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| Alamak News |
 Wed May 3 17:44:10 GMT 2006
Full server reboot for maintenance and to clear the memory cache, we do this kind of maintenance once every couple months.
Wed May 3 17:22:47 GMT 2006
The system admins apologize for being offline for 3 days due to office network failure, we're using gprs and our broadband reciever crashed
Thu Mar 16 10:19:40 GMT 2006
By request from the MY office voting has been disabled in server MY
Mon Jan 23 14:26:13 GMT 2006
Changed icon.cgi to /ops/icon.html which should be a little more efficient that the old cgi version.
Thu Nov 10 11:35:33 GMT 2005
The expiry time deletes all votes from the voting table older than a certain number of days, election times which controls rotation of the elected committee is unchanged.
Thu Nov 10 11:34:25 GMT 2005
Added a Vote Expiry time which is selectable for each server, all servers set so that Votes expire after 180 days except request from SG votes expire after 30 days.
Tue Aug 2 17:35:16 GMT 2005
banish command I mean
Tue Aug 2 17:35:07 GMT 2005
bansih command I mean
Tue Aug 2 17:34:51 GMT 2005
fixed a bug in the /bansih command, i kept dying, guess I am out of practise playing myst
Tue Aug 2 17:34:23 GMT 2005
noticed myst was slow due to DNS problems, removed DNS lookup in the cgi script until problem can be properly fixed, much faster now
Mon Feb 28 23:57:45 GMT 2005
upgrades and fixes to the backup cluster
Wed Jan 26 11:26:10 GMT 2005
We changed password on expired accounts due to some people getting passwords from a loohole in the mailapplication which is now fixed
Fri Dec 24 17:16:00 GMT 2004
upgrades for security to the cc payment page and the mailapp page to prevent password guessing programs to brute force guess passwords
Wed Dec 1 11:50:42 GMT 2004
upgrades to freehome server, some hackers were using password guessing programs to try and hack WuBe's account and driving up server load. Added a bad password timeout.
Mon Nov 8 22:29:44 GMT 2004
deop system upgraded
Mon Nov 8 22:26:02 GMT 2004
many upgrades to chat server fixes for compatibilty to fixes withnew comlevels format, comvotes page fixed to remove deopped ops etc, admin system upgrades for offices, office form setup to sms main office number
Sun Nov 7 21:46:31 GMT 2004
There was a bug in the referrals transfer email when transfering reserve free months for use where emails were sent everyday for those who qualified once. Fixed that more than 2 weeks ago to send 1 emails per each 1 month transfer
Sun Nov 7 21:45:15 GMT 2004
upgrades to the cc billing page, added a ccinfo page for those who have rejected billing, allows secure upload of docuemnts to support manual completion of the transactions
Fri Sep 17 21:54:18 GMT 2004
more fixes to new voting system which did not count the number of elected comms properly
Fri Sep 17 21:18:05 GMT 2004
Upgrades and fixes to Alamak Hangman program
Thu Sep 16 15:38:48 GMT 2004
Changes made to the commitee voting system to reduce cross server voting and turnover of elected commitee. Committee now are elected for a 1 month term and Ops can only vote in 1 server.
Mon Sep 13 0:36:55 GMT 2004
Altered the comvoting system so that an elected Op gets a timestamp, after 1month they become available to be replaced or re-elected with a new timestamp.
Thu Jul 15 19:40:54 GMT 2004
updated server and pages to prevent voting and election of deoppped users.
Mon Jul 5 23:43:06 GMT 2004
changed servers 3 and TR to votes only server, each server gets 10 elected committee, offices will not appoint any committee in these servers due to different groups complaining about each other, let the votes decide who is on comm
Mon Jul 5 23:42:08 GMT 2004
Tue Mar 30 17:34:28 GMT 2004
Alamak is opening a new server, server3.alamak.com, please be patient while we get things working. thanks!
