from the Actually.-it-was-just-a-Full-Moon dept.
[Update #2; 2021-08-23 02:35:27 UTC]
So, mechanicjay responded to the bat signal, and "did a kill on every process that referenced slashd and started the service."
We think that should do the trick; please reply here or in the #soylent channel on IRC.
Again, many MANY thanks for your patience and understanding!
[Update #1; 2021-08-23 01:41:16 UTC]
"Constants aren't; variables won't." So goes an old adage. Seems to be the case for us, as well. My efforts to get comment counts to update and to get get mod points to be distributed have been fruitless. I've reached out to mechanicjay to see if he is available to take a look and lend a hand. So far, it appears that mod points were not distributed at 00:10 UTC this [Monday] morning.
I apologize for the disruption. --martyb
Original story follows below the fold.
As if nothing else of importance was going on with the site pertaining to moderation...
We discovered this morning that slashd (think slashdot's creation of cron way back in slashdot's early days) did not run to completion overnight. And, obviously, it chose to die right when it was handing out mod points for the day.
(NB: Rehash (the code that runs the site) is a fork of a version of slashcode. That code was open-sourced a couple years before we grabbed it. It also needed a great deal of work to get into an actually-functioning state.)
It actually handed out some mod points. It wasn't until we received reports that some people failed to get mod points that we realized there was a problem. I restarted slashd. Problem solved, right?
That would be easy. Who wants easy on a Sunday? Apparently easy was not in the cards for today.
We later learned that things were left in an interim state — some users got some mod points and others did not get any. Of course, I did not realize *that* until a bunch of people had used mod points.
So there was no obvious way to give "make up" mod points to those who missed out. (My mysql skills are limited.) Nor, apparently, was it obvious to any other staff who was around.
Rather than mung (Mung Until No Good) things even further, in discussion with other staff, it was decided to leave well enough alone. Things should clear themselves up on their own the next time mod points are scheduled to be re-issued (starting each morning at 00:10 UTC).
--martyb
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Sunday August 22 2021, @09:09PM
Thanks for all the effort you put in.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 22 2021, @09:40PM
On the bright side, the system is robust enough to handle the error without crashing the site.
I wouldn't go replacing the cron job with another solution over this incident. Adding simple error tracking should be enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 22 2021, @09:43PM
Do you have a way to audit the live codebase, make sure no extra code got added? Given APK's spam behavior I wouldn't put attempted hacking out of mind.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 22 2021, @09:47PM (1 child)
When I post drunk the night before, somebody keeps going in and editing them to make them boring, unfunny and repetitive.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 22 2021, @11:10PM
Puh-lease. You only wish your drunk postings could be as boring, unfunny and repetitive as mine [soylentnews.org].
--
So over it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday August 22 2021, @10:39PM (1 child)
I don't see the comment count for this story on the front page or admin.pl.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Monday August 23 2021, @12:06AM
Same thing with the next story here too.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday August 22 2021, @11:40PM
If anyone named something like "Bobby Tables" offers to help, turn them down. Or at least complete multiple backups including the offsite one just prior.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday August 23 2021, @12:30AM (2 children)
Well I assume they will show up at 01:10 UTC. It's now 00:30 UTC
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday August 23 2021, @12:35AM
That was a test. :-)) I've oft wondered about time stamps on the posts. It's now 12:36 PM in Suva. So that must be where the server is located.. :-))
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday August 23 2021, @01:25AM
I guess it's borked two days in a row, like the comment counts mentioned above, and the daily moderations message. Also, no comment reply notifications (got the last one at 18:45 UTC yesterday, but none of the ones for Gaaark's journal yet).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23 2021, @02:27AM
[dons sunglasses] far from pointless...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 23 2021, @03:33AM
An AI determined that bats argue a lot. I figure they would fit right in here at Soylentnews.
"Researchers “Translate” Bat Talk. Turns Out, They Argue—A Lot"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-translate-bat-talk-and-they-argue-lot-180961564/ [smithsonianmag.com]
What would be interesting would be to see if Tesla's AI would get into an argument with AMDs AI and would they also argue with Google's AI. What would they argue over and which AI would win?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 23 2021, @05:08AM (1 child)
Is this the type of error that happen once in a blue moon? Because yesterday we did have a blue moon. [space.com]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by TheMightyChickadee on Monday August 23 2021, @06:34AM
I think it is still hanging over my night sky. Moon. Blue. Better than the Blood Red Moon of Death, or the Pink Moon of the Incel apocalypse. But OTOH, Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" [youtube.com] is quite lovely.