• Rougue bot

    From Al@21:4/106 to Avon on Sun Nov 7 02:36:58 2021
    Hello Avon,

    There is a bot gone rogue in the FSX_BOT area, posting 6 or so messages a minute from 21:2/136.

    Maybe we can disconnect that node from the bot area until the sysop there can get a better handle on his bot?

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... Proofread carefully to see if you any words out
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From apam@21:1/151 to Al on Sun Nov 7 20:47:23 2021
    Maybe we can disconnect that node from the bot area until the sysop
    there can
    get a better handle on his bot?

    Taking bets on what happens first... Avon waking up (surely he's in bed sleeping now lol) or Robert noticing his bot gone crazy...

    My bet is avon waking up... but maybe if it's a net 2 node solaris could interveine?

    Andrew

    --
    |03Andrew Pamment |08(|11apam|08)
    |13Happy|10Land |14v2.0|08!|07


    --- Talisman v0.30-dev (Windows/x64)
    * Origin: The Grinning Cat - telnet://gcat.talismanbbs.com:11823 (21:1/151)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to apam on Sun Nov 7 02:53:30 2021
    Hello apam,

    Taking bets on what happens first... Avon waking up (surely he's in
    bed sleeping now lol) or Robert noticing his bot gone crazy...

    That could be. I am usually configuring things on the BBS around midnight and a little beyond, like today! :)

    My bet is avon waking up... but maybe if it's a net 2 node solaris
    could interveine?

    Solaris is probably asleep now too but if either one can solve it that would be great. I think the next time I do maint on the msg base I am going to be left with a msgbase full of these posts and little else!

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... Enter any 12 digit prime number to continue
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From apam@21:1/151 to Al on Sun Nov 7 21:22:26 2021
    be great. I think the next time I do maint on the msg base I am going
    to be
    left with a msgbase full of these posts and little else!

    Hehe, ah well, at least it's the bot echo and not fsx_gen or something
    like that. I'm sure it will fill up again with variety in no time :P

    Andrew

    --
    |03Andrew Pamment |08(|11apam|08)
    |13Happy|10Land |14v2.0|08!|07


    --- Talisman v0.30-dev (Windows/x64)
    * Origin: The Grinning Cat - telnet://gcat.talismanbbs.com:11823 (21:1/151)
  • From Black Panther@21:1/186 to Al on Sun Nov 7 09:44:06 2021
    Hello Al!

    07 Nov 21 02:36, you wrote to Avon:

    There is a bot gone rogue in the FSX_BOT area, posting 6 or so
    messages a minute from 21:2/136.

    Maybe we can disconnect that node from the bot area until the sysop
    there can get a better handle on his bot?

    Look at the traffic flowing through the network though! ;)

    I'm guessing it has something to do with daylight savings... There is probably an event that is getting stuck due to the time change.

    Black Panther

    ... Everyone stand back.....she's got a pickle!!!
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: Exploring other frontiers! (21:1/186)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to Black Panther on Sun Nov 7 09:49:40 2021
    Hello Black,

    Look at the traffic flowing through the network though! ;)

    There is that. At least we know we have the "stuff" to get it done.. ;)

    I'm guessing it has something to do with daylight savings... There is probably an event that is getting stuck due to the time change.

    I wondered about that but it all started a bit before the time change.

    My own system ran maint twice last night.. ;)

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... A closed mouth gathers no foot
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Al on Mon Nov 8 22:05:36 2021
    On 07 Nov 2021 at 02:36a, Al pondered and said...

    There is a bot gone rogue in the FSX_BOT area, posting 6 or so messages
    a minute from 21:2/136.

    Maybe we can disconnect that node from the bot area until the sysop
    there can get a better handle on his bot?

    It's late Monday my time, just logged in and found this, working to delink the node from the echo now. Wow that's a lot of bot action.. :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to All on Mon Nov 8 22:14:44 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 10:05p, Avon pondered and said...