Tue Feb 17 17:18:54 GMT 2004
Ran a reboot on the US machines, it was time to be done! Maintenance
Tue Feb 17 12:41:03 GMT 2004
Was on business trip to Sabah for 2 weeks and just got back, working on upgrades to icon uploads and the /send command. After that the cycle program and time conversion for the new referral system.
Wed Jan 14 18:25:06 GMT 2004
Installed new database server and encryption system, searched the net looking for possible cause for cert expiration error. This seems to be happening every month :(
Wed Jan 14 18:09:42 GMT 2004
Spent the last 2 days working on an Alamak referral system to give credit to those Ops who refer others to Alamak. The whole day spent fixing the ssl connections in the databsae server, the certs expired again though they should be good for 3600 days.
Wed Jan 7 19:33:18 GMT 2004
Also investigting a problem where the database server is eating most of the system cpu time though not doing much of anything, not sure on that one yet.
Wed Jan 7 19:32:32 GMT 2004
Did work to standardize the secure and regular ops manager functions to a common login and will try to fix the scroll down problem for the change password so the errors will show up more visibly.
Wed Jan 7 19:31:45 GMT 2004
Investigated reports that the password page did not show errors if the change was not accepted. The page does work, it does show errors, but users may have to scroll down to see the errors.
Mon Dec 22 16:59:12 GMT 2003
Changed Server TR designation to Server3, or second international server which hosts the Turkey Pakistan and Arabia rooms. Upgraded the site logins, checked the cc payment page which was repoted down but in fact is working fine.
Wed Dec 17 18:37:21 GMT 2003
Added UK EU and MY2 offices and upgraded the office forms page, cleared admin emails now working to clear the customer emails.
Tue Dec 16 16:31:34 GMT 2003
Alot of upgrades to the ops renewal and status pages to make it easier to obtain old account level and info then click and go to either cc or by check payment renewal pages. Also studing java-jsp-servlets and asp.net this past week
Fri Dec 5 19:20:37 GMT 2003
cleared all the backed up emails, back to alamak development programming. Oh yeah fixed up some database stuff and a few minor improvements to the chat server code and admin pages.
Wed Dec 3 23:34:30 GMT 2003
Also installing and setting up a few more machines for gateway and development, re-install pretty much everything on 4 dual boot servers ergo 8 OS installs plus applications and servers.
Wed Dec 3 23:33:07 GMT 2003
I've been lost in server land, installing new web, jsp, aspx servers and IDE's for alamak project development.
Sat Nov 29 14:03:39 GMT 2003
Making the norobot sql code more robust because its causing the chat server to crash when the robot makes so many connections. Upgraded comlevels office suite which had a bug. recompiling apache on server SG because the https server can't handle img.html.
Sat Nov 29 14:02:22 GMT 2003
Office PC HDD crashed, bought new drives, reinstalled OS. Went home, fried PC motherboard there while setting up a new drive. All trying to prepare a new developments suite for writing java games. Back to square one.
Wed Nov 26 19:49:17 GMT 2003
Due to the bug there were about 15 new accounts that did not get added on time. 1) All duplicate billings were refunded in full. 2) All accounts were added with 1 extra month to compensate for our delay in adding the accounts. Sorry folks!
Wed Nov 26 19:47:37 GMT 2003
This bug in cc renewal only affected new accounts and was not a logical error but either a typo or corruption during program upload. I did check it carefully and confirm renewals were okay but apparently this one slipped through.
Wed Nov 26 19:46:30 GMT 2003
Spent the day answering customer emails, fixing acccounts, suspending some fraud transactions, voiding other suspected fraud transactions. And fixing accounts that did not get added automatically by the cc form.
Mon Nov 24 19:48:59 GMT 2003
various upgrades on the image password which was causing too many open connections. the chat had a regex bug in /unban which could cause crashes, solved.
Sun Nov 23 5:23:18 GMT 2003
A side result of these change it was practical to upgrade to new web server, php release, and mod_ssl version with the added gd and truetype upgrades. Enjoy your chatting! Hope that helps keep the robots out!
