Task force TalkChess access

[hgm]

First of all switch to https: instead of http:

This shouldn't be to difficult with a certificate of 'Let's Encrypt'

Well, as long as the ftp access isn't restored, there isn't anything I can do. And even when the access gets restored, I would not have any access to any of the servers. Just to the files in the public tree of the HTTP server.

[mvanthoor]

The (gzipped) database was 203MB.

I have now rented a VPS, and installed Ubunto 20.04 plus the Light TPD HTTP server on it. The website still only consists of the standard welcome page, and can be accessed at http://212.114.109.12 . It is accessible through ssh and ftp. I have already installed MySQL, but have not configured it in any way yet.

Assistance from someone with MySQL experience would be appreciated. I will continue with this tomorrow.

Hi HGM,

Instead of Lighttpd server, I'd personally run Apache 2. For PHPBB, you'd obviously need PHP. If you're running the latest version of PHPBB, you'd have to check which PHP versions it supports. You may need to use 7.4, or 8.x. On Linux, it's not easy to install a version different from the one in the repository automatically; but for Ubuntu, there may be PPA's. (No experience with PPA's here.) Even after you get PHPBB running, you'd have to make sure that tis version actually works with the existing database. There may have been changes over time. It would be safest to first install the version of the forum we're now on, and then do a migration later (if at all possible; it may be difficult or impossible if the version difference between our version and the latest version is big).

For handling MySQL, I'd recommend using phpMyAdmin to dump the database on the current server and then restore it on the new one.

I hope this helps somewhat.

Unfortunately I don't have time to actively help with this (as you may have noticed, I haven't been active for about 8 weeks. Due to being very busy with work, I've put chess programming to the side for some time, and I'm just slowly getting back into it again.)

[hgm]

Well, as you can see at the link all these problems have already been solved. I am not sure anymore what HTTP server I am running, though. It could be that in the process of following the install tutorials lighttpd got replaced by Apache2. But whatever is running, it appears to work. And phpBB was updated from 3.2.2 to 3.3.4, including the database update.

By the way, I now moved all scripts the forum was using (e.g. for FEN) onto the server, so that it doesn't have to access my own website anymore.

The poll feature still seems broken, though. Some users can vote, but not everyone.

[mvanthoor]

Well, as you can see at the link all these problems have already been solved.

Very good. As far as I've been able to gather, Talkchess now runs as an also-ran website on the ChessUSA server. Is it your intention to move Talkchess.com to this rented VPS permanently? Assuming you're paying for that VPS yourself, I'd be willing to make a contribution towards that. I would also be willing to function as some sort of last-ditch option of "site rescue person", to copy it from the VPS and move it somewhere else, if that is ever necessary for whatever reason.

(I assume you, or someone else, keeps a regular backup of the forum and the database.)

Talkchess may not contain information on the very bleeding edge of chess engine programming (particularly neural networks), but it does contain a lot of information about classical alpha/beta chess engines. Even now that there are hundreds of engines already, new ones are still being written as a hobby. (Trying concepts, new programming languages, or just as a step-up to add a neural network later.) Just like CPW, I'd hate so see the forum lost, because it would lose a HUGE amount of useful information.

[ydebilloez]

First of all switch to https: instead of http:

This shouldn't be to difficult with a certificate of 'Let's Encrypt'

Moving to https instead of http does not increase a lot the security of the forum. It slows down somewhat denial of service attacks but at the same time increases server load for each connection. If you want this, I suggest you put a lighthttp with Let's Encrypt as a proxy in front.

HTTPS will protect transmission of log-ins against man in the middle attacks. Content protection is meaningless because the forum is public anyway. In short, HTTPS has no added value if you talk about chess. We are not Google or Facebook that want to make blocking parts of their offerings impossible neither.

To protect the webserver, you should make sur to have a recent version of PHP, phphBB, mariadb, ... And apply patches regularly. Correct configuration of the complete environment is key. Think of fail2ban and do not open MySQL/mariadb externally.

I have extensive knowledge of MySQL minimal PHP. I have even set-up a new environment to host the forum on one of my hosting-servers. (http://chess-comp.org/) (Amsterdam) current blocked for all but me because unfinished work. I also installed phpBB to play around a bit. Happy to assist on my spare time.

I can offer a shared hosting with 3 GB storage. Donations remain welcome

[hgm]

[Moderation] As the topic from here on focused on the ownership of TalkChess, and I wanted to keep this thread for resolving technical issues of the forum software, I split the thread. The discussion on ownership can be continued at forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=78174 .

[hgm]

I still have some problems with the clone of TalkChess: it is not possible to register as a new member there. The problem seems to be in the captcha that should be displayed on the registration page; this is apparently a non-standard one, which is not installed in the clone, (which started its life as a standard phpBB 3.3.4 install), but the page tries to invoke it.

Problem is that in the Admnin Control Panel, where the captcha could be disabled or another one selected, the same crash happens, because it tries to show a preview of the currently selected captcha. So this page is also blank.

Any ideas how this could be solved?

[hgm]

I have not had a single '403 Forbidden' error on talkchess.com today, which is very unusual, as these past months I could virtually never connect. But I discovered something interesting. I took a look in the board's 'admin log', which lists the IP addresses from which the admin connects. This would obviously only be IP addresses that were not blocked. The interesting thing is that they are all different.

Since we are using CloudFlare as a proxy, I assume that all these IP addresses are form the CloudFlare server. But it seems this 'server' is actually a big cluster, so that the IP address assigned to you when connecting to talkchess.com is randomized. This could explain why it sometimes works, and most other times not: some (most) of the IP addresses CloudFlare could assign to you might still be blocked. Only when you are so lucky as to get an IP that is not blocked the access works.

[mvanthoor]

I still have some problems with the clone of TalkChess: it is not possible to register as a new member there. The problem seems to be in the captcha that should be displayed on the registration page; this is apparently a non-standard one, which is not installed in the clone, (which started its life as a standard phpBB 3.3.4 install), but the page tries to invoke it.

Problem is that in the Admnin Control Panel, where the captcha could be disabled or another one selected, the same crash happens, because it tries to show a preview of the currently selected captcha. So this page is also blank.

Any ideas how this could be solved?

Last time I used phpBB, it supported "plugins" by replacing files or lines of code. (Not really the most robust mechanism...) If you installed a plain phpBB, how is it possible that it still invokes the captcha, assuming that this captcha is actually a plugin / code change?

I could try to take a look at it, but I'd assume that a plain phpBB install would work as normal. The only thing that quickly comes to mind is that the captcha requires a field in the database to be set when registering the new user, which isn't done by the plain phpBB. That could trigger a crash.

[hgm]

I install a plain phpBB (which gives me a virgin forum with only a single posting, and everything works there), but then I change the database name in the config.php file (where this is stored) to that of the TalkChess database which was copied from talkchess.com. I suppose the captcha setting is stored in the database, so that it automatically tries to use the same captcha as we have here. This is the 'sortablescaptcha', which is not in the standard install, but is a standard extension. I downloaded that from the phpbb.com website, and installed it (= unzipped it in the desired directory). This doesn't solve the problem; the page of the Admin Control Panel to configure the captcha still remains blank.