ACCIDENTAL BAN OF EVERYBODY'S IP ADDRESS—sorry, fixing it as quickly as I can.

[emk]

It looks like the anti-spam tools were broken by the migration to the new forum. I'm fixing it. You are not banned! (I mean, unless you're a spammer. Or you were banned before today.)

Many apologies, more soon.

[emk]

It looks like the anti-spam tools were broken by the migration to the new forum. I'm fixing it. You are not banned! (I mean, unless you're a spammer. Or you were banned before today.)

Many apologies, more soon.

OK, it looks like rdearman just beat me to the fix.

What I think happened: As part of try to get the Super Challenge bot back online, we needed to install a "reverse proxy" server, which acts as a "front end" and directs traffic to either the forum, or a the Super Challenge bot, depending on the website name used. Generally, the reverse proxy tries to say, "Hey, it's not me sending this data; I'm just forwarding it for address XYZ."

But sometimes either the reverse proxy forgets to tell the software it's forwarding to, or the software it's forwarding to is clueless. And so when we hit the button that says, "Yeah, sure, ban that spammer's network address," the forum bans the reverse proxy instead, because that's where it saw the traffic coming from. Talk about an "own goal."

I could still log in, because I'm administrator and we're not allowed to ban ourselves, because that would be incredibly annoying to fix.

My huge apologies. I was very likely the person who banned the spammer, and thus accidentally confused phpBB into banning the reverse proxy. I'm also the person who set up the reverse proxy. So any way you figure this, it is almost certainly 100% my fault when you get right down to it. My humble apologies for scaring everybody.

[neumanc]

Thanks a lot for fixing the forum so quickly. I am so happy that I am not banned. To be honest, it was quite a shock to read "You are permanently banned from this board." It left me thinking: Life without ALLF might be possible, but is it also meaningful? Glad that I don't have to find it out.

[tomgosse]

So any way you figure this, it is almost certainly 100% my fault when you get right down to it. My humble apologies for scaring everybody.

For that you get fifty lashes with a wet noodle.

[aaleks]

Just a question . I logged in twice after forum started to work again and the both times I wasn't able to do at the first attempt because of:

You exceeded the maximum allowed number of login attempts. In addition to your username and password you now also have to solve the CAPTCHA below.

I gave answers to those puzzels/question and than was/is in. Is it a kind of 'bug' or it supposed to be so?

[tomgosse]

Actually, I thought I broke the forum when I posted my 1000th post. I was afraid I overloaded some kind of bucket or something.

[emk]

Thanks a lot for fixing the forum so quickly. I am so happy that I am not banned. To be honest, it was quite a shock to read "You are permanently banned from this board." It left me thinking: Life without ALLF might be possible, but is it also meaningful? Glad that I don't have to find it out.

Yeah, so sorry. The anti-spam tool is very useful, but the forum is definitely not honoring the IP address correctly from the reverse proxy.

I'm going to ask rdearman if he has the ability to send an email notice to all forum members saying what happened. I have no idea how to do that, but he might know.

Apparently the fix is to configure something called mod_rpaf, which will give phpBB a clue about about the reverse proxy. Sigh. Some days I really hate software. Why phpBB doesn't make this a switch in the admin panel, and why the anti-spam tools don't notice what's going on and warn us, I don't know. This is an incredibly common setup.

[Bluepaint]

Just a question . I logged in twice after forum started to work again and the both times I wasn't able to do at the first attempt because of:

You exceeded the maximum allowed number of login attempts. In addition to your username and password you now also have to solve the CAPTCHA below.

I gave answers to those puzzels/question and than was/is in. Is it a kind of 'bug' or it supposed to be so?

Supposed to be so. It is an anti-spam measure from one of the times we were getting hugely spammed. Anytime a mod would log in throughout the day they would be met with dozens and dozens of first-posts waiting to be manually approved. And they were mostly for 'medicines' or for graphic porn (with embedded videos!) so the Captcha helps to reduce our workload.

[Bluepaint]

So any way you figure this, it is almost certainly 100% my fault when you get right down to it. My humble apologies for scaring everybody.

For that you get fifty lashes with a wet noodle.

Wet noodle you don't half crack me up!

[Stefan]

I ended up buying Assimil French and refreshing Esperanto. To whom should I forward the bill?