Sun Nov 23 5:19:58 GMT 2003
Regular users are not supposed to use secure login, but well I went ahead and recompiled the secure server on the US side as well so it properly displays the norobot image password even if they use the secure entry. Off to bed!
Sun Nov 23 4:18:32 GMT 2003
Anyway it works, at least with /norobot users can login and it is harder for OCR programs to decript the image password, will check and clean up that added screen, must be that truecolor hehe. tata and good night zzzzzzz
Sun Nov 23 4:17:41 GMT 2003
Well it's now 4am and I have installed the new blocker code and the robot blocker code and image on all servers. The image does not seem to have the screen on the US servers, ooo maybe thats the true color factor I should put back in? hmm
Sun Nov 23 4:16:37 GMT 2003
All last night and today spent building and testing the new filter because that other new chat with 28 users keeps running bots here to flood with ads for thier chat, what a waste of my time. Rather be working on Ops email! Haiz!
Fri Nov 21 16:28:15 GMT 2003
The uygrades are normally first admin tested on ServerFC on alamak.com.sg then user tested on ServerSG. Finally installed on the US servers. The US server php pages are different and must be updated with patches but hey work in progress. TATA!
Fri Nov 21 16:26:51 GMT 2003
Anyway I better not get off on how these lamers design bots to come in and run ads here, they can't run for any length of time with FREE goodies anyway, we do plan to be around for a long time. Anyway ugprades are going to include better ban filters.
Fri Nov 21 16:25:39 GMT 2003
The last two days. 1) Upgrading the norobot image and php norobot code which has ebeen bypassed by trivial bots, so now we get have to get more sophisticated. 2) Upgrading the advertising filter, gee I would rather do Ops email, don't you agree?
Wed Nov 19 20:38:55 GMT 2003
updated the SG and US server login pages with new code, fixed the regex bug in the Servers, rebooted cleaned up everything I broke, so I hope
Wed Nov 19 19:07:54 GMT 2003
And other changes to the chat server RoomCount, added two extra fields to this table, IDX and Timestamp, to flush out old entries.
Wed Nov 19 19:07:07 GMT 2003
Some key changes in the chat server. We again have those lamos from alachat.net advertising in our chat. I am damn tempted to rewrite my web robot to loginto thier chat and flood them, let them know how it feels, huh? Anyway I put in some blocking.
Wed Nov 19 18:05:20 GMT 2003
Fixed the guestbooks on server SG
Wed Nov 19 17:39:36 GMT 2003
The cert expiration problem should not occur again (crossing fingers).
Wed Nov 19 17:38:45 GMT 2003
And after all that regenerated the certs with the new configuration using the script written the other day to simplify the proceedure.
Wed Nov 19 17:38:11 GMT 2003
This also cause the failure of new accounts to update on the US Servers for a few days. It should now be solved. Found a 30 day default in the openssl.cnf file and added an explicit call to 3600 days in all gencert and signing requests.
Wed Nov 19 17:34:21 GMT 2003
Users had been complaining that Cybermyst on the US Server was down. This was due to the certificate expiry on the database server. The certs are self generated and should be good for 3600 days but they are only good for 30 days.
Wed Nov 19 17:10:26 GMT 2003
Upgrades to comvotes form and comlevel table to display in human readable form the date of the next election as drawn from the votelimits table.
Tue Nov 18 22:49:25 GMT 2003
Most of the day spent fixing accounts and testing upgrade to the chat server for the Trivia bot IRC login
Mon Nov 17 21:00:40 GMT 2003
Generating certs is complex enough to be hard to remember what actually needs to be solved to get it running again. The script will at least make this less of a problem. As long as I can remeber where I put the script HAHA!
Mon Nov 17 20:59:46 GMT 2003
Still not sure of the cause but 3 things are being tested. 1) Changed the cert generation file to explicitly specify the CA validity for 10 years. 2) Script written to regenerate certs faster. 3) Will setup a polling to notify me if this fails again.