    There is a bot gone rogue in the FSX_BOT area, posting 6 or so messag a minute from 21:2/136.

    Maybe we can disconnect that node from the bot area until the sysop there can get a better handle on his bot?

    It's late Monday my time, just logged in and found this, working to
    delink the node from the echo now. Wow that's a lot of bot action.. :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

    OK delinked from 2/100 for the FSX_BOT echo, have dropped him a netmail.

    I make it 8570 messages sent while connected.. phew :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 01:19:11 2021
    Hello Avon,

    It's late Monday my time, just logged in and found this, working
    to delink the node from the echo now. Wow that's a lot of bot
    action.. :)

    OK delinked from 2/100 for the FSX_BOT echo, have dropped him a
    netmail.

    Good stuff, now we can get back to normal.. ;)

    I make it 8570 messages sent while connected.. phew :)

    I just saw about 1000 in fido's BBS_ADS area. I deleted them and hope that will be the end of it.. but we'll see.

    I hope you are doing well. :)

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... All wiyht. Rho sritched mg kegtops awound?
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 01:25:05 2021
    Hello Avon,

    I just saw about 1000 in fido's BBS_ADS area. I deleted them and hope
    that will be the end of it.. but we'll see.

    Those were from a different system, so it looks like the time change did cause a bug in a bot software as BP was saying..

    I hope it won't catch to many OP's unaware..

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... Unable to load REALITY.SYS Invalid Parameter: /UTOPIA
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Al on Mon Nov 8 22:30:53 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 01:19a, Al pondered and said...

    I make it 8570 messages sent while connected.. phew :)

    I just saw about 1000 in fido's BBS_ADS area. I deleted them and hope
    that will be the end of it.. but we'll see.

    Yep :)

    I hope you are doing well. :)

    Well I'm a tad tired as it's late here and too early to message Todd given his local time (around 4am) but yeah doing OK thanks :)

    Have posted to James in fido suggesting a rate limiting function for MUTIL. I'm not sure how others handle such things but it seems like a good idea to me for when bots go wild.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Al on Mon Nov 8 22:31:28 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 01:25a, Al pondered and said...

    Those were from a different system, so it looks like the time change did cause a bug in a bot software as BP was saying..

    I hope it won't catch to many OP's unaware..

    Yep... so a shift to daylight time or away from it?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 01:37:20 2021
    Hello Avon,

    Well I'm a tad tired as it's late here and too early to message Todd
    given his local time (around 4am) but yeah doing OK thanks :)

    Yep, we used to get up around 4am to milk the cows.. but I don't know if Todd has any cows there.. :)

    Have posted to James in fido suggesting a rate limiting function for MUTIL. I'm not sure how others handle such things but it seems like a
    good idea to me for when bots go wild.

    That's going to be a tough one to do. I don't know of any tosser that can detect that kind of flooding and turn the link off.

    You could add a filter to hpt's perl hooks but I think that gets complex.

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 01:42:22 2021
    Hello Avon,

    Yep... so a shift to daylight time or away from it?

    Back to standard time yesterday morning at 2am. We are heading into winter here.

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... If Pro is the opposite of Con then what is the opposite of Progress?
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Al on Mon Nov 8 22:54:05 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 01:37a, Al pondered and said...

    Yep, we used to get up around 4am to milk the cows.. but I don't know if Todd has any cows there.. :)

    So what time is it now? Half past cow or closer to rooster o'clock? :)

    That's going to be a tough one to do. I don't know of any tosser that
    can detect that kind of flooding and turn the link off.

    It would be interesting to see if some logic could be built into a tosser to do something like that, but it would need to track messages into a base over x time and then decide if the rule had been broken.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Al on Mon Nov 8 22:54:25 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 01:42a, Al pondered and said...

