Help maintain New Mars Forums!

jburk · 2018-06-19 20:41:14

Hi all,

I'm James Burk, the IT Director for the Mars Society. We'd love to get your help with maintaining the forums. We are an all-volunteer staff and could use technical help with updates to FluxBB and overall improvements to the domain newmars.com. It would be great to build out newmars.com to be a news-worthy website with original writings about sending people to Mars. If you would like to work on that, or help us to maintain the FluxBB forums, please drop me an email: jburk@marssociety.org

Thanks,

kbd512 · 2018-06-20 05:06:23

What kind of help do you need?

I've done extensive work on SQL Server and Oracle databases. I've done Java and C# web application programming in the past, but I'd need a week or so to bring myself back up to speed. I mainly do pl/sql programming, performance tuning, and data analytics these days. Without knowing specifically what you need, it'd be hard to know if I can actually help.

I've always wanted to write a useful web app, instead of the play things I've built in the past to entertain myself, that uses an object database. I can explain why that would be particularly useful, if the concept is not well understood.

Edit: A really useful feature would be the ability to have livestream so we can actually talk to each other instead of simply writing to each other. I think a lot gets lost in translation.

Last edited by kbd512 (2018-06-20 05:12:04)

SpaceNut · 2018-06-20 17:17:00

I would agree that you are a good fit to the task as I am just a hack at all of those and would need quite a bit more help.
I do hope that you have the time to devote to the cause and of course you have my vote as it is needed to help maintain this site in good working order as we have a lot to lose if it should go down again.

kbd512 · 2018-06-20 19:54:51

I sent a PM to you. I tried to call JBurk to get more info about what was required, but no dice. I'm reading about FluxBB so I can understand how it works.

SpaceNut · 2018-06-20 20:52:23

The functions of edit, post, quote, create a new topic are all scripts that are part of the free program that sends the data to the sql data base.

JoshNH4H · 2018-06-21 21:47:58

I don't have much skill with regards to programming or site design but I would be glad to write an essay or article for the site, perhaps as a weekly or semiweekly column, if you're looking for content

SpaceNut · 2018-06-22 17:25:39

I would love to see a topic round up with they way some of our topics stray but end up with an even better discussion. Such as the solar on mars we just went through due to the dust storm....

Kbd512 I did send an email to Jburk as well.

jburk · 2018-07-05 19:33:30

Thanks to Danny Murawsky for fixing our CAPTCHA. New user registrations are back up!!

kbd512 · 2018-07-22 20:42:10

jburk,

I responded back to your E-mail stating that I would do whatever you wanted me to do to help maintain the forum, but never received a response back afterwards.

SpaceNut · 2021-01-14 18:00:36

Just an FYI from James the forum has received an upgrade to Newmars from PHP 7.1 to 7.4. Let me know if there were any issues is the request.

Now to dig in and see what the differences are...

tahanson43206 · 2021-01-14 18:44:08

for SpaceNut re #10

Thanks for this update! I'll let you know immediately if I see any differences in how the tools I'm using behave.

As a reminder, FluxBB.org is back up if you want to look for information there.

***
Update after work session 2021/01/15 ... no differences were noted.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2021-01-15 09:13:50)

jburk · 2021-08-07 22:23:42

Hi all, I have updated the Forum to the latest FluxBB (1.5.11). Please let me know of any issues you experience. jburk@marssociety.org

tahanson43206 · 2021-08-07 22:28:37

Hi Mr. Burk!

I just reported the message to SpaceNut ... glad to know you're on top of things !!!

Hopefully this new version will fix the problem of duplicate Bans entries. We've been dealing with a lot of those in recent times!

(th)

SpaceNut · 2021-08-08 07:51:41

Just went to the new version topic https://fluxbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=9472 to check the release information out.

tahanson43206 · 2021-08-08 08:48:52

For SpaceNut re #14 Thanks for the link to the updates notes for the new version...

