NikonGear'23

The NikonGear Office => Site Issues => Topic started by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 01:29:59

Title: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 01:29:59
I spent a few hours last night trying to make Site5 support understand what mess they had created for us. Even their LiveChat didn't function well. For example, communication literally was one-way only. Quite frustrating.

The first hours were a waste of time, due to the smart-alecks answering my chat messages. That the hosting provider was responsible for the mess was beyond their wildest imagination. Only when a female support tech came online did we see progress. She understood immediately what was wrong and worked for about 1 hour to get all bits and pieces to their correct position.

Now, ordinary DNS name resolution should work. Do flush your resolver cache if you cannot connect through an alias such as nikongear.com or nikongear.org. The www prefix will work later, not now, but is really superfluous.

For those of you using the HOSTS hack, no harm is done by just leaving the file as is. If we move to another IP or hosting company we surely will announce that well ahead of the change.

Do note the new DNS propagation might take a few hours. Tomorrow everything should be back to normal.

I have a bottle of Laphroaig whisky from my birthday celebration somewhere. Off now to open it.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: armando_m on October 25, 2016, 01:33:47
Good ! thanks for all the hard work
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Frank Fremerey on October 25, 2016, 01:34:54
I get my birthday Laphroig to join you in celebration (15 year variety)
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 01:48:28
Oh YES. Currentlydown.com now reports nikongear.net is UP.

The days of angst and despair have ended.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: David H. Hartman on October 25, 2016, 01:56:06
Thank You for the hard work. It's very good to see NikonGear up again!

Best,

Dave Hartman
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 01:59:37
The idyllic days of peace and quiet are drawing to an end. Traffic will soon pick up again.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Hugh_3170 on October 25, 2016, 02:01:52
Thank you and Erik for your good work in resolving the messes brought on by others.

Laphroaig works well for me with smoked trout and salmon. YMMV, but enjoy either way.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Akira on October 25, 2016, 02:06:22
I set the DNS inquiry to default (auto) and can get here with no problem.

Again and again, thanks for your effort!
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 02:07:58
The aliases to NG: nikongear.com, nikongear.org might not be fully operational until tomorrow, but the core .net domain resolves even with the www prefix. I'll sort out the minor wrinkles remaining after getting some hours of sleep.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Akira on October 25, 2016, 02:27:10
Hope you can sleep well now, Bjørn!
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: RobOK on October 25, 2016, 02:54:15
Of course this little episode made us all realize how addicted we are to this site, the great people, and the constant learning!

Glad you are back and relatively unscathed!

I took the time to go out and shoot my daughter's soccer game with my Df.   Maybe we need a thread "What i did when NG was down"!

Cheers guys,
Rob.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: JohnBrew on October 25, 2016, 02:59:00
Thanks for the hard work, guys. I really appreciate Erik keeping us in the loop while things were screwed up.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Matthew Currie on October 25, 2016, 03:03:56
Well done and thanks. 
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Mikes on October 25, 2016, 03:12:16
Many thanks for your efforts, Bjørn, Eric and the team. I can only imagine how much effort this issue took to resolve.

Mike.

Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: richardHaw on October 25, 2016, 04:01:10
good job! I did not know what happen, i just thought that the server got tired and decided to go on a holiday :o :o :o

who would want to do something like this? and on a photography site, no less. ::)
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: aerobat on October 25, 2016, 04:33:49
Many thanks Bjørn,

Ich have changed my hostfile back to normal and can reach nikongear.

