Page 2 of 4
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Tue May 13, 2025 5:19 pm
by HiFi Kabin
Everyone (you and I included) who isn't logged on is a guest, so no it won't work
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Tue May 13, 2025 5:41 pm
by Felix
HiFi Kabin wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 5:19 pm
Everyone (you and I included) who isn't logged on is a guest, so no it won't work
Does that mean we would not be able to find the site to log in?
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Tue May 13, 2025 5:50 pm
by HiFi Kabin
Felix wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 5:41 pm
HiFi Kabin wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 5:19 pm
Everyone (you and I included) who isn't logged on is a guest, so no it won't work
Does that mean we would not be able to find the site to log in?
Exactly so
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Tue May 13, 2025 10:55 pm
by Supermofo
MrLongbeard wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 11:59 am
OK, OK, subscription renewed, there are easier ways to persuade me
My Sub ran out today! Over the weekend I thought I'd do it Monday but the universe decided not! Tried earlier and couldn't for some reason but seems to have gone through now.
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:18 pm
by weeksy
Bear with us guys... honestly i'm working on it.
Update here..
Message: Hello Steve,
We regret to inform you that there has been a critical security incident on server s3945.lon1.stableserver.net regarding your domain revtothelimit.co.uk. The server experienced a flood of requests, with a rate of 229.0 requests per second.
To mitigate this security threat, we have taken immediate action by adding a rule to the .htaccess file for your domain. The following rules have been implemented:
deny from all
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [R=500,L]
These measures are aimed at preventing further unauthorized access and protecting the integrity of your website.
We advise you to review your website's security measures and consider implementing additional safeguards to prevent future incidents such as using Cloudflare and set to under-attack mode (
https://developers.cloudflare.com/funda ... ttack-mode). Should you require any assistance or have further concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to our support team.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Trust and Safety Team
So basically from there we've regsitered, deployed and implemented Cloudflare which is a security package that stops 'bots'.
For whatever reason, the website (and lots of others) has come under attack from bots.
cloudflare shows some interesting stats on http requests.
Vietnam 299,647
Brazil 148,060
Indonesia 16,436
India 2,356
United States 768
I'm currently installing, configuring and trying to stop this.... I'm using all of their inbuilt 'free' tools, but if we want to keep this place going we may need to consider whether we purchase their full suite, which i think is £210 per year...
I know i know.. it's not ideal... but it comes down to how much you lot want/need this place.
When they allowed it back 20 mins ago the CPU was peaked at 99% hence why you/we couldn't really get in. So i've deployed stronger security which i'm hoping has lowered it, it was 61% last time i looked, but i'll need to work out and see what it was say 3-4 days ago as i've never needed to see beofre so don't know
All i can say is,
@HiFi Kabin was working on stuff today/yesterday and of course i'm working on it now...
How far i'll get, i don't truthfully know.
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:25 pm
by MrLongbeard
weeksy wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 10:16 am
Most users ever online was 60536 on Mon May 12, 2025 5:29 am
Well that escalated quickly
Most users ever online was 180834 on Wed May 14, 2025 6:03 am
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:28 pm
by weeksy
Didn't it just... that's basically what we and Cloudflare are trying to stop... but this is my first time on this software and i really don't know much about it at the moment... I can see the CPU is doing some work but not always maxed now, i've set the 'users online' to 5 minutes so we can gauge how we're doing a little better.. but i honestly thought now we've implemented Cloudflare that would be a LOT lower.
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:28 pm
by Supermofo
If necessary £200 quid between a bunch of us seems fair value for money to keep the place going.
I've had 5-6 spam calls to my mobile and a couple to my landline in the last couple of days. Don't know if that's potentially the M&S hack where I think I've made an order a while back or just general increase in shit housery
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:35 pm
by weeksy
ts by
Steve Weeks, on Flickr
I'm optimistically hoping this shows that the settings are getting there and the figures dropping... but ... well, lets see
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:37 pm
by Mr. Dazzle
I get the subjected to the Voight-Kampff test when I visit this site now, which is new. Seen it on loads of other sites but first time here.

Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:49 pm
by Mr Moofo
Count Steer wrote: Tue May 13, 2025 10:38 am
Might have excommunicated Moofo - in Japan.
Oh no , they haven’t
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 2:56 pm
by Yorick
I'll bung some dosh in if necessary.
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 3:03 pm
by weeksy
Well lets not get too hasty just yet... but... well it's still showing a LOT of guests.
Cloudflare seems to be pretty good, but still, their 'chat' only seems to be open to 'business plan' which is $200 per month LOL... so that ain't happening. They have a pro which is $20 per month or $240 per year...but i need to look into that.
At the moment though i do need to do some actual work reconfiguring VMWare clusters.
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 3:14 pm
by weeksy
The actual number of bots doesn't worry me as such, but clearly it worries our ISP/Provider/Host, which can and may mean they take it down if it gets insane... but i don't know at the moment where acceptable>insane is with them.
Currently the board is running happily (with more guests than i think is acceptable) so i'm not going to lose sleep just yet.
I would say sorry for the outages... but i'm pretty sure there's not a lot i could have done here

Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 3:15 pm
by Count Steer
I reckon it's orchestrated by Faceberk, trying to crush the last pockets of rebel resistance.
Freeeeeedooooom!
PS Do you know if the server people are running any other instances of PHP?
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 3:33 pm
by ogri
Nice to be back, thought i had upset someone

Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 3:36 pm
by weeksy
Well lets not say it's forever... but i've got shit to do lads

Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 5:07 pm
by Horse
FWIW another board I use has suffered similarly.
Don't know what security they're now using, but it takes several seconds to load now.
Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 5:20 pm
by cvilla
5.19pm Wed 14th;
Apparently I am human

forum is working and it says at the bottom users browsing just me and 0 guests and no bots!
Keep up the good work, all appreciated

Re: Major board outage, 12/5/2025 info.
Posted: Wed May 14, 2025 7:36 pm
by asmethurst99
Logged in just now from my iPad - had the are you human question but it’s running quicker (seems to be )