Mon Nov 17 20:56:51 GMT 2003
A problem was reported by Roger Saturday morning and I 'fixed it' before going to KL. Apparently the cause was not the change in the table structure but the SSL connection failing again.
Mon Nov 17 20:55:24 GMT 2003
We have again experienced the same thing with the secure connection. Nothing was changed on th server but apparently after a reboot the SSL data certificates are not good anymore and we had to recreate and restart the data server.
Fri Nov 14 18:06:10 GMT 2003
Working on the Ops Email again, created a new secure login form and setup form for entering email address and personal alamak domain name. Back for more fixes on the Trivia bot IRC login which seems to be doing double logins.
Fri Nov 14 12:54:42 GMT 2003
Added 2 fields to ops database for MaksEmail and MaksDomain personal email and domain for Ops. Upgraded CC Payment page to handle that and added top and side menus. Tested it and changed the WP banner image and background.
Thu Nov 13 22:55:54 GMT 2003
Changes to the chat server IRC codes to try and solve connections problem with the SG Trivia Bot
Thu Nov 13 22:11:57 GMT 2003
Again back to work on the blackjack server. This game was run as part of the chat but has to be rewritten to run seperately so as not to slow down the chat. I am hoping to find the extra time to squeeze in and have it up in a few days.
Tue Nov 11 18:43:10 GMT 2003
Setup new forms for new offices in Europe and Pakistan. Needed to modify the office forms to hide passwords for security purposes. This means office can not tell you your passwords but can only reset them for you. Except for the SG office of course.
Tue Nov 11 12:27:03 GMT 2003
Updated office info to put in notes for each office. SG office needs notes for IB and ATM transfer. MY needed a note that GR is in the hospital with Denki fever. Let us all hope he feels better soon!
Mon Nov 10 15:52:04 GMT 2003
Figured out how to do mysql statements in C from the C API so we can potentially log bad and good mail hosts in a MySQL table and block spam boxes. My own little mini RBL!
Mon Nov 10 15:49:34 GMT 2003
Patching again qmail to prevent <netscape.com> and <@netscape.com> style emails used by spammers.
Mon Nov 10 15:49:12 GMT 2003
Patched qmail-smtpd.c again to prevent sender same as recpt email, used by spammers. Cleared all emails. Settting up new office for malaysia. Small upgrade for cybermyst logging.
Thu Nov 6 20:02:31 GMT 2003
More upgrades to both hangman and minesweeper. Added score field to hangman tables instead of just won and lost, so presentation of score lists will be less intensive. Did some account fixes, emails wil be done tomorrow.
Wed Nov 5 19:41:18 GMT 2003
I will consider created an old high score list. The new words seem alot more difficult, either that or I got stupider LOL!
Wed Nov 5 19:40:41 GMT 2003
Rewrite and install of Hangman on the SG server. New words database added, everything shifted to work with new Ops database, same as Minesweeper. Same stuff different day different game!
Wed Nov 5 13:52:37 GMT 2003
Yesterday did upgrades and fixes to minesweeper so that it now uses the new ops database and new scores table and HallOfFame. Today finished fixes and testing. Noticed Expert level hangs w/ Linux Netscape on Xwindows but okay with Windows platform.
Mon Nov 3 20:06:18 GMT 2003
Still spending alot of time backing up data from old servers and throwing away duplicate data. It's Alamak disk cleaning time, just as with cleaning our the old storeroom it takes time to sort through years of garbage! haha
Fri Oct 31 19:35:21 GMT 2003
As you can see this has been a hardware/software week. We had 7 or so spare work/server machines with 8 or so drives that had never been cleaned up or used. In the end some drives were bad, some memory was bad and saved some stuff threw other stuff out!
Fri Oct 31 19:33:43 GMT 2003
canabalized 4 old machines/server at home and 1 old server in the office. reformatted rebuilt drives and installed new OSs on 2 PCs at home. Fixed up formatted rebuilt office server with new os and broke 1 spare server in office.
