MurkNET BBS

[solarbird]

Okay, this message will serve as the header for a temporary BBS about the Murknet situation. I've postdated it so it will stay at the top of my journal, and I'll turn anonymous posting back on for a little while. Check back to this message to watch for situation updates in the reply chain.

** THIS ENTRY IS NO LONGER ADVANCE-DATED BECAUSE THAT REALLY SUCKED FOR NEW JOURNAL ENTRIES. **

Newest Status, 12:22am Tuesday: Pulled mail spools and a lot of other configuration data off of lodestone on a private LAN. The thing has all kinds of crap b0rked on it - it's drifting in space, life support is barely functional, and the warp drive is a hopeless pile of junk. Fucking Brazilians. We're having trouble getting spamassassin to invoke properly on newmoon, so no mail pointer updating yet. (V. sad.) But at least we've got mail spools so that people can get the mail that was already queued up when I pulled the plug. I've also got DNS files pulled down, and the mailman mailing list databank, so hopefully that might work again sometime this year.

Status, 8:45pm Monday: Mostly been busy with other stuff during the day today. Tonight, with Traest's help, I got pine/pico installed from source (pine can't be distributed in binary form) and, more importantly, spamassassin. Email soon, minions - soooooon.

Status 10:34am Monday: POP3 is running on newmoon. Also, we're creating a few user accounts on newmoon for people who use the murknet as their primary net source. See the other BBS for details. If you don't have access and need it now, catch me somewhere interactive and online.

Status 11:39pm Sunday: newmoon is ON the FUCKING. NET. And downloading security patches as quickly as its little brain will let it. Yay! I'm doing the Happy Ed Dance. This means we might have a mail server again sometime tomorrow, at least for individual users. Lists... will take longer. Retrieving old spool files will take similarly long. But new mail? Soon.

Status 10:18pm Sunday: Installing a zillion packages from CD image. I'm worrying about netcard drivers, but I'll leave that for after the basic package set is installed and hopefully running. Sooooooooooooooo sloooooooooooooow.

Status 7:36pm Sunday: Surface validation on a 120G drive takes FOREVER. Still installing linux 3.0r2. As in, this may be an overnight job. We're ordering in pizza. so we can keep working on things. Anna is pulling files off of backup for a couple of people who are particularly desperate for older versions of data, just to have something. IF YOU RELY ON US FOR DNS AND WANT IT BACK ONLINE IMMEDIATELY, I CAN DO THAT. I fixed that yesterday, except for all the data we can't get to yet on the old machine. If it's important to have it now, reply to the "Murknet DNS" topic below and I'll set something up for you.

Topic: Murknet DNS
Topic: MurkMUSH accessibility
Topic: No luck yet with the new mail machine
Topic: Putting Mimi's data on Cub, updating DNS pointers
Topic: Messages I didn't think I'd see

Comments

[solarbird]

I'm working on validating our second DNS box, in the hope that I can slide it under the lodestone IP to get our DNS services back online. Do not expect this to be quick.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

let me know if you want me to put mx or dns service on cub.

[solarbird]

We need a secondary that works, at least minimally. I would very much like it if you could set up and get me the zone info.

MurkMUSH still online

[solarbird]

The MurkMUSH is still online at 209.20.199.4. DNS isn't working for you yet, but if you're a MurkMUSH regular, you can get on by using the IP address instead of the domain name.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

CUB.ANDOR.ORG 199.170.200.10

it's registered and running. let me know what domains you want me to serve and where the primaries are, and i'll get it right up, or hand me the info and i'll set up cub to primary.

Re: MurkMUSH still online

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm. I can't seem to log in, but that's because I was routed through lodestone, right?

Re: MurkMUSH still online

[solarbird]

Yes. Use the IP address (209.20.199.4) instead of the domain name (mush.murkworks.net). You shouldn't have been using lodestone.murkworks.net anymore anyway.

Re: MurkMUSH still online

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

I'm just clueless then, cause when I tried to telnet to that address, it didn't work and when I tried ssh from my Mac it wanted a name and password, and none of my names/passwords would work. I don't know how else to get there.

Re: MurkMUSH still online

[solarbird]

Type this in the RUN box:

telnet 209.20.199.4 4201

You can't log on and use tinyfugue to get to the MUSH that way. You have to connect to the MUSH directly, using telnet on your local machine.

[solarbird]

I've got door serving a skeletal primary for murkworks.net, including reverse. Traest said he could get lookups off us; can you?

I'd like you to be our secondary for murkworks.net, since farm.net is fuxx0red. 209.20.199.3 is answering (again) via a door alias, so that'll make other changes minimal.

Re: MurkMUSH still online

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the Mac doesn't have a "Run" option and it only seems to have ssh, not telnet, and I don't dare turn on the PC.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

ok, now serving .net (and .org while i was at it) with 209.20.199.3 as master.

No luck yet with the new mail machine

[solarbird]

Looks like the on-motherboard drive controllers for the used machine we were going to use as the new mail server are toast. Or at least, we can't use them. I don't know (or at this point care) why. I'm going to try to get a new barebones machine at Computer Stop tomorrow and hopefully get that running.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

can i get the files for mimi's website, and can we update her dns to point to cub? i can host it here.