Have a good day
Daniel
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: MFloyd on October 25, 2016, 04:37:19
Thanks for the efforts. Happy that NikonGear is online again 😉
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Airy on October 25, 2016, 05:50:33
Everything is fine indeed. Enjoy the Laphroaig!
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bent Hjarbo on October 25, 2016, 09:37:48
Thank you for the hard work.
Nikongear was missed badly.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Jakov Minić on October 25, 2016, 11:29:35
Just to add thanks to Jan Anne who was also providing hacking tips in the background, and there was one time when only he was online :)
Thank you Jan Anne!
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 11:32:01
We should extend our thanks to every one except for DDOS hackers and Site5 support :D

I'll keep my HOSTS configuration anyway as this is my recipe for eschewing connectivity issues in general.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Thomas Stellwag on October 25, 2016, 11:44:12
thx to the team
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Frank Fremerey on October 25, 2016, 11:47:54
attachments cannot be seen
pictures get corrupted in the upload process
my pictures are randomly deleted by admins
not good. unusable for me.

Admin comment: we do NOT "randomly delete" your pictures. What nefarious activity might go on here needs to be investigated, but don't accuse us of doing something we don't do at all, please.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 12:28:03
As of now, also all the aliases to NG work as they should. Apparently I ticked the right boxes this morning :D Mail notification should be functional as well.

NG thus can be accessed though nikongear.net, nikongear.com, nikongear.org, with or without any 'www' prefix. The rationale of the aliased sites is two-fold, firstly, they trap existing references to content posted on the 'old' NG, secondly, we can set up diversified services later on.

Besides these aliases, the backdoor approach through fiercebearofthenorth.com works as before.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Jørgen Ramskov on October 25, 2016, 13:43:42
Yehaa! :D

Thanks and thanks Erik for keeping us updated. Damn those "smart" toasters...
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Mike G on October 25, 2016, 13:52:28
It's nice to have you back.

I can't quite understand why anyone would need a "smart toaster"? Just want the thing to work.  ;D
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: DougB on October 25, 2016, 14:31:51
Welcome back & thanks for the hard work
Too bad you can't afford to buy the new scotch & you have to suffer with that old stuff  8)
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Jørgen Ramskov on October 25, 2016, 15:26:51
It's nice to have you back.

I can't quite understand why anyone would need a "start toaster"? Just want the thing to work.  ;D

There's an insane amount of silly IoT devices, basically poorly maintained, insecure small computers and connected to the internet. A disaster waiting to happen and the wait ended the other day.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: BW on October 25, 2016, 15:41:56
Shit! I was actually able to get some work done during the down time ;)
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on October 25, 2016, 16:01:10
Just to clarify: NG never actually was *down*, but normal connectivity was lost since Friday night until last night. Using the suggested HOSTS file hack, no problem getting to the server and the forum. A lot of members managed this. However, as the mail server temporarily was disconnected, we could not send out a Newsletter to inform our entire membership. That has been taken care of today.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Andrea B. on October 25, 2016, 16:33:59
Finally made it back! Turns out our router needed a reboot & reset to clear up everything.

Richard, the attack was not directed at Nikongear. It was a general denial-of-service attack by a hacker group in the US directed against an internet backbone group in the US. The hacker group also took over many devices like web cams, laptops, and routers. Nikongear was simply "collateral damage".
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: jhinkey on October 25, 2016, 16:56:07
I spent a few hours last night trying to make Site5 support understand what mess they had created for us. Even their LiveChat didn't function well. For example, communication literally was one-way only. Quite frustrating.

The first hours were a waste of time, due to the smart-alecks answering my chat messages. That the hosting provider was responsible for the mess was beyond their wildest imagination. Only when a female support tech came online did we see progress. She understood immediately what was wrong and worked for about 1 hour to get all bits and pieces to their correct position.

Now, ordinary DNS name resolution should work. Do flush your resolver cache if you cannot connect through an alias such as nikongear.com or nikongear.org. The www prefix will work later, not now, but is really superfluous.

For those of you using the HOSTS hack, no harm is done by just leaving the file as is. If we move to another IP or hosting company we surely will announce that well ahead of the change.

Do note the new DNS propagation might take a few hours. Tomorrow everything should be back to normal.