Tue Oct 28 14:31:26 GMT 2003
Spending a couple days to upgrade office and home work machines. Hard Drive on my home PC totaly crashed so time to install a new one and reinstall a newer OS.
Fri Oct 24 18:37:59 GMT 2003
Fixed the lousy looking format of the new chat login under Netscape, heck it was nice with Opera! And fixed the credit card payment page which seems to have been down for 4 days :(. A few attemped billings during work on it, not added not billed.
Fri Oct 24 18:35:39 GMT 2003
Today is a holiday but had to come in and fix some things. Seems when I was upgrading the chat server it dumped my password to the banlogs and that ended up on Yahoo Search, that was interesting? Cybermyst upgrades left right and center.
Thu Oct 23 18:25:03 GMT 2003
locking the tables doesn't appear to help except in the case of doing inserts into the RoomCount table from the chat server. Go figure.
Thu Oct 23 18:24:18 GMT 2003
It seems though I can do a select Index from Blah where condition then loop through and delete from Blah where Index='index_var' and then it doesn't corrupt the table. Never seen anything like this before but oh well!
Thu Oct 23 18:22:54 GMT 2003
Spent quite a few hours debugging scripts which seemed to be failing to close tables particularly the RoomCount and Sessions tables. Even resulting in corrupted tables which is worrying. Found that delte from Blah where condition is BAD.
Thu Oct 23 13:34:01 GMT 2003
Found some tables not being close properly so closed them and checked my php for sloppy coding. Sure enough those tables ComVotes ComLimits SessionLimit Sessions RoomCount were missing close statements.
Wed Oct 22 20:12:34 GMT 2003
Still working on getting minesweeper and hangman working on SG. Also in the process of trying out a new server and network for possible shift.
Tue Oct 21 20:20:18 GMT 2003
Handled emails, upgrades on the game servers and figured out how to sort incoming emails using maildrop software.
Tue Oct 21 12:39:05 GMT 2003
Upgraded ccpayment lgos to return insert id for new operators.
Mon Oct 20 21:45:06 GMT 2003
Did some cleanup on the mailapp.html. Some problems getting the form to reset, caching variables even using method GEt, at least with Opera. :(
Mon Oct 20 20:17:05 GMT 2003
Worked on Cybermyst Minesweeper and hangman on both SG and US servers. Cleared all customer and office email, updated office forms for billings. Updated links on us servers for billing and info pages.
Fri Oct 17 22:08:10 GMT 2003
If you want to see what we've been up to the past 2 days check the qmail smtpd-chkusr, Block Reverse DNS, TMDA, Vpopmail, Python programming page under AboutUs.
Fri Oct 17 21:31:19 GMT 2003
Tried my hand at a little Python programming to fix output from TMDA. didn't like the generic username on the output!
Fri Oct 17 19:05:30 GMT 2003
Added some options to office account editor to swtich a renewal to addition of new account when it appears the application is not the authorized account holder. Fixed up bug in chat server allowing other case use of nicks.
Fri Oct 17 15:27:05 GMT 2003
Finally figured it out! tcpserver startup had a -H flags was killing reverse DNS checks! Grrr! Now a normal connection gets 220 alamak.com.sg ESMTP' and a fake gets '451 Bad reverse DNS. Your email configuration is bad. Use your providers smtp server.'
Thu Oct 16 21:33:20 GMT 2003
Handled all emails and problems therein, if you have problems please submit another contact thanks!
Thu Oct 16 21:32:53 GMT 2003
Worked many hours trying to block email connections from machines with no reverse DNS, worked before but can't seem to get it working on the new machine, Not critical so time to move on.
Wed Oct 15 22:02:21 GMT 2003
Installed Cybermyst, Freehome, and Guestbooks working on the new server. Still need to test freehome due to reorganization.