[solarbird]

that should work, now that i have dns minimally running. i'm just getting breakfast - give me a few minutes and pop onto the murkmush?

[solarbird]

i've gone ahead and updated dns so that sunandmoonmurals.org and www.sunandmoonmurals.org points to cub. she can start uploading any files she has available at any time.

if they're only on loadstone, that's going to be a Problem (tm).

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Alas that is the problem. All of the files I have are on lodestone. :} Hence why I was upset and worried about the whole thing. :P Also, the website address is sunandmoonmurals.com, not .org. :)

Thanks for trying though. I'll check in with Anna when she gets back and see if there isn't some way to pull the relevant files off of the backup. At the worst I can at least doctor up a site that explains why there is no site. :}

Re: MurkMUSH still online

[annathepiper]

ssh should work just fine for getting to the mush as long as you specify the port number. So if you go ahead and tell your ssh 209.20.199.4 4201, that should still work.

Or, you can hit the mush by door.murkworks.net 4201, which should also in theory work; I got there from here this weekend, or more specifically, from my drizzle account.

[annathepiper]

I will, indeed, be able to pull your files out of backup; I can just do that on scouter. The tricky part will be getting them out to Vicka's site. But we'll work something out!

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

Woot! You are a fabulous Anna. In fact all of you have been very fabulous and I thank you very much and very deeply. :) Perhaps at the worst we can burn then onto some sort of media and mail it to her? Fortunately everything needed should be in two files - murals and artwork. :)

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

er ... DIRECTORIES. Yeah. Two directories - murals and artwork. ;) Duh.

Messages I didn't think I'd ever see a few years ago

[solarbird]

"mkswap: warning: truncating swap area to 2097144kB"

I'm using one of Paul's old 6G drives as a separate swap drive for better swapping performance. I didn't realise there was a 2G limit to swap. It makes me giggle. I have to keep saying, "They're GIGS. They're GIGS. They're GIGS." when dealing with things like the partition table. ^_^ ("Is 25 megs really enough for sys... oh right.")

[annathepiper]

Update on this, hon...

I have a backup of lodestone that dates back to 4/13. I can pull your entire account out of that, and once we do that, I can arrange to ftp the relevant files up to Vicka's site. She and I will work something out for that.

So we'll get your web page back up and running, though it won't have any changes you might have made to it SINCE then.

In the meantime, Dara and I will also be working on doing data recovery off of lodestone once we have the new server online. Please note: we will be putting a NEW PLAN into place. This plan is that web pages and the web server will be on one box--which will be lodestone, as soon as it has been reformatted and made secure again. Everything else, mail, all non-web user accounts, and such will go onto the new server, which is going to be called newmoon.

What this means for you is that your account will be restored to the newmoon server, but your web page will live on lodestone... so I can help you set it up such that you can have a backup copy of your web pages on newmoon. In the future, this'll mean that if our web space gets compromised again it'll hopefully be easier to pull web pages back up. :P

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have done any updates in quite a long time - other than a small change in text. So that should all be good. Ironically it was me deciding to do some webpage updating that led to discovering the hack the morning afterward. :} Oh the, well, irony. ;)

So if I'm understanding you right, it might be possible to recover some stuff off of the current lodestone version? That would be lovely, though I don't think I would lose anything I couldn't live without, but it's always nice to have everything back if possible. I think the only thing I will have lost are the logs I've made since RPing on Aether again, which I would love to have but won't kill me to lose.

The new plan sounds wise. I know there probably isn't anything I can do to help, but if there -is- something, please feel free to poke me ... even if it's just plying you with Remington Steele or something so you don't go crazy or taking you out for "breaks". :)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

haven't managed to run into you on the mush. will keep trying...

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

call me at work (617 724 7755) so we can set you up an ssh-able account on cub.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

call me at work (617 724 7755) so we can work out an ssh transfer of the data.

[annathepiper]

I've got that data ready, finally; do you want me to call you, or do you want to just pop onto the Murk MUSH?

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

mushwards ho.

[annathepiper]

I would adore going to see The Bourne Supremacy with you! Though we'll have to see when a good time would be--right now Dara and I are kind of hoping to get at least enough stuff to technically 'move in' at Murk North by Tuesday, so after I have my surgery, I can recover there instead of here.

In the meantime--Vicka should now have a copy of your web page files from 4/12 over on her machine. I also have copies of your non-web-page files sitting on door right now--I can put them into your account space on newmoon, if you want.

It will indeed to be possible to get some of your data back off of lodestone. But that probably won't be until after we move the servers to Murk North, and we have the time to actually sit down and go through lodestone's files and evaluate what all got damaged. The main issue with everybody's files on lodestone is going to be whether the hackers fucked with anything else in people's account space besides the index files in the web pages.

We might do something like restore what files we can into a special partition and compare them against the files recovered from the 4/12 backup, and if anything flags as suspicious in the lodestone files, we can replace it with the same file from the backup. Does that make sense?