Task force TalkChess access

[hgm]

Thanks to Sjrda we now have a clone of TalkChess (as it was a few days ago), at http://212.114.109.12/forum3/ !

You are encouraged to browse it, to see if you can discover any irregularities. You could also try to post there. Beware, though, that this is not the real TalkChess, and that whatever you post there will sooner or later disappear. Because I intend at some point to make a completely up-to-date backup of the real forum, after locking it, and restore the state of the test forum to that.

And then use that new forum for a few days (rerouting any access to the talkchess.com domain to it), to test it under a real load conditions.

[mclane]

Thanks HGM. Thanks Sjrda.

We are maybe sometimes different opinion but i am with anybody who helps to continue the forum WITHOUT these problems we have now here.

We founded this forum 1997 for ALL computerchess friends.
And i find it extremely sad to see some people beeing blocked for random reason.

[smatovic]

The version is : phpBB 3.2.x

I went to the phpBB forum and searched for 403 - forbidden. Most of the time it is related to the : mod_security settings.

Useful readings -

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2547341

https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2475811

I am not sure on this, AFAIK mod_security is not installed by default and should be a primary matter of shared hosting systems, webspaces from ISPs, and it affects only some users. If it is installed you can disable it for all sites via:

Code: Select all

sudo a2dismod mod-security2
sudo apache2ctl restart 

Test if 403 still appears, and reactivate again via:

Code: Select all

sudo a2enmod mod-security2
sudo apache2ctl restart 

As I posted already on the other thread, I don't get quite why these 403 still appear, in my understanding this should not happen with Cloudflare, maybe phpBB thinks it gets flooded by Cloudflare and blocks their hosts? Dunno. Will take a look into vers. 3.2.x for some hints.

--
Srdja

Hmm, sorry, I can not debug this further without having hands-on on the system - a affected user, the Cloudflare setup, the TC phpBB. I can only guess that there is some issue going on between Cloudflare and the TC phpBB that causes the TC webserver or web-app to throw an 403. Cloudflare works like a proxy in between:

https://images.ctfassets.net/slt3lc6tev ... Ps__1_.png

There are mutliple ways how an 403 can be triggered in phpBB, maybe it helps if this module is installed in phpBB, to restore the users IP adress:

https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/exte ... masked_ip/

or this module from Cloudflare in the webserver:

https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us ... 97z77b3XZV

--
Srdja

[towforce]

Thanks to Sjrda we now have a clone of TalkChess (as it was a few days ago), at http://212.114.109.12/forum3/ !

You are encouraged to browse it, to see if you can discover any irregularities. You could also try to post there. Beware, though, that this is not the real TalkChess, and that whatever you post there will sooner or later disappear. Because I intend at some point to make a completely up-to-date backup of the real forum, after locking it, and restore the state of the test forum to that.

And then use that new forum for a few days (rerouting any access to the talkchess.com domain to it), to test it under a real load conditions.

I have created a thread in the "general topics" forum (this forum on the other site) for reporting errors. Maybe it would be better to put that in this copy of the forum?

[hgm]

Strange: when I create an entirely new forum (as on http://212.114.109.12/new ), and define the [ fen] BBcode as it is defined here, posting a FEN surrounded by those code tags displays a position diagram all right.

But when I use it in the TalkChess clone ( http://212.114.109.12/forum3 ), which defines the [ fen] tag the same way (according to the Admin Control Panel), and use it in a new posting, it gets completely ignored. That is, the FEN and surrounding tags just appear as text like I wrote them, like no [ fen] BBcode is defined at all. Same if I define a novel tag [ fen2].

[mclane]

Chess is seen as a virus in THIS forum.

[hgm]

OK, I made some progress. There was apparently a compatibility problem with the version of the database. This could be solved from the phpBB installation menu.

I now upgraded the clone to phpBB 3.3.4 (including the database), and now everything seems to work. Position diagrams appear, user names link to the user's profile, etc. Please come check it out to see if you can discover any flaws:

http://212.114.109.12/tc

[Eelco de Groot]

It looks great here! Thanks! But will we be able to keep this mirror forum? Because the old one seems to be beyond repair. Or can we totally replace that one with the mirror forum eventually? Great job!

[hgm]

Keeping it as a mirror is not possible, or in any case not practical.

The purpose is to create a forum configuration that works well and is hacker-resistant, in order to judge whether the required measures can be ported back to the ChessUSA server. And if not, continue TalkChess where it can.

Seems the efforts are not universally appreciated, though; my ftp access to talkchess.com has been mysteriously revoked.

[Joost Buijs]

Keeping it as a mirror is not possible, or in any case not practical.

The purpose is to create a forum configuration that works well and is hacker-resistant, in order to judge whether the required measures can be ported back to the ChessUSA server. And if not, continue TalkChess where it can.

Seems the efforts are not universally appreciated, though; my ftp access to talkchess.com has been mysteriously revoked.

First of all switch to https: instead of http:

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