Posts Tagged ‘forum’

How to reduce spam in PHPBB based internet forum on Debian GNU / Linux

Monday, March 26th, 2012

phpbb reduce spam bot registrations on Debian Linux tiny script

I had to install two PHPBB based internet forums, some long time ago. Since long time passed and I haven't checked what's happening with them I just noticed. They start filling up spam threads. The phpbb installations are done using the standard shipped deb packages in Debian Linux Lenny.

After checking online, I found one smart solution to . The idea is very simple most spam bots are written in a way that they don't have a properly set timezone. Therefore the quickest way to get rid of spam bots which try to auto register and put spam content inside the a forum category or post is to add a simple if condition in php to check the browser set timezone:

The file to add the php if condition is ucp_register.phpThe phpbb package install places default phpbb path on Debian is /usr/share/phpbb3/ and hence the file I had to modify is located in:

/usr/share/phpbb3/www/includes/ucp/ucp_register.php

To make the TZ check one needs to modify ../www/includes/ucp/ucp_register.php and look for php array definition:

$data = array(
'username' => utf8_normalize_nfc(request_var('username', '', true)),
'new_password' => request_var('new_password', '', true),
'password_confirm' => request_var('password_confirm', '', true),
'email' => strtolower(request_var('email', '')),
'email_confirm' => strtolower(request_var('email_confirm', '')),
'confirm_code' => request_var('confirm_code', ''),
'lang' => basename(request_var('lang', $user->lang_name)),
'tz' => request_var('tz', (float) $timezone),
);

Right after this chunk of code add the if condition code which is like so:

if ($data['tz'] == '-12.00')
{
die('Die, bot! Die.');
}

From now onwards, any attempt for new user registration with an incorrect timezone of -12.00 will be immediately stopped while the forum spammer bot will be offered an empty page 🙂

Another good practice is to disable Birthday Listing from phpbb Admin Control panel (ACP). Go to menus:

ACP -> General -> Board Settings -> Enable Birthday listing: (No)

Enable birthday listing phpbb forum screenshot

I like disabling birthday listing, as when it is enabled and you have some spammer registrations, which even though didn't succeeded to contaminate your forum content has specified a birthday and therefore there profiles gets popping up each different day on the main page of the forum.
This will not eradicate all spammer bots, but at least will significantly decrease spammer bot registrations.

How to install display and audio drivers on motherboard Asus P5B-Plus with video ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT on Windows XP

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Ati Radeon 2600 XT, Display and Audio Drivers download how to

I re-installed one PC with Windows XP which was refusing to boot. The PC had a hardware of:

Motherboard: Asus P5B-Plus
Video Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT
Sound card / Sound Blaster:

Ethernet card: Attansic L1 Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Controller

It took me like 1 hour of search on the Internet and looking through forum threads and sites to properly install all the hardware. In hope to help someone out there looking to install the hardware Window drivers on ATI RAdeon HD 2600 XT, I’ve made a small archive of all the drivers necessery to make the Video card , Sound Card and Ethernet be properly installed and operating.

Here is download link to all the drivers for ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT to run smoothly on Windows XP

Installation of the drivers on Windows is pretty straight forward download the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT archive extract and install each one of the files contained in the archive. A few restarts will also be necessery after some of the installed drivers to make the drivers work.

ATI Catalyst (included in the archive) will install the Video drivers for the Radeon XT 2600, whether AD1988AB_Audio_V6585_XpVistaWin7 and 11-11_xp32-64_hdmiaudio will install the Audio drivers. Attansic_L1_Lan_V1737907_V10560011159 contained in the archive needs to be extracted and installed to make the Attensic L1 Gigabit ethernet to show up as installed hardware in Windows device manager.

Hope this post will save some time to ppl looking to install the same drivers on XP 😉
Cheers 😉

How to change mail sent from in Nagios on Debian GNU/Linux 6

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

I’ve been playing with configuring a new nagios running on a Linux host which’s aim is to monitor few Windows servers.
The Linux host’s exim is configured to act as relay host to another SMTP server, so all email ending up in the Linux localhost on port 25 is forwarded to the remote SMTP.

The remote smtp only allows the Linux to send email only in case if a real existing username@theserverhostname.com is passed it, otherwise it rejects mail and does not sent properly the email.
As the newly configured Nagios installatio is supposed to do e-mail notification, I was looking for a way to change the default user with which Nagios sends mails, which is inherited directly after the username with which /usr/sbin/nagios3 and /usr/sbin/nrpe are running (on Debian this is nagios@theserverhostname.com).

Thanksfully, there is a work around, I’ve red some forum threads explaning that the username with whch nagios sends mail can be easily changed from /etc/nagios3/commands.cfg by passing the -a “From: custom_user@myserverhostname.com” to all occurance of /usr/bin/mail -s , its preferrable that the -a custom_user@myserverhostname.com is inserted before the -s “” subject option. Hence the occurance of mail command should be changed from:

| /usr/bin/mail -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$

To:

| /usr/bin/mail -a "From: custom_user@theserverhostname.com" -s "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$

Now to read it’s new configurations nagios requirs restart:

debian:~# /etc/init.d/nagios3 restart
...

Now in case of failed services or Hosts Down nagios will send it’s mail from the custom user custom_user@theserverhostname.com and nagios can can send mail properly via the remote relay SMTP host 😉