New Server thanks to TOAF

Posted 20 June 2011 by

Yesterday, we migrated PT to its new server: Proteus. Proteus is a beast of a machine: FreeBSD 8.2, AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor, 16GB of memory, and 5 2TB drives in a ZFS raidz2 array. Most of the hardware was provided by the Talk Origins Archive Foundation. If you want to support PT, you can donate to TOAF. The server migration is the first step in a series of improvements that will hopefully make PT better. The second step has also been completed: requiring registration to comment. Hopefully, registration will go smoothly, but if you are having problems email us at thecrew@pandasthumb.org. You many need to clear your cache if you are having problems commenting.

47 Comments

shebardigan · 20 June 2011

Interesting. Could sign in using wordpress, but didn't immediately find a way to create an account independent of the array of other authenticators.

Reed A. Cartwright · 20 June 2011

Yeah, I don't have a "register" link up yet.

Reed A. Cartwright · 20 June 2011

Now there is a "sign up" link on the log in page.

Flint · 20 June 2011

Kewl. Now, how do I find the login page?

Flint · 20 June 2011

OK, take 2. My comment vanished. I don't know where to look for a log in page.

jgulner · 20 June 2011

Hitting CTRL-F5 may help anyone that is having trouble. Some old javascript may be cached or something like that.

Reed A. Cartwright · 20 June 2011

Local registration disabled until I figure out how to protect it from spammers.

paul.paulburnett · 20 June 2011

Now if I could only figure out how to log in directly instead of via my Gmail account. [grump]

Reed A. Cartwright · 20 June 2011

Registration reenabled. Let's see how the CAPTCHA works.

SWT · 20 June 2011

So far so good?

Mike Elzinga · 21 June 2011

Seems to be working.

That CTRL F-5 did the trick. Don't know why.

Reed A. Cartwright · 21 June 2011

Some of our scripts have changed to support the new commenting format. You need to do a hard refresh to clear out your cache.

CTRL-F5 or CTRL-SHIFT-R might work for you.

Mike Elzinga · 21 June 2011

Testing. ∇ Δ ⇒

Yup. :-)

Mike Elzinga · 21 June 2011

Another test.

Mike Elzinga · 21 June 2011

What triggers a comment to be held for approval by the administrator?

xubist · 21 June 2011

Yee-hah! I can comment!

MichaelJ · 21 June 2011

Testing Testing Testing. Why couldn't Pharyngula make registration this easy

Paul Burnett · 21 June 2011

Much better. Thanks, folks.

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmZQ_ZOt5jAlL9YRFwmxqDJ1It_Uari8KI · 21 June 2011

working? ...

DS · 21 June 2011

Tasting. Tasting.

Oh man, spell checker said that was right.

Dave Wisker · 21 June 2011

Works fine.

Karen S. · 21 June 2011

I'm in! Any trolls yet?

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkSEda1RaPlIt1hdMLNIFcQc_0GcOg4iRY · 21 June 2011

Google sign in shows a mess as my "name".

D. Robin · 21 June 2011

This is a good start. Thanks to all who have made it possible.

dpr

https://me.yahoo.com/a/XwX54Ugxg_zA.giOl0_NAACpyNmwv0SJVLRoxnK4QTct#e9300 · 21 June 2011

Dale Husband here. This signing in process is what many blogs in Scienceblogs does, including Pharyngula by P Z Myers. I don't like it, but if it keep spammers out, I can tolerate it.

david.utidjian · 21 June 2011

OK. That was awkward. I am running Linux (Fedora 14), Firefox and Chrome. I got it all to work in Firefox but there still seem to be issues for me in Chrome. Other than that (and the login suff) I don't notice much difference yet.

david.utidjian · 21 June 2011

Ok works in Chrome on Linux.

Gary_Hurd · 21 June 2011

That seems to have worked.

phhht · 21 June 2011

Will the Bathroom Wall ever be back? Thx.

phhht · 21 June 2011

Will the Bathroom Wall be back as it was?

Science Avenger · 21 June 2011

No sweat. Now let's see if it is trollproof.

oclarki · 21 June 2011

OK...try this again. My first try vanished...

Henry J · 21 June 2011

What's the "Password recovery word/phrase *" for? (It's one of the boxes in the registration page.)

circleh · 21 June 2011

This sign in system is what is used on Pharyngula, the blog by P Z Myers. I just hope it keeps the spammers out.

Dale Husband

Test User · 21 June 2011

testing

Test User · 21 June 2011

test

Reed A. Cartwright · 21 June 2011

Sorry, we had a spam filter enabled that was marking every comment that wasn't by a "trusted" commenter as spam. It is now gone.

Reed A. Cartwright · 21 June 2011

Henry J said: What's the "Password recovery word/phrase *" for? (It's one of the boxes in the registration page.)
If you need to reset your password, you need to submit that "recovery word" for it to succeed. However, I can generate a new password for you if you forget yours.

John Pieret · 21 June 2011

Testing ...

Henry J · 21 June 2011

Reed,

If you need to reset your password, you need to submit that “recovery word” for it to succeed. However, I can generate a new password for you if you forget yours.

So how do I remember what I punched in for the "recovery word"? Was I supposed to write that down someplace? LOL

wynne3617#39925 · 22 June 2011

Testing

Henry J · 22 June 2011

A link like

http://pandasthumb.org/cgi-bin/mt

/mt-comments.fcgi?__mode=xomment&id=4838&a=0

used to get all the replies for a given thread number (4838 in this example).

Now what it gets is "403 - Forbidden".

Did the URI argument syntax change for that feature?

Also the ampersands in that kept getting replaced by & so I stuck a line break in the middle of it so that the second part would be treated as plain text.

Reed A. Cartwright · 22 June 2011

Yeah:

pandasthumb.org/mt/comments.fcgi

John · 23 June 2011

I posted two comments yesterday, but the one on this thread was deleted. Let's see if this works now or else I swear I'm some weird variety of mendacious intellectual pornographer.

Henry J · 23 June 2011

Reed,

Yeah: pandasthumb.org/mt/comments.fcgi

Thanks! (Say, since the link code got shorter, does that mean it was intelligently designed? :D ) Henry

Reed A. Cartwright · 24 June 2011

I designed it, QED.

Reed A. Cartwright · 25 June 2011

testing