I am glad to finally announce the next patch release of FluxBB: version 1.5.11.
Feature updates
Increase minimum password length
Prohibit links in topic subjects (based on existing anti-spam permission)
Allow longer SMTP passwords
Return correct HTTP status code on error and maintenance pages (to prevent search engines from indexing)
Prevent duplicate bans
User profiles: Use user's date/time formats, not the viewer's
Improve error message for very short searches
Please check out the details in the full changelog. In addition, this release fixes nine bugs, some of which affect...
Security
Proper CSRF protection for rebuilding the search index, logging in and promoting users
Stop using insecure random number generator on certain PHP versions
Fix insufficient escaping of HTML output in installer and error pages
This release has benefited from contributions by jasonrohrer, nsuchy and Visman. Thank you!
I also want to thank TheBritain, Visman, Li of SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab and Omar Kurt of Netsparker for respectfully and responsibly disclosing security-relevant issues.
Project update
As you know, this is the first release in a long time. I have decided to continue giving FluxBB the maintenance it deserves. However, I need support to achieve this. Before I announce all of my plans, as a token of goodwill and to regain some trust, I plan to release the long-awaited v1.6 within the next few weeks. This release will clean up some of the dusty bits under the hood of FluxBB. By removing support for old PHP and browser versions, we can lay the foundations to carefully modernize the codebase, while staying true to the spirit of FluxBB. This means that 1.5.11 is the last release to support PHP 4 (which is horribly outdated). In addition, 1.6 will get some much-needed love in the realm of security hardening.
With that out of the way: please go ahead and download the new version on the downloads page. If you are upgrading an existing forum, you can find instructions and resources on the upgrade page.
Enjoy using FluxBB and stay tuned for more news on v1.6!
fluxbb.de | develoPHP
"As code is more often read than written it's really important to write clean code."

I note that the update notice was from 2018, so I assume Version 1.6 is still in development.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2021-08-08 08:49:55)

Void · 2023-03-14 20:07:35

I cannot complete the post #43 for "Index» Science, Technology, and Astronomy» Optimism for Energy, accumulation of skills."

Because I am getting the "Internal Server Error".

I will go back and try again.

Last edited by Void (2023-03-14 20:07:54)

tahanson43206 · 2023-03-14 20:19:36

Hi Void!
Thanks for your report.
I am getting the Apache error frequently as well.
SpaceNut wrote to Mars Society and received an acknowledgement.
I got a MySQL error this morning, so hoped someone had rebooted the server.
However, I got the error later today, as did you.

A technique I tried today was to cut text from a post until it is accepted by Preview. Once Preview accepts the post, then Submit will accept it. I don't understand why that would be, unless Preview actually sends the proposed text up to Apache for checking.

In any case, by trimming from the bottom, I found a point where the post was accepted.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-03-15 17:27:23

Have sent off a new message about what we all have been experiencing.

RobertDyck · 2023-03-15 18:27:39

R.I.P. FluxBB

FluxBB was a fork of PunBB created by its developers after Andersson left the project in April 2008. The developers felt that forking was necessary to maintain control over the development process without the influence of commercial interests. As with PunBB, it is released under the GNU General Public License. In July 2008, FluxBB was announced as a finalist in SourceForge.net's 2008 Community Choice Awards in the "Best New Project" category.
Originally a continuation of PunBB's 1.3 branch, it was announced in January 2009 that the then-current 1.3 branch would be discontinued and that FluxBB 1.4 would revert to being based on the 1.2 codebase. For FluxBB 1.4, several features were backported from 1.3, including UTF-8 support, a new default theme, and the ability to split and merge posts. The extension system, however, was not included. FluxBB 1.5 was released in May 2012.
In July 2012, it was announced that FluxBB 2.0, the next major version of the software, would be based on the Laravel PHP framework, with existing work ported to the new framework.
In 2015, FluxBB's lead developer Franz announced they would merge the project with another forum software named "Flarum" alongside esoTalk lead developer Toby Zerner. This caused a brief uproar in the FluxBB community and led to several forks of the FluxBB code. The most recent active continuation of FluxBB was conducted by a community member known as MioVisman, who continued to maintain and update the code throughout the years, publishing unofficial releases of FluxBB with his latest release (February 2021), making FluxBB PHP 8 compatible (https://github.com/MioVisman/FluxBB_by_Visman/releases). On May 31, 2021, it was discovered the official FluxBB dot com (FluxBB.com) website was offline, and as of this writing (June 9, 2021), it remains offline and the domain itself is set to expire, April 26, 2022.
If you were a FluxBB user, welcome to phpBB.

Before the great crash, we used phpBB.

tahanson43206 · 2023-03-16 11:34:05

For RobertDyck re #19

Do you recall any discussion at the time about why/how the decision was made to go with FluxBB.

In the quote you provided, there is mention of FluxBB being a port to avoid commercial interests. From my perspective Franz and his associates did a terrific job of keeping FluxBB going as a labor-of-love for an extended period.

