Well, that should be fixed so that it won't break again - and it seems like that is what was causing the terrible slowness with resolving. DNS servers got jacked up. There are so many gotchas with Linux - and I seem to trip over every one of them. 

Thu Dec 10 2020 23:58:26 MST from ParanoidDelusions

Fhhhixed It! 

 

Thu Dec 10 2020 23:34:24 MST from ParanoidDelusions

 I think RSS feeds are probably working again, too. 

 

 

A little more incidental downtime today. I wanted to try making an image of the entire drive on another disk to see if it would work. It did. I had to do a boot recovery process on the EFHI partition - but I know have a test system that is an exact clone of the production system - with the entire database. That is good news. I'll probably pick up another 240GB SD so I can have a kind of "gold build" image drive that we can recover from if something catastrophic happens, and another image disk I can use for live testing. For now - I think I'm done trying to change anything on the production server unless I know how to make it work on the test one - so things should be stable now... 

I did have a start when I plugged it all back in and the Ethernet didn't come up - but I think that has to do with the cable not being plugged all the way in. At any rate... I got that sorted - but figuring it out extended the downtime longer than it had to be. 

Might as well get this shit out of the way now. 

RSS feeds are still working, which means DNS is still working.

This is the last time for a while, I swear. Everything is going to be left alone. It is actually running better than it ever has, in most regards at this point, and we've got a good backup of it. We're in better shape than we've ever been before. :) 

I've got everything humming along now - the last couple of things I wanted to get sorted out are fixed. The Certificate is now a self-signed Certificate. If you want to connect HTTPS for security purposes (it is just a BBS, but I get it...) you can assign my root certificate in your browser and it will run faster and never alert you that there is something wrong with the cert again. 

Instructions to do that are here: 

https://blog.eldernode.com/install-root-certificate-in-chrome/

For some reason, this in turn fixed the issue I was having where when you first open up the BBS and you're not logged in - I wanted it to take you to the welcome/hello page - but it wouldn't. 

Now, if you're not logged in when you connect, you'll see Johnny Cash giving you the finger - just as your Sysop intended it. 

Everything else is working great except the SSH login requires a password when connecting to ssh@secure.walllofhate.com. The password is "cit". I can live with that. If you're smart enough to be using SSH - you're smart enough to read that you need a password. 

So... I'm *literally* done messing with it for awhile - unless there is something else broken that I'm not aware of. 

I might install the Acronis agent so I can start doing actual backups of the entire system - but not right now. Later. I've got a good image made on a backup system. 

How To Navigate a Citadel BBS

When you connect to a Citadel, you’ll get something like the screen below. The important buttons are the Log In Button on the Left menu and the navigation and post controls at the top bar of the main window – circled in red below. Those  buttons change based on the type of room you’re in – but Ungoto, Skip this room and Goto Next room are always available options. 

The first thing to do is click Log In – which will open a Log In dialog You can enter your username and password here, or Register if you are a new user. 

On your first log-in, EVERY message in EVERY room is a "NEW" message, which means you may be seeing months or even years of conversations that meander, go off topic, go back on topic, have had messages deleted... and each room can take a long time to wade through, especially if you try and read every message in every room. This may initially make a lot of people give up before they've seen the beauty of how this works. 

Generally you will start in a room called “Lobby”. Here the new messages are displayed in pages. The total number of pages is displayed at the bottom of the screen, and the page you are on is displayed with brackets around it. 

The trick usually is, on your first call, just <G>oto each room, one after the other. You <G>oto the next room with unread messages by clicking the “Goto next room” icon at the top of the window. 

When <G>oto the next room, you’re taken to the next room with new messages, and all messages in the previous room are marked read. 

<G>oto the next room, and so on until you find yourself back in the Lobby. You’ve now made a full circuit of all the rooms in the Citadel. 

At the end click the Log Off button (or in the web client, log out). When you do this, all these changes are saved. 

Then on your next call - new messages will be much more manageable - and you'll be able to pick up on the CURRENT conversation in each room and start to contribute. 

Imagine if the first time you entered Facebook, you saw every message posted by EVERY person on your friend list (and you had a complete friend list). But the next time you went back, only the messages since the LAST message you read on your first visit would show as new. 

That is what Citadel does. 

Paranoid Delusions - Sysop - The Sanitarium BBS https://secure.wallofhate.com  http://wallofhate.com

This document is available in .docx format in the file directory room "TheSanitarium" on The Sanitarium BBS. Feel free to distribute freely. 

Citadel makes it easy for you to customize the BBS so you see only what you want. 

On the Left menu, click the folder icon on the +Rooms menu entry.