[jola]

As you might have noticed the entire CFD Online site has been down since yesterday evening. It is now finally up and running again. I apologize about the down-time.

Before going to bed yesterday I was just going to run a quick OS-update on the servers. I have done this hundreds of times before, without any problems, but this time the virtual KVM-server running CFD Online refused to start.

Virtual servers are fantastic when they work. You can move your site between hardware nodes and it is easy to update things and create failover servers. But when a virtual KVM server does not start it is very frustrating.... your entire server is just a file, which it is difficult to do anything with.

I was unable to get the site up and running yesterday. But after a few hours of sleep I was finally able to get the server to boot today. It required some manual steps in the boot process. However, once the virtual server had come up everything went back to normal, and now it boots automatically when the hardware node is restarted, as it should.

I apologize about the down-time and the frequent re-boots this morning to debug this. But now I think everything works as it should again, and I am not planning any more reboots today.

If you notice anything that is not working as it should please report it here or via email to webmaster@cfd-online.com. If the site is down please report it as replies to our Twitter or Facebook pages.

[flotus1]

Getting this error when trying to reply to an existing thread:
Specs for a good workstation

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /Forums/newreply.php on this server.

Pretty sure I replied to other threads since the site went back up again, so it might not necessarily be related.

[jola]

Your problem is most likely caused by our spam filters. We have been forced to have fairly aggressive spam-filters to keep the forums reasonably free from spam. You can read more about the problem in my previous post here: Spam filter problems - Forbidden, You Don't have permission to access ...

If you are still having this problem please contact me directly via email (webmaster@cfd-online.com) or with a personal message here on the forums.

[flotus1]

After trying to edit in my message bit by bit in order to narrow down the offending part, I think my IP was temporarily added to a blacklist. Same thing happened yesterday, I can only access the site via mobile internet now.
Message doesn't contain any links or particularly colorful language, I really don't know which part might cause a false positive. I promise, it wasn't spam

[jola]

Yes, testing what causes the problem easily makes the filters block you permanently for a period. Repeated blocks will eventually make the filter block you completely for a period. I apologize about this, it is very irritating, I know. Please email me (webmaster@cfd-online.com) your IP number so that I can review the logs and unblock you. You can find your IP number here: https://whatismyip.com

[jola]

I did some further investigations of this problem. I managed to find in the log files when you were blocked. You were blocked by our commercial ModSecurity filter from Atomicorp. The log says this: "Atomicorp.com WAF AntiSpam Rules: Gambling or Poker Content" I was not able to decipher why your post trigged this rule. The filter contains thousands of rules and sometimes it can be a bit tricky to see the reason for the block since the rules contain very complex regular expressions. Anyway, I have disabled this particular rule now and I hope that you will not be blocked any more.

I have also removed the firewall block of you. This is another filter that after 5 blocks by our ModSecurity filter temporarily blocks your IP number from the entire server.

I apologize about the problem.

[flotus1]

Thanks a lot. I just got around to reporting back to you with my IP.

It makes some kind of sense now why my message was blocked for "gambling or poker". It contained keywords like "slots" and "machines". I was of course referring to PCs and DIMM slots. Pretty hilarious if you asked me, but the spam filter definitely needs some further fine tuning.

For example, I reported this gem of a thread just today:
screenshot_spam.png
At least to a human reading it, this is the poster child for a spam message. New user with zero reputation (i.e. failed to answer all questions), shady link, one-liner message in broken English advertising said link, overall has nothing to do with CFD.
I have seen other forums outright preventing new users from posting links. Moderators had to approve these messages manually before they appeared on the forum. I am not a huge fan of that, it usually caused more trouble than it was worth. But thanks to the reputation system in place on this forum, maybe you could at least prevent new users with zero reputation from posting links. At least if that's how the reputation system works... New users who answered those CFD-related questions correctly start with some reputation score higher than 0?