    Back to standard time yesterday morning at 2am. We are heading into
    winter here.

    that explains why I keep having BBQs here now :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 02:09:33 2021
    Hello Avon,

    So what time is it now? Half past cow or closer to rooster o'clock? :)

    We are coming up on rooter hour here, around 7am this time of year.

    It would be interesting to see if some logic could be built into a
    tosser to do something like that, but it would need to track messages
    into a base over x time and then decide if the rule had been broken.

    They could but I wonder if it is worth it. I don't recall a time when something like this happened. Simpler to fix the buggy bot if the author is willing to do that.

    There has been the odd dump of old messages. Those can be caught with dupe detection and not importing echomail over 30 or 60 days. That's the way I handle that here.

    Whatever features are built into your tosser take time to execute/handle at each toss.

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... All those updates, and still imperfect!
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 02:18:17 2021
    Hello Avon,

    that explains why I keep having BBQs here now :)

    Yeah! I like the winter, it's beautiful. I just don't like the cold and driving in it!

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... Done't be sexist - Broads hate that!
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From deon@21:2/116 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 21:24:38 2021
    Re: Re: Rougue bot
    By: Avon to All on Mon Nov 08 2021 10:14 pm

    OK delinked from 2/100 for the FSX_BOT echo, have dropped him a netmail.

    I make it 8570 messages sent while connected.. phew :)

    My clearing houz had stopped for some reason yesterday (need to figure out why), and only noticed because of the queue on Hub 3.

    So I restarted it, and it ate these 8500 messages and kept running - so good workout. (If it had downlinks they would have been sent on :( )

    I'll look at doing something that I think Rob is doing in Synchronet - I didnt see any of those dupes because they all had the same text
    body. I guess seeing the same text body more than once, in a short time frame, should be considered a dupe and dropped?


    ...δεσ∩
    --- SBBSecho 3.14-Linux
    * Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)
  • From Al@21:4/106 to deon on Mon Nov 8 02:58:26 2021
    Hello deon,

    I'll look at doing something that I think Rob is doing in Synchronet -
    I didnt see any of those dupes because they all had the same
    text body.

    Yes, SBBS stores a crc value for the message body. Another message body like that will not be imported or sent on to linked nodes. That's a little brutal but works wonders in this scenario.

    This method fails when another like message arrives with a new msgid and time stamp. Those messages will simply be dropped, a problem for BBS ads and moderator rules postings.

    I guess seeing the same text body more than once, in a
    short time frame, should be considered a dupe and dropped?

    Yes, depending on the number of crc's you are keeping and the number of messages an area receives, it could be a while before a message with the same message body is imported again, and the cycle continues.

    Ttyl :-),
    Al

    ... What do you mean off topic??!!! There's a topic?
    --- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
    * Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Avon on Mon Nov 8 06:10:33 2021
    On 08 Nov 21 22:30:53, Avon said the following to Al:

    Have posted to James in fido suggesting a rate limiting function for MUTIL. I'm not sure how others handle such things but it seems like a good idea to for when bots go wild.

    And as both an FTN developer and Sysop of a busy Hub system I have suggested
    to James to ignore such asinine requests.

    "When bots go wild" has never been a prevalent problem, its the sole problem of one incompetent Sysop. It is not the responsibility of an author to sit
    at the console writing all sorts of code, wasting all sorts of man-hours to
    fix the incompetence of one Sysop.

    How do I handle it here? I don't. I let the mail flow, use the "Next" key
    to skip crap I don't want to read and let others flame that incompetent Sysop.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From apam@21:1/151 to Atreyu on Tue Nov 9 08:58:18 2021
    And as both an FTN developer and Sysop of a busy Hub system I have
    suggested to James to ignore such asinine requests.

    ...

    "When bots go wild" has never been a prevalent problem, its the sole
    problem
    of one incompetent Sysop. It is not the responsibility of an author to
    sit
    at the console writing all sorts of code, wasting all sorts of
    man-hours to
    fix the incompetence of one Sysop.

