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<div class="usermessage">This is an Archived Discussion Page. If you wish to comment on any of these threads please do so at [[Discworld & Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum]]. All new threads should be started there. Thank you.</div>

==Annoying Scanners & Attackers==
Wiki went down for a bit this morning due to a someone scanning or mirroring the site. CPU spiked to 100% and disk activity went from nil to 3GB/sec within 1 minute. Needless to say, the site crashed... --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 15:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
:Maybe [https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Mightily_Oaks "Discworld Wiki"] decided to take it all at once? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 17:49, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

==When We Forget==
The whole wiki missed the anniversary of Mr Pratchett's death on Saturday. My excuse is that I'm old and daft; I suppose each has his own. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 02:51, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

==Spam filter again==
Now I'm prevented from editing the Main page because of the supposed content "101,502,138,396" (without the commas), which I don't see in the page nor does the the browser's "find" function. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 03:38, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

[[Category:Wiki Data|Discworld & Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum]]

==Question==
Depending on usage, I spend ~$40 USD per month hosting this site. That cost has fluctuated as usage has gone up or down over the years. For example, Terry's passage forced a major resource increase for about a week tripling costs that month. Right now the site is sitting on an AWS T1/medium server which hosts both the database and website.

Originally, I had this site setup pretty slick. It sat on a single webserver using a separate Amazon RDS database server and depending on the volume of requests the site spun more instances up as necessary to scale with traffic. I stopped that because using a database on another server doubled the cost and the wife and I were going though a lean stretch.

I'd like to get back to that setup. It's more robust and I don't have to worry about much maintenance. But we're back in that lean time. So my question to the rest of you is would you object to a small paypal donate button being placed on the site to help defray the costs? Donate or not as you see fit. Thoughts? --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 01:31, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
:I'm up for it, since you say advertising revenue can't be had. I've had near ten years of free entertainment; I don't know how generous the reading public might be. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 03:36, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
:Sounds good, but we'd need to make sure any donate button was clearly enough displayed that any reader could see it, but not so obnoxiously placed as to be annoying. --[[User:AnnieBudgie|AnnieBudgie]] ([[User talk:AnnieBudgie|talk]]) 09:57, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Go ahead! I'll check the piggybank. [[User:AgProv|AgProv]] ([[User talk:AgProv|talk]]) 11:43, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
:No complaints here. Thanks for hosting the site. If I ever do get my Pratchett course running -- not gonna happen anytime soon, I'm in charge of our journalism ''and'' physics programs now -- I'll make a donation part of my course budget.[[User:Moishe Rosenbaum|Moishe Rosenbaum]] ([[User talk:Moishe Rosenbaum|talk]]) 11:47, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Got it up! Checkout the sidebar. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 23:18, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
:So, how's fundraising going after a couple of months? Has the reading public contributed the first dime? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 02:33, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

==Featured Article==
It seems to be ages since a Featured Article was nominated as an exemplar of everything that's right about this site. Can I suggest [[Book:Guards! Guards!|Guards! Guards!]] as a candidate? for one thing, it seems to be a rare "completed" book page with no red links leading to empty pages!
:...but that's not the stated objective of the Featured Article. It's a request for improvement, not a commendation. The last thing good articles need is attention from bloat fans and graffiti artists. 
:Since no one ever pays any attention to it anyway, should we change the heading to suggest an exemplar instead? That seems useful and in line with Wikipedia's version, but we'd want to change it a lot more often. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:49, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

==BAN HAMMER==
I don't know who you are Mr. "5.9.62.136" but you won't even see this since you've been banned from the server.

I finally got the time to dig around and look into the systems overall stability. Found out >90% of the traffic is from the same IP in Berlin. One ban hammer later, and things are running smoothly now. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 03:21, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
:Yay! Best part of being a god is getting to smite the evildoer. (Hmmm, [[User:Death|Death's]] in Berlin, could he...?} --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 03:58, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
::Doubtful, it resolves to static.136.62.9.5.clients.your-server.de . Do you know the address of his site? I can crosscheck it. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 15:19, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
:Just wondering if He and Binky could pay the annoyance a salutary visit; sorry...The Diskwiki's address is at the de: link on the Main Page, of course. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:48, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
::So I tried to downsize the webserver and we started crashing again. Seriously, this thing gets scanned constantly. I don't mind googlebot or bingbot but AhrefsBot and SemrushBot have got to go. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 05:26, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
:I suppose there's no wiki attachment to discourage them? I thought anyone could come up with a new IP address pretty quickly. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 17:07, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
::Updated the [http://wiki.lspace.org/robots.txt robots.txt] file to ban them. But their documentation states it may take up to 2 weeks before they will respect it. In the meantime, I tweaked the webserver config. When one of them hits the server, they get a 403 Forbidden message. CPU & Bandwidth usage dropped like a rock. For the last 6 hours, this server has been running just fine on a micro sized system at 1/4 the cost of the medium sized one it had to be on before. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 20:18, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