However, as reported elsewhere in the forum (probably in the Housekeeping topic) Franz is married, has a family, and a full time job, and keeping FluxBB going was too much.

I see no reason to change from FluxBB. I am confident we ** do ** need someone to serve as Webmaster .... James Burk filled that role for a number of years, but his new duties have drawn all his time and energy. If the Mars Society has a webmaster to take the place of mr. Burk, I've not heard the news.

We ** do ** need someone able and willing to look at the monster sized Apache run logs, to find out why we've been seeing the Internal Server Error in recent weeks. it is probably a good idea to check the MySQL data base to be sure it is healthy.

(th)

RobertDyck · 2023-03-16 18:49:15

Josh Cryer used to be very involved. He registered in 2001 but last post was in 2018. Maybe he would know. We had a plugin for math. Was very useful.

SpaceNut · 2023-03-18 08:14:59

Part of the issue is that the normal phpbb was crashing after posts within a topic reached the 300 mark which ment not just programming skills but data base msql was also required each time it happened. It also meant that the logs were used to capture and insert those posts into the data base that would be lost otherwise.
At the time Josh Cryer was the one starting near 2005 through to 2010 ish which kept the site running as well as for the hosting location. It was about 2015 that I was looking at the log files when James saved them to a place that I could download them from when He became webmaster for the forum.

As for the current FlexBB it just means we have no further updating capability without module script writers on staff to fix function issues.
I currently have no access to the server via drive mapping to see what is happening and would even if I did take me a bit to see what is there let alone attempt resolving the issue that we are seeing.

If this has and is all sun spot caused then it will subside in a few weeks.

tahanson43206 · 2023-03-18 08:28:39

For SpaceNut re #22

The cause of Apache Server errors is NOT related to sunspots, interesting as that may be.

The cause and remedy of this particular error has been discussed at length by others posting on the Internet. I have provided a list of citations in the Housekeeping topic, or you can just search for the error yourself.

We don't need to be thinking about sunspots. We ** do ** need to be looking at the actual errors as recorded by Apache.

It would seem as though you might be a candidate to assist James Burk, since your prior experience and willingness to work the problem would be a positive indicator.

Please ask Mr. Burk if he would be willing to grant you read-only access to the log files. You can then identify the actual problem, and recommend a solution.

(th)

SpaceNut · 2023-03-18 12:15:44

So the electronic server is hardened against emp good to know as we know that is what a sunspot activity is doing.

Every website needs a web server, and every web server runs on an operating system 06cNQR42ysiexl1692P4CPe-1.fit_lim.size_1600x900.v1625098764.jpg

Not all errors get into the server log as well. Most of what we are seeing is the handshake error of standard communications from 1 IOS to another via the submission button. I see this every day with printer commands that look like the dialog box indicates going to the spooler as if it got the data but in actuality it did not, so it never goes to the printer. This started with the transition to windows 10 and the newest hack of the printer which is patched currently.

I am sure that James has looked at this error log and it's got nothing in it to show what we see, or it would have gone away.

Intermittent problems are the hardest to fix and sometimes it's easier to let it break and then it's really found and fixed.

SpaceNut · 2023-06-14 20:13:42

I began also getting the posting errors or edit post which is the call to the msql data base for php forums and since the front page is word press, we may be seeing other issues of corrupt files.

update
I logged out and just came back in to make a new edit

edit 2
was making post before this and then it started giving errors
and still is making the error in that other post

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2018-06-19 20:41:14

Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#2 2018-06-20 05:06:23

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#3 2018-06-20 17:17:00

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#4 2018-06-20 19:54:51

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#5 2018-06-20 20:52:23

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#6 2018-06-21 21:47:58

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#7 2018-06-22 17:25:39

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#8 2018-07-05 19:33:30

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#9 2018-07-22 20:42:10

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#10 2021-01-14 18:00:36

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#11 2021-01-14 18:44:08

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#12 2021-08-07 22:23:42

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#13 2021-08-07 22:28:37

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#14 2021-08-08 07:51:41

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#15 2021-08-08 08:48:52

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#16 2023-03-14 20:07:35

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#17 2023-03-14 20:19:36

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#18 2023-03-15 17:27:23

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#19 2023-03-15 18:27:39

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#20 2023-03-16 11:34:05

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#21 2023-03-16 18:49:15

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#22 2023-03-18 08:14:59

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#23 2023-03-18 08:28:39

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#24 2023-03-18 12:15:44

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

#25 2023-06-14 20:13:42

Re: Help maintain New Mars Forums!

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