I have a bottle of Laphroaig whisky from my birthday celebration somewhere. Off now to open it.
Thanks for all the unnecessary hard work to bring the site back.
Hopefully, in the future, it will be possible to hunt down the entities responsible for such DDOS attacks and put them in jail as this is a form of very expensive vandalism in the cyber space of today's world.
Plus, I hope international standards for device security are placed on the manufacturers of these cheap connected devices to help prevent this from happening in the future.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Andrea B. on October 25, 2016, 17:32:46
A lot of the problem with home devices is that their owners never change the factory password. So these devices remain very easy to hack. I hope our members here are very careful with any device which they put "online". Factory passwords are often phrases like "1234" or "password".

Even though our wireless router has a strong password and was not taken over during the DoS attack, it seemed to get hung up a couple of times. A reboot cleared up everything fortunately.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Akira on October 25, 2016, 18:14:50
I received storm of notification emails possibly on hold during the down time.   :o ;D :o ;D 8)
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: John G on October 25, 2016, 18:45:25
On my commute now, with NG on the CellPhone.
Bloody Marvelous. 😁
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Thomas G on October 25, 2016, 20:15:48
Nice. Welcome Back!
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Jørgen Ramskov on October 25, 2016, 20:24:49
A lot of the problem with home devices is that their owners never change the factory password. So these devices remain very easy to hack. I hope our members here are very careful with any device which they put "online". Factory passwords are often phrases like "1234" or "password".

That is, I believe, what they take advantage of. I don't really think it is the users fault, they don't know better, but the manufacturers of these devices should make sure their devices never showed up on the internet with a default password. We have regulations for a lot of other stuff, but in the IT world it's the wild west.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: FriskoKry on October 25, 2016, 20:44:56
Thanks for all the work you've put into getting back NG to the world (or vice versa).

Ardbeg is not far away. Skål Björn!
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Jan Anne on October 25, 2016, 23:22:37
Just to add thanks to Jan Anne who was also providing hacking tips in the background, and there was one time when only he was online :)
That was indeed a very surreal experience, like a virtual equivalent of walking through a ghost town  ;D ;D
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Akira on October 26, 2016, 02:59:58
Good job, Jan!
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: MILLIREHM on October 26, 2016, 12:59:37
Good to have you back. Thanks for all the efforts behind
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Frank Fremerey on October 27, 2016, 00:57:52
After days of flaws and quirks, this evening the sever is very responsive and everything seems to work fine as it did before the crash. Thank you again.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bent Hjarbo on March 29, 2017, 13:34:09
To day I have intermittent problems getting access to the site, well just now I an connected ;-)
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bjørn Rørslett on March 29, 2017, 13:40:13
No reports on connectivity issues in the server log. In fact, even well before the end of the month, we have an all-time high visitors record !!

Apart from flushing your browser cache, at present I can offer no further advice. If problems persist, do notify us.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bent Hjarbo on March 29, 2017, 14:24:03
It seems to be a strange thing with MacOS and Safari, I can use Firefox on the Mac. But it will connect at times even with Safari.
On my Linux laptop, as I am writing on now it works as well.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bent Hjarbo on March 29, 2017, 15:10:00
Just to inform you, I have several sites that do not load, can't find the server, on my Macs and other Apple product, using Safari, but even using Chrome on my iPad gave problems, so maybe some special DNS routing here in Denmark is the culprit. I can as an example not find the Danish Radio site.
Firefox seem at the moment the best option.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Jørgen Ramskov on March 29, 2017, 15:22:10
You could try to use a different DNS server like https://blog.uncensoreddns.org/dns-servers/
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Bent Hjarbo on March 29, 2017, 15:42:21
I did a reset on my DSL modem and all my WiFi routers, seem to help ;)
Found that it did work with my 3G/4G connection, so problem must be inhouse or at by internet provider.
Title: Re: We are BACK
Post by: Andrea B. on March 29, 2017, 20:34:35
Thanks for the update.  "-)