::[[File:2016-12-21 14 20 20-Apache ModStatus PerfStats Sensor Details PRTG Network Monitor (PRTG).png]]

:::And we've been stable for a week now! --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 16:15, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

==Encryption==
FYI: I've installed an SSL certificate from the EFF.org provider (LetsEncypt). You can now access this site securely via [https://wiki.lspace.org https://wiki.lspace.org]. You may get a certificate error because not all providers recognize LetsEncrypt by default --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 20:35, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
:Works for me, once I remember my password. (Russian hackers are everywhere!) --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 21:00, 24 January 2017 (UTC)
::in a couple weeks, once i'm sure this is properly setup and stable, i'll force everyone over to the secure side. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 21:33, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

==Harder Spam Filter Problem==
We've patched "'''prĭnter'''" before, but you can't do it in a link. This is cruel to the [[Guild of Engravers and Prĭnters]] and pages like {{TT}}, but I don't see a solution. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 16:40, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
:That's a shame; I'll try this as a workaround for the problem: [[Engravers' Guild|Guild of Engravers and Prínters]] --[[User:Jagra|Jagra]] ([[User talk:Jagra|talk]]) 18:19, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
Ah, I missed that one. Handy that it had an alternative already. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 19:43, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

==Markup for spacing?==
We don't seem to have Wikipedia's "Pad" or "Spaces" templates. Does anyone have a neater way of leaving a space than a string of &Nbsp;? 
Strangely, nowiki doesn't work on the real form of that. See<nowiki> </nowiki>source. Added [[Template:Pad]]. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:22, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

==Thumbnail errors==
Just in the past month, we have this error message for new images (including ''File:Sliderule.jpg'' although it's linked and working): 
'''Error creating thumbnail: /bin/bash: /usr/bin/convert: No such file or directory Error code: 127''' 
What's that for? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:22, 10 July 2017 (UTC) 
This continues to be a problem; [[User:AgProv|AgProv]] just ran into it. Image files since 8 Jun can't be inserted as we've been used to doing. See [[Special:ListFiles]]. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:10, 27 July 2017 (UTC) {{Pad|2em}}Syntax copied directly from Mediawiki Help:Images doesn't work on the newer uploads; it produces the error message above. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 17:08, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

--I'll get to it. Wife's 9 months pregnant so I've got a ton of distractions at the moment. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 01:48, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
----This should be fixed. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 20:59, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
:It was, but it's back, just in the last couple of weeks. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:16, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
:Now upload works, but '''Delete''' doesn't. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:06, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
::Deletion of what? images? files? pages? Can you walk me through the steps to recreate the issue? --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 04:10, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
:'''Delete''' image. go to the file list and try to delete the most recent (marked "test"). '''Error deleting file: Could not create directory "mwstore://local-backend/local-deleted/p/i/g".''' --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 16:23, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
:<S>And...uploads work now but still can't create a thumbnail</S> (see [[User talk:Jagra]]). --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 21:11, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
:Thumbnails - check. Delete - check. Book and Character templates still a mess. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 03:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

==Vandalism==
[[Misuser:MASS VANDALISM]] wasn't kidding. I wonder if '''Move''' should require higher permission. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 16:07, 11 July 2017 (UTC) 
''Persistent'' bugger, too. I hope something can be done (preferably causing a lingering, painful death). --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:23, 13 July 2017 (UTC) 
...and he's back again. I got him at the first page this time but it's getting tiresome. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 17:23, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Yea I'm gonna have to do an update. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 05:13, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
:Well, that didn't work. [[User:Slashkamr]] is highly suspect but hasn't done anything yet. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 15:49, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

==Something seems to be broken...==

....if you try to register with an e-mail address:

<nowiki>[59181f6c] /mediawiki/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&action=submitlogin&type=signup&returnto=Discworld+%26+Terry+Pratchett+Wiki:About Exception from line 304 of /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/UserMailer.php: PEAR mail package is not installed

Backtrace:

#0 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/User.php(3885): UserMailer::send(array, MailAddress, string, string, NULL)
#1 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/User.php(3862): User->sendMail(string, string)
#2 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/specials/SpecialUserlogin.php(314): User->sendConfirmationMail()
#3 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/specials/SpecialUserlogin.php(219): LoginForm->addNewAccount()
#4 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/specialpage/SpecialPage.php(379): LoginForm->execute(NULL)
#5 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/specialpage/SpecialPageFactory.php(503): SpecialPage->run(NULL)
#6 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/Wiki.php(285): SpecialPageFactory::executePath(Title, RequestContext)
#7 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/Wiki.php(588): MediaWiki->performRequest()
#8 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/includes/Wiki.php(447): MediaWiki->main()
#9 /var/www/html/wiki.osiris-web.com/public_html/mediawiki/index.php(46): MediaWiki->run()
#10 {main}</nowiki>

Might be putting a few folks off joining! [[User:Indulgence|Indulgence]] ([[User talk:Indulgence|talk]]) 23:