    It might not happen very often, and the problem might be caused by one incompetent Sysop, but it's everyones problem, at least everyone who got
    ~8000 of the same message in their base.

    It's not a hard thing to keep a file with a rolling log of message content hashes along with a time received, and acting accordingly.

    It's also not fixing the incompetence of one sysop, it's building
    resilient software, that can handle the incompetence of one sysop.

    How do I handle it here? I don't. I let the mail flow, use the "Next"
    key
    to skip crap I don't want to read and let others flame that
    incompetent Sysop.

    Ok, so press next 8000 times. I don't think anyone is flaming that
    incompetent sysop, as people make mistakes.. but it would seem that 8000
    of the same message coming through at several a minute, would be
    something software could be built to handle, especially at the hub level.

    Andrew
    --
    |03Andrew Pamment |08(|11apam|08)
    |13Happy|10Land |14v2.0|08!|07


    --- Talisman v0.30-dev (Windows/x64)
    * Origin: The Grinning Cat - telnet://gcat.talismanbbs.com:11823 (21:1/151)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Apam on Mon Nov 8 19:26:26 2021
    On 09 Nov 21 08:58:18, Apam said the following to Atreyu:

    It might not happen very often, and the problem might be caused by one incompetent Sysop, but it's everyones problem, at least everyone who got ~8000 of the same message in their base.

    Then Avon should be the one to pull the plug on that system if in fact its causing problems for everyone. You are not allowed to have a feed until you confirm you fixed your broken system. Harsh? Maybe... but an effective "fix".

    I've had to pull the plug on maybe... one or two systems... in two decades.

    So it just doesn't happen often that I'm required to take action, but:

    It's not a hard thing to keep a file with a rolling log of message content hashes along with a time received, and acting accordingly.

    I'm the author of a major mailer/tosser and had added this functionality in
    my product recently. It wasn't because of this incident but due to the stubbornness of some insisting on running software that strips Seen-By lines.

    But I'm not a fan of adding this level of checking for a few reasons which could morph into a whole other uninteresting topic altogether.

    Ok, so press next 8000 times. I don't think anyone is flaming that

    I wouldn't press Next 8000 times. I would just tell my BBS to mark the
    lastread pointer ahead 8000 messages. Its not a problem for me, is my point.

    Two decades of running this Hub with now close to a hundred links... many international, many are inexperienced Sysops, many are peering/meshing,
    many know-it-all-Linux-techno-geeks; almost all the links are running various combinations of software, OS's, etc, etc... yadda yadda, you get to see
    these problems "first hand".

    Every couple of years we seem to have someone rescan/dump old messages everywhere... often with new MSGID's, different header CRC, dates, you
    name it... I'm actually used to it now.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Atreyu on Mon Nov 8 07:12:05 2021
    "When bots go wild" has never been a prevalent problem, its the sole
    problem
    of one incompetent Sysop. It is not the responsibility of an author to
    Or if the activity is wrecking mail flow and other systems, then the hub
    would likely need to silence that node until their system calms down.


    --- Talisman v0.30-dev (Windows/x86)
    * Origin: Inland Utopia BBS iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Utopian Galt on Mon Nov 8 21:20:34 2021
    On 08 Nov 21 07:12:05, Utopian Galt said the following to Atreyu:

    Or if the activity is wrecking mail flow and other systems, then the hub would likely need to silence that node until their system calms down.

    This, exactly.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From apam@21:1/182 to Atreyu on Tue Nov 9 13:05:14 2021
    Then Avon should be the one to pull the plug on that system if in fact
    its
    causing problems for everyone. You are not allowed to have a feed
    until you
    confirm you fixed your broken system. Harsh? Maybe... but an effective "fix".

    Yes, but what if Avon is away?

    I'm the author of a major mailer/tosser and had added this
    functionality in
    my product recently. It wasn't because of this incident but due to the stubbornness of some insisting on running software that strips Seen-By lines.

