• I'm back! (Nodes marked as busy)

    From CatX@21:1/197 to All on Sat Mar 9 11:17:22 2019
    Sorry for being offline for so long ;__;
    For some reason Mystic keeps marking nodes as busy, this keeps happening
    over and over again. At first I didn't even realise nothing was being
    sent out as I assumed the issue had already been resolved, but now I know
    it hasn't.

    Do you guys have any advice for a more permanent solution, besides having
    to do "./fidopoll killbusy" when I want to send or receive messages?

    I plan on upgrading to A43 by the way, is it stable?

    ¿ÚÂÄ ³ CatX, ³ . . . . . . . . . .
    ÃÁ´. ³ SysOp Of ³ . . : . : . : . : . .
    ³ ÀÙ ³ Trigonia ³ . : . : . .

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A42 2019/02/01 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Trigonia :: (21:1/197) * Sweden (21:1/197)
  • From g00r00@21:1/108 to CatX on Sat Mar 9 11:11:30 2019
    I plan on upgrading to A43 by the way, is it stable?

    This won't be the answer you want to hear, but A43 is only slightly more stable than A42 and thats because A42 is already pretty stable. There is one potential issue with the SSH server. Do you use SSH?

    My BBS has had 100% uptime since I put it online (5 or 6 weeks uptime), no crashes or issues with nodes and its constantly getting spammed because it uses default ports. There are other examples of that too. I am using A43 though.

    There may be something else going on that is leading to this. Are you forcing the BBS to close instead of logging off or doing stuff like "kill -9"? That will do it. When this happens its because Mystic gets shutdown by something forcefully and that does include a crash. But if it were due to a crash, then it should be noted in your log files somewhere and most SysOps know when
    their BBS crashes.

    Even when a crash happens MIS will catch it and clean up the node after some time, so its very odd that even that isn't happening.

    I know there was someone who was very resistant to me when I tried to explain what they were doing with Linux accesses and ownership was wrong, but I don't remember if that was you or not. Access/ownership is sometimes a challenge too.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)
  • From CatX@21:1/197 to g00r00 on Mon Mar 11 10:41:38 2019
    This won't be the answer you want to hear, but A43 is only slightly more stable than A42 and thats because A42 is already pretty stable. There
    is one potential issue with the SSH server. Do you use SSH?

    Yeah.. I use SSH a lot. I don't feel very confident in sending my login
    details in plaintext via school wifi or open hotspots.

    There may be something else going on that is leading to this. Are you forcing the BBS to close instead of logging off or doing stuff like
    "kill -9"? That will do it. When this happens its because Mystic gets shutdown by something forcefully and that does include a crash. But if
    it were due to a crash, then it should be noted in your log files somewhere and most SysOps know when their BBS crashes.

    No.. I don't think that's it. I keep my server up 24/7 and the rare
    times when I do shut it down or restart mystic I do it via "sudo ./mis shutdown". I've never had mystic crash either, and the log files look fine
    as far as I can tell.

    Even when a crash happens MIS will catch it and clean up the node after some time, so its very odd that even that isn't happening.

    I know there was someone who was very resistant to me when I tried to explain what they were doing with Linux accesses and ownership was
    wrong, but I don't remember if that was you or not. Access/ownership is sometimes a challenge too.

    We did discuss it a bit a while ago, but it was more the other way around
    as I set them way too low, allowing pretty much anything :S
    I really need to fix that some day..
    If they were set too high then it would be a potential issue but right now
    I don't think so as it's pretty much the opposite.

    As I don't want to lose SSH access, is there anything else I can do while
    I wait for A44 to arrive?

    Is there some way I can reset part of the BBS to a more default/stock
    format, along with file permissions etc, but also keep all my
    modifications and custom themes?

    Best regards,

    ¿ÚÂÄ ³ CatX, ³ . . . . . . . . . .
    ÃÁ´. ³ SysOp Of ³ . . : . : . : . : . .
    ³ ÀÙ ³ Trigonia ³ . : . : . .

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A42 2019/02/01 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Trigonia :: (21:1/197) * Sweden (21:1/197)
  • From g00r00@21:1/108 to CatX on Mon Mar 11 12:12:44 2019
    As I don't want to lose SSH access, is there anything else I can do while I wait for A44 to arrive?

    There isn't going to be a noticeable difference in A44 because the problem you're having isn't a problem other people are having to my knowledge. I have SSH up on my BBS too on Linux/64 and have never had my nodes filling up with bogus users.

    I'll of course try to help figure out what is going on and fix anything that needs to be fixed but we just have to figure out what is happening before anything is going to get better for you. :(

    Is there some way I can reset part of the BBS to a more default/stock format, along with file permissions etc, but also keep all my modifications and custom themes?

    Well the first to do is to "chown -R /mystic user:user" where user is the user you want associated to Mystic.

    The thing is, if you are starting up Mystic incorrectly, then all of that
    can get out of whack anyway.

    So how do you start up your BBS and do you use SSH on port 22? I want to change my BBS to work in a similar way so I can see if I can get the same problem. I also do not run my BBS as a daemon and it sounds like you do,
    so I will change over to doing that as well.

    If I can get it to happen to me regularly like it is to you, then it should
    be much easier for me to get it fixed up if there is a problem.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/02 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Sector 7 (21:1/108)
  • From CatX@21:1/197 to g00r00 on Tue Mar 12 08:49:16 2019
    Wow, thanks for the fast reply!

    There isn't going to be a noticeable difference in A44 because the
    problem you're having isn't a problem other people are having to my knowledge. I have SSH up on my BBS too on Linux/64 and have never had
    my nodes filling up with bogus users.

    This got me thinking.. while it's still odd that mystic doesn't kill the
    busy nodes after a while, is it possible that setting the "Max Allowed"
    field in the mystic BINKP server config to 5 might simply just be too
    low? For now I've increased it to 10, just in case. The "max BBS nodes"
    field is set to 255 and "Start Hidden" is off.

    I'll of course try to help figure out what is going on and fix anything that needs to be fixed but we just have to figure out what is happening before anything is going to get better for you. :(

    Is there some way I can reset part of the BBS to a more default/stock format, along with file permissions etc, but also keep all my modifications and custom themes?

    Well the first to do is to "chown -R /mystic user:user" where user is
    the user you want associated to Mystic.

    Okay, I did "sudo chown -R user:user /mystic", replacing user with the
    correct name. I've tried this before but it might have helped. How can I determine which user is supposed to be associated with mystic, for
    example is there some special permission that I need to give to the user
    in question?

    The thing is, if you are starting up Mystic incorrectly, then all of that can get out of whack anyway.

    So how do you start up your BBS and do you use SSH on port 22? I want to change my BBS to work in a similar way so I can see if I can get the same problem. I also do not run my BBS as a daemon and it sounds like you do, so I will change over to doing that as well.

    I start mystic via init.d, which then runs a script with root
    permissions, starting the mis daemon. I've also started mystic manually
    via terminal a few times, but nothing changed. I run SSH on port 222, but
    I'm not sure if it is SSH that's causing this. When I have some time over
    I might try to disable SSH and restart to see if anything changes.

    If I can get it to happen to me regularly like it is to you, then it should be much easier for me to get it fixed up if there is a problem.

    If you tell me where to upload I could give you a zip package containing
    most of my BBS if that would help.

    ¿ÚÂÄ ³ CatX, ³ . . . . . . . . . .
    ÃÁ´. ³ SysOp Of ³ . . : . : . : . : . .
    ³ ÀÙ ³ Trigonia ³ . : . : . .

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A42 2019/02/01 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Trigonia :: (21:1/197) * Sweden (21:1/197)