What happened last night?

marens · 2025-03-07 17:56:20

After midnight CET:

Guests online: 701

I didn't have access to try to find the reason, but I visited a few Linux forums that I had bookmarked and nowhere did I see more than 150 guests online at the time.

I don't know if there's a bug in the forum software or something else, but it's really strange.
Of course I would like us to be very popular, but I am realistic and cautious.

The BL forums website was running smoothly and quickly as always.

P.S.
This is just a warning for admins.

Döbbie03 · 2025-03-07 18:42:14

Probably crawlers.

DeepDayze · 2025-03-07 19:22:07

Döbbie03 wrote:

Probably crawlers.

That's the most likely scenario.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-03-07 20:19:05

I saw a similar thing over at daemonforums.org just the other day. I presume the LLM companies have changed their useragents to avoid the current robots.txt blocks. Might take a bit to catch up — I check the BBC's version, they're quite good at keeping current: https://www.bbc.co.uk/robots.txt

That version is different to this site's so perhaps an update is needed.

Pirx · 2025-03-07 22:10:38

Döbbie03 wrote:

Probably crawlers.

Definitely. Not a chance there was 701 people suddenly visiting this forum.

merens wrote:

This is just a warning for admins.

Out of curiosity - how secure/up to date is this forum? The engine seems to be pretty simple (which is good), but the official website is gone and the github repository hasn't been updated in two years.

Last edited by Pirx (2025-03-07 22:13:14)

unklar · 2025-03-08 08:21:05

^As far as I remember, @johnraff also had to 'take over' because no one else was there...

marens · 2025-03-09 02:48:42

^ I think you're right.

@johnraff also said that one of their most valuable moderators had left them, but he didn't name anyone.
As far as I know, @rbh maintained the site, but it's been gone for a long time.

In the meantime, I learned what it means when I see jonhraff-admin and jr2 logged in.
At the same time we were making a dark mode for the BL forums.
He Hydrogen-Dark and I Hydrogen-night (+ Hydrogen-invert).

johnraff · 2025-03-09 06:48:39

marens wrote:

As far as I know, @rbh maintained the site...

Not true in fact.

Anyway, there are a lot of "guests" here these days (170 as I write) and when I looked today after a break of 3 days, about 80 new forum registrations. Very few of those ever continue to the email verification stage though. So yes, a lot of web crawlers...

A warning to all forum users - don't upload any important personal information here. The software only requires a valid email address, and records the IP. That's enough. There should be nothing in the forum database for hackers to steal, even if they manage to get in.

---
@HoaS thanks for the BBC robots.txt
Of course that file only works on an "honour" basis - crawlers are not obliged to pay it any attention - but anyway it wouldn't hurt to (carefully) update ours. Bearing in mind:

mozilla wrote:

While using this file can prevent pages from appearing in search engine results, it does not secure websites against attackers. On the contrary, it can unintentionally help them: robots.txt is publicly accessible, and by adding your sensitive page paths to it, you are showing their locations to potential attackers.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc … Robots_txt

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-03-09 09:35:10

Using / as the path avoids that problem nicely :-)

johnraff · 2025-03-10 02:55:28

^Sorry, I don't understand what you're saying there.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-03-10 14:36:48

The Disallow path for all the LLM ("AI") bots is set to the root directory, which doesn't give away any sensitive file locations.

marens · 2025-03-11 02:54:20

johnraff wrote:

marens wrote:
As far as I know, @rbh maintained the site...
Not true in fact.

Yes, you are right.
I misunderstood this:

hhh wrote:

We are tiny. Right now it's just @johnraff doing the heavy lifting, @rbh moderating the forums, and me doing theming.

https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 58#p128758

But I have an excuse.
That was a long time ago and I'm not a young guy anymore.

johnraff · 2025-03-11 05:59:06

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

The Disallow path for all the LLM ("AI") bots is set to the root directory, which doesn't give away any sensitive file locations.

So any listed bots that are conscientious will refrain from indexing the site. OK nice.
Any other bots will refrain from checking out eg /bitesize/search/ if they're feeling kind.
So the plus side of robots.txt is to "reduce website load and stop unsuitable content appearing in search results" (Mozilla).

There's no security benefit at all.
Any evil bot will just ignore robots.txt and look anyway.
'/' just translates to the web root, so it might not be beyond a reasonably intelligent bot to figure out that /bitesize/search/ is https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/search/

But, agreed, the BBC robots.txt isn't giving away much sensitive info.

Last edited by johnraff (2025-03-11 06:00:41)

johnraff · 2025-03-11 06:04:02

marens wrote:

I'm not a young guy anymore.

Nor am I.

eightysixed · 2025-03-11 06:04:50

Pirx wrote:

Out of curiosity - how secure/up to date is this forum? The engine seems to be pretty simple (which is good), but the official website is gone and the github repository hasn't been updated in two years.

The last official release was over 10 years (Source) ago

Last edited by eightysixed (2025-03-11 09:16:14)

Pirx · 2025-03-11 08:51:11

Wow! And it still works! I really like this forum - simple, fast, easy to use. No PMs, likes, achievements, badges, chats and other social media style crap.

eightysixed · 2025-03-11 09:18:27

Yeah, I really like(d) Flux. It was the last of the good "old school" feel forums.
Fun fact, it had a fun/weird life span too.

PunBB --> FluxBB --> Flarum

Döbbie03 · 2025-03-12 05:34:17

One thing I do like from Discourse is the "heart" function. Just a little thing to show your appreciation without having to reply and possibly derail conversation.

Other than that, FluxBB forever!!

eightysixed · 2025-03-12 07:01:43

Yeah, Discourse is neat but it's a total resource hog unless you want to spend an hour tweaking/optimizing.

Flux was always my favorite, even when vBulletin was all the craze there for a little bit. Flarum is a step above Flux with features, security, flexibility and you can install it on a toaster, but you lose the old school UI/UX, which I'm fond of.

Pirx · 2025-03-12 07:56:09

Döbbie03 wrote:

One thing I do like from Discourse is the "heart" function. Just a little thing to show your appreciation without having to reply and possibly derail conversation.

Yes, something to show appreciation would be nice, but not heart. It looks a little bit childish when someone "loves" technical post with code or terminal output in it.

#1 2025-03-07 17:56:20

What happened last night?

#2 2025-03-07 18:42:14

Re: What happened last night?

#3 2025-03-07 19:22:07

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#4 2025-03-07 20:19:05

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#5 2025-03-07 22:10:38

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#6 2025-03-08 08:21:05

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#7 2025-03-09 02:48:42

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#8 2025-03-09 06:48:39

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