Recent posts

#1

Announcements / Upgraded System

Last post by Xepher - March 30, 2024, 06:57:57 AM

Upgrade time again. Nothing specific, but prompted by a major security breach in a core package (XZ) used by almost every Linux (and BSD) distro on earth today. It doesn't look like any direct exploit or vulnerability happened here on xepher.net, but it made me want to update and verify things generally.

We're still on PHP 8.1 but 8.2 may be coming sooner rather than later. Don't expect any issues there, but, one never expects the Spanish Inquisition. That said, and for now, this round of updates should be "done." If you have any remaining issues or problems, please let me know. And I apologize for the interruptions the past 10 hours or so.

#2

Announcements / Re: Upgrading to PHP 8.1 and M...

Last post by Xepher - September 02, 2023, 04:00:55 AM

Okay, upgrade is complete... I think. Let met know if you have problems. But please try upgrading any php based software first!

#3

Announcements / Upgrading to PHP 8.1 and Maria...

Last post by Xepher - July 17, 2023, 01:36:55 AM

PHP 7.4 is end-of-life, and so mysql 5.7. The real impetus for this change though is that openssl 1.1 itself (which both of these depend on) is going EOL in September as well. Most people hopefully won't be affected in any serious ways, but if you have PHP scripts on your site (such as wordpress) you should make sure you're up to date with the latest version.

I will likely perform this upgrade sometime next week, but depending on how busy I am, may postpone it slightly longer. I aim to have it done by the end of July in any case, so please check your site software for upgrades soon.

EDIT: Upgrade complete. Please upgrade your software if you have issues, and reach out to me if you can't resolve things.

#4

General Chat / What do you plan to do for Chr...

Last post by MeditativeMoney - December 24, 2022, 11:11:36 PM

Myself, I don't have any family or friends, but you never know, that might change.

#5

General Chat / Do you believe in reincarnatio...

Last post by MeditativeMoney - December 22, 2022, 06:53:47 AM

Why or why not?

#6

Technical Support / Re: Weird Message

Last post by Xepher - August 30, 2022, 07:45:57 PM

So... yeah. First off, sorry about that. But over the past few days, the traffic to your site shot through the roof starting about 6 days ago. Unfortunately I was out of town for the last 5 and didn't get to look into it until last night, and was planning to take a longer look at it after work today. Long story short, I think your wordpress install was under heavy attack. There were hundreds of gigabytes of traffic going to a few dozen eastern european and russian IPs, and all of those were continually sending dozens of comments and login attempts every minute. Over a full terabyte of traffic already went to your site before I locked it down. I hope by turning it off for a day or so, it'll kick it out of the botnet's list of targets and maybe the problem will be resolved.

I'm emailing you for further discussion.

#7

Technical Support / Weird Message

Last post by danieljswan - August 30, 2022, 06:55:39 PM

Hi Xepher:

When I tried to access my site earlier I was greeted with a weird message that read:
For security, this account has been disabled. If this is your site, please contact the xepher.net administrator to have your account unlocked.

find enclosed a screenshot I took and any help to get this resolved would be great

thanks

Daniel Swan
Through Daniel's Lens

(http://throughdanielslens.xepher.net/)

#8

Announcements / Due to Upgrade, Password Updat...

Last post by Xepher - October 24, 2021, 09:28:14 PM

Starting next week (November 1st) there will be an upgrade to some of the core system software on the server. This will obsolete old passwords (set before around 2008) which are stored using weaker md5 hashes. Support for those is going away in the cryptography library used by service pieces of software (including SFTP.) Everyone who hasn't changed their password in the past few years will need to do so, or potentially be locked out of some services until they do.

To change your password, go to https://xepher.net/user-services/ and login with your old/current password, then change it. Note that if you use MySQL for things like wordpress, this will change your database password as well, so you may need to update your wordpress (or other software) configs. For wordpress, that typically just means editing wp-config.php. This would also be a good time to make sure that file is secure (it does contain your password after all) so click the properties for that file and set the permissions so ONLY user (you) have read/write access (for you nerd types, "chmod 600 wp-config.php".) Remove the access from group and other/world so no one else can view it. You should do this for any other web software you may be using... any file where you have your own password stored.

If you have any questions or problems, just let me know!

#9

Technical Support / Re: Updating with a Windows ma...

Last post by tmazanec1 - September 07, 2021, 09:45:12 AM

Checked on iPhone and it is changed.
Guess my HP hasn't caught on yet...

#10

Technical Support / Re: Updating with a Windows ma...

Last post by tmazanec1 - September 07, 2021, 08:48:39 AM

I managed to change it, but I am trying to change it again.
When I go to what should be the new page via google, I still get the old page on my screen, but when I click the page on SCP I get the new one.
What is wrong?