Wed Oct 15 17:00:11 GMT 2003
The remote transmit wasn't adding new accounts on the US Cluster. Decompression refused to overwrite previous files so added -force flag. Old files left due to network failure during transmit.
Wed Oct 15 16:57:26 GMT 2003
Realized the VoteLimit tables was not created properly so limiting vote tabulation to once every 15 days would not work. Updated chat server to print a more organized Committee List and removed extra fields. Repairs to the remote transmitter.
Tue Oct 14 21:08:19 GMT 2003
Added voting limits file and implemented election dates. Committee Votes are now retablulated only when an office alter the committee list for a server or 15 days since last election. This is intended to slow down the committee turnover.
Tue Oct 14 20:09:26 GMT 2003
Major upgrades on the US cluster, new versions of apache web server php, db, etc ... newer is better right? Several security upgrades to the chat server to prevent flood logins, re turkish flood robot denyolaunch. Possibly not solved yet.
Tue Oct 14 18:07:27 GMT 2003
upgrades to prevent flood logins on the chat server
Tue Oct 14 17:22:52 GMT 2003
Originally www seemed to be missing ldconfig libs but reboot seemed to solve it. Rebooted both woah and www to ensure SSLDB connection works after reboot. It does. Re-Sync'd SG and US Cluster data.
Tue Oct 14 17:17:14 GMT 2003
Reported that account changes CMAIL etc not working on US Cluster. Diagnosed SSL connection to DB server failing. This is the 3rd time Ive set it up then later it stops working without me apparently doing anything and its starting to piss me off!
Tue Oct 14 16:08:18 GMT 2003
Just a quick note Alamak does not have any of the actual credit card info on our server, our server never even sees the card number, expiration date, or security code .. it is all on the secure WorldPay server.
Tue Oct 14 16:07:01 GMT 2003
Many users appear not understand that Alamak may not post-auth cc-transactions even though wp sends an approval email. Users always email the CA office so CA office can now check the results of CC billings.
Mon Oct 13 22:04:21 GMT 2003
Noticed that server SG was almost 20 minutes off from real time. Added a cron entry to update time once an hour and on reboot. Had to restart the chat server since resetting system time this much will cause temporary chat server malfunctions.
Mon Oct 13 22:03:42 GMT 2003
Updated to mailapp.html. Users didn't seem to know now to renew if they had forgotten the challenge answer.
Mon Oct 13 22:01:12 GMT 2003
Upgraded contact.html to allow for submission of password change requests, handled some Ops email requests and upgraded formatting problem with admin add.html forms. Will clear email request in the morning, tata and have a nice chat!
Mon Oct 13 19:58:58 GMT 2003
upgraded alamak news to have more human readable datetime stamps
Mon Oct 13 19:40:37 GMT 2003
fixed some bugs in admin login panel and added ablity for office to send emergency message to the SG office in the event of server down or other bugs
Mon Oct 13 17:45:56 GMT 2003
fixed the ccpayment page error, accounts were added but with NULL level, accounts non-functional. Reparied new account entries in database and bumped account start dates on those affected to the current date.
Mon Oct 13 17:43:53 GMT 2003
More upgrades to office admin forms as well as field to control office login or account addition. This allows offices to login and view transaction records without being able to update accounts or to prevent login at all should the need arise.
Fri Oct 10 19:48:17 GMT 2003
More updates to office billings forms to list out transcation lists for associate offices. This will help associate offices keep better track of accounts and assist Operators with account problems. Still need ability to void transaction mistakes.
Fri Oct 10 14:37:20 GMT 2003
Added new fields to office management forms, updated database to include accounting from old system, display of adjustments, per office accounts and totals.
Thu Oct 9 15:26:12 GMT 2003
Added php page to view the change logs. Hopefully I won't be so wordy from now on LOL!
Thu Oct 9 15:05:27 GMT 2003
Created change log table and shell level program to easily insert entries to change log and keep Alamak users informed about system work and upgrades.
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