) to export
local msgs into FTN echoes via packets and bundles, etc. It's possible
the sysop has a single local sub connected with multiple echoes via
his areas.bbs file. But that's just a guess. I only chimed in here
because someone was pointing the finger at my software and I wanted to know why.

Understood. This is one of the echos that got bombed with duplicate messages, so as long as we're trying to figure out why, I doubt anyone has any complaints
that we're not on-topic at the moment.

That said, I'm not blaming your software.. but I originally pointed out that these dupes started the day he upgraded to the Oct 31 sources. More likely a configuration issue and not knowing all the newer features you've added or how to deal with/configure them is probably the real issue here.

It went on for a few days before I finally paused the feed. Although since I've
paused it, I haven't received anything from him (besides his normal 2-3 file report postings) in my BAD area, but he hasn't visited my Areafix yet either, so maybe he's working on it, or maybe when he upgraded it flushed out a bunch of packets from his system and went back to normal operation. We have yet to know any of that though.

Regards,
Nick

... "?? ????. ? ????? ?????? ???????."
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20170303
* Origin: thePharcyde_ distribution system (Wisconsin) (1:154/10)

On 2017 Nov 05 07:18:48, you wrote to me:

one slightly educated wild-arsed guess is it is maybe related to the
new adding of unconfigured echos... we haven't seen the code or
updated in a few months and we're not sure what mike's configuration
is/was on the echo side but it would explain the duplicated 58
messages dumped in various echos on various days if maybe those echos
were being newly added to his config... where and why the 58
duplicated posts are coming from? no clue but obviously somewhere on
his system as they were in order from the first of Oct to the end...

Only 58 made it through?

no, sorry... 58 in each area each time it spewed...

Well, I suppose it's a lot better than the 10,000+ my system stopped
here and didn't send on (anything over 30 days old, which was a lot).
;)

oh wow! that may explain why i saw only Oct 1 thru 31 in each area they appeared in... they were all this Oct's postings, too...

Otherwise, I didn't check to see if any of the ones that actually went through were posted with new MSGIDs from their original or not, which
is also possible.

they were not caught here as dupes by HPT which is set to retain MSGIDs for 1100 days across all message areas carried... that only means that they were not dupes in the areas they were posted in... HPT does dupe checking per area instead of across all areas... that means that the same MSGID can be seen in more than one area... other software doesn't check per area but over all areas...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it wrong...
... Misspelled? Impossible. My modem is error-correcting.
---
* Origin: (1:3634/12.73)

On 11/06/17, Nicholas Boel pondered and said...

Looks like Bill just got bit by it too, but glad to see it was found and fixed quickly!

Agreed, got a dump of them across a number or echos from his system too.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A36 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | telnet://agency.bbs.geek.nz (3:770/100)