    So... you've already added the feature, but suggesting no one else should?

    Why didn't you just cut the feeds of Seen-By stripping nodes?

    I get that it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, what's the
    harm in sending a few identical messages to /dev/null? Or at least having
    the option to?

    It's not that different from dupe checking. Sure people want to post
    identical messages periodically, that's what the time out is for..

    I wouldn't press Next 8000 times. I would just tell my BBS to mark the lastread pointer ahead 8000 messages. Its not a problem for me, is my
    point.

    Yeah I get it. So it's not a problem for you, it's not a problem for
    anyone else? Granted it happened in the bot echo, so nothing particularly important in there, but what if it was in FSX_GEN, especially if you have message base pruning on? And it's not like 8000 messages didn't have odd normally posted messages inbetween.

    But I'm not a fan of adding this level of checking for a few reasons
    which
    could morph into a whole other uninteresting topic altogether.

    Ok, I see you're not a fan... I guess the whole other uninteresting topic
    is performance degradation? If so, why not just have it as an option and
    meant for end nodes? Hubs can spew out thousands of dupes, and people who
    do actually care can toggle it on, and have some kind of protection?

    Every couple of years we seem to have someone rescan/dump old messages everywhere... often with new MSGID's, different header CRC, dates, you
    name it... I'm actually used to it now.

    Yes, I've seen it happen plenty of times too. I guess it doesn't happen
    very often, I've only seen this one time with the 8000~ identical
    messages, but that doesn't mean it won't happen again, and I don't see
    the issue with having a discussion about ways to proactivley prevent it.

    I certainly don't think it's an asinine suggestion.

    Andrew

    --
    |03Andrew Pamment |08(|11apam|08)
    |13Happy|10Land |14v2.0|08!|07

    --- Talisman v0.30-dev (Linux/x86_64)
    * Origin: HappyLand v2.0 - telnet://happylandbbs.com:11892/ (21:1/182)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Apam on Mon Nov 8 22:36:18 2021
    On 09 Nov 21 13:05:14, Apam said the following to Atreyu:

    Yes, but what if Avon is away?

    Easy... its a silly hobby, not an enterprise-grade commercial network.

    The sun rises and sets no matter if he's busy listening to whatever Abba is limping to the barn with or obsessing about dinner with Gillian Anderson.

    Why didn't you just cut the feeds of Seen-By stripping nodes?

    Its a tad hard to cut the feeds of Seen-by stripping nodes when they are in-between the Paths of systems that have peered/meshed with others. Even if that system got its feed from here, what good is a feed cut when he's peered with 2 or 3 other systems? And one of them runs that crap Fastecho tosser where the Seen-by stripping is hardcoded?

    When you have something like FSX or most Othernets, its mickey-mouse simple to design a distribution topology to prevent almost all of these problems.

    I certainly don't think it's an asinine suggestion.

    I certainly do and I'm almost certain G00R00 feels the same, only he may be
    a bit more "nicer" than I am. Whats the saying... clean up your own backyard before commenting on your neighbours.

    If you don't want 8000 identical messages, then Avon as a ZC should personally make sure as many precautions are in place in his network to prevent this amongst the Sysops participating. Whats a Sysop with a Bot doing posting in
    FSX in the first place? Was it deliberate or an accident? Either scenario
    needs absolutely zero hand-holding or "improvement" from a developer.

    No peering/meshing, nobody stripping Seen-bys, no buggy tossers, no buggy Bot programs, no circular paths, no rescans/dumps... do all this and you would
    have a very clean running network with guaranteed "zero" problems with dupes.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From apam@21:1/151 to Atreyu on Tue Nov 9 14:17:16 2021
    I certainly do and I'm almost certain G00R00 feels the same, only he
    may be
    a bit more "nicer" than I am. Whats the saying... clean up your own
    backyard
    before commenting on your neighbours.

    Not sure what you're getting at here...?

    You may be right, it may not be worth adding, I've only seen it happen
    the once. I'm still undecided if I'll add something to my tosser, but I
    fail to see the harm in talking about it?

    Andrew

    --
    |03Andrew Pamment |08(|11apam|08)
    |13Happy|10Land |14v2.0|08!|07

    /@≤@
    --- Talisman v0.30-dev (Windows/x64)
    * Origin: The Grinning Cat - telnet://gcat.talismanbbs.com:11823 (21:1/151)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Atreyu on Fri Nov 12 15:54:00 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 06:10a, Atreyu pondered and said...

    And as both an FTN developer and Sysop of a busy Hub system I have suggested to James to ignore such asinine requests.

    Ouch, OK, well thanks for sharing.. that's something we don't agree on then.

    Hope you had a better day today.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Atreyu on Fri Nov 12 15:58:20 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 07:26p, Atreyu pondered and said...


    On 09 Nov 21 08:58:18, Apam said the following to Atreyu:

    It might not happen very often, and the problem might be caused by one incompetent Sysop, but it's everyones problem, at least everyone who go ~8000 of the same message in their base.

    Then Avon should be the one to pull the plug on that system if in fact
    its causing problems for everyone. You are not allowed to have a feed until you confirm you fixed your broken system. Harsh? Maybe... but an effective "fix".

    Erm... thanks for the driving lesson... you may have read that I acted and did just that for the echomail area in question.

    Still hoping you had a better day today...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Atreyu on Fri Nov 12 16:26:27 2021
    On 08 Nov 2021 at 10:36p, Atreyu pondered and said...

    On 09 Nov 21 13:05:14, Apam said the following to Atreyu:

    Yes, but what if Avon is away?

    Easy... its a silly hobby, not an enterprise-grade commercial network.

    Yep it's a hobby, I don't think it silly though. Time consuming yes, a bit
    of a labour of love, sure... but then I get to meet all sorts of people
    because of it. For the most part that's fun, sometimes it's not..

    The sun rises and sets no matter if he's busy listening to whatever Abba is limping to the barn with or obsessing about dinner with Gillian Anderson.

    Is this some lyrics from a bathroom hit you wrote? ..and how did you find out about my dinner with Gillian?

    Its a tad hard to cut the feeds of Seen-by stripping nodes when they are in-between the Paths of systems that have peered/meshed with others.
    Even if that system got its feed from here, what good is a feed cut
    when he's peered with 2 or 3 other systems? And one of them runs that crap Fastecho tosser where the Seen-by stripping is hardcoded?

    sorry... lost me here are you talking about me running Fastecho?

    I certainly don't think it's an asinine suggestion.

    Respectfully, I disagree. If something can be added in programmatic terms to negate this kind of thing I can't see why it shouldn't be explored.

    I certainly do and I'm almost certain G00R00 feels the same, only he may be a bit more "nicer" than I am. Whats the saying... clean up your own backyard before commenting on your neighbours.

    By 'nicer' I take it you mean the considered and measured reply he gave me in the Fido MYSTIC echo that I just read? I've only suggested something Nick. I'm not going to loose sleep if in the end nothing comes of it but it appears
    James is open to looking at it and that's all any request can hope to achieve.

    You've lost me on the 'before commenting on your neighbours' reference.

    prevent this amongst the Sysops participating. Whats a Sysop with a Bot doing posting in FSX in the first place? Was it deliberate or an

    There's this echo called FSX_BOT ... fsxnet.nz offers info about it and
    it's intended usage, there's also info in the infopack. It's not a new echo and I see you're linked to it.

    If you don't want 8000 identical messages, then Avon as a ZC should personally make sure as many precautions are in place in his network to prevent this amongst the Sysops participating. Whats a Sysop with a Bot

    Thanks for the free advice.

    No peering/meshing, nobody stripping Seen-bys, no buggy tossers, no
    buggy Bot programs, no circular paths, no rescans/dumps... do all this
    and you would have a very clean running network with guaranteed "zero" problems with dupes.

    This sounds like winning the lotto. So we need all nodes and HUBs to play ball according to the above parameters and then all will be fine?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/09/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Avon on Fri Nov 12 01:31:37 2021
    On 12 Nov 21 16:26:27, Avon said the following to Atreyu:

    I certainly don't think it's an asinine suggestion.

    Respectfully, I disagree. If something can be added in programmatic terms to negate this kind of thing I can't see why it shouldn't be explored.

    Your request is largely unworkable, impractical and at the very least would introduce a whole new level of complexity all because of the actions of one system. A system whose actions you dealt with now, so its not worth exploring.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Atreyu on Sun Nov 14 09:13:26 2021
    On 12 Nov 2021 at 01:31a, Atreyu pondered and said...

    Your request is largely unworkable, impractical and at the very least would introduce a whole new level of complexity all because of the
    actions of one system. A system whose actions you dealt with now, so its not worth exploring.

    OK thanks, you've made your views clear, I just don't agree with them.. and that's fine, if we agreed on everything life would be rather dull eh?

    Asides this contention I hope things are going well for you and that the development work on DB continues to bring you enjoyment.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/11/06 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Avon on Fri Nov 12 07:33:00 2021
    Avon wrote to Atreyu <=-

    Is this some lyrics from a bathroom hit you wrote? ..and how did you
    find out about my dinner with Gillian?

    Just to be clear, are we talking about X-Files Gillian, The Fall Gillian, or Gillian as Margaret Thatcher?


    ... The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From JoE DooM@21:1/230 to Atreyu on Sun Dec 19 10:07:13 2021
    And as both an FTN developer and Sysop of a busy Hub system I have
    suggested to James to ignore such asinine requests.
    [snip]
    How do I handle it here? I don't. I let the mail flow, use the "Next"
    key to skip crap I don't want to read and let others flame that
    incompetent Sysop.

    Ah, the old "it's not a problem for me, so it shouldn't be a problem for
    you" mentality...

    I'm the author of a major mailer/tosser and had added this
    functionality in my product recently.

    Ah, the old "do as I say, not as I do" mentality...

    If you're ok with flaming sysops you see as "incompetent", are you ok
    with flaming sysops who have a shitty attitude? I'm going to guess you're
    not the sort of person who does well when your own attitude is reflected
    back at you.




    --- Talisman v0.35-dev (Linux/x86_64)
    * Origin: Lost Underground BBS (21:1/230)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Joe Doom on Sat Dec 18 18:45:16 2021
    On 19 Dec 21 10:07:13, Joe Doom said the following to Atreyu:

    If you're ok with flaming sysops you see as "incompetent", are you ok
    with flaming sysops who have a shitty attitude? I'm going to guess you're not the sort of person who does well when your own attitude is reflected back at you.

    Since I do not recall ever conversing with a Joe Doom, I'll politely say that everyone gets "one chance" with me... everyone, doesn't matter who it is.

    I've been warned by many about one particular supposedly-nasty Sysop not being "trustworthy" yet that individual actually turned out okay and is considered
    a close friend for 16 years now of trading personal silly banter via Netmail.

    Likewise I've been introduced to Sysops who are apparently brilliant, smart, highly technical/scientific, etc... you name it... yet they would initiate something with me in the most condescending flaming rude manner imaginable, even outright cutting a conversation short because I do not have IPV6 or run whatever Linux flavour was popular that month.

    Some Sysops also like to flame me unprovoked, out of the blue, with no prior context, just because I have a certain stature in another message net or develop a very popular mailer used by many; both of which mean nothing in the context of being able to trade silly banter.

    So yes... I am a person that does very well when someone tries to take me to task. Its almost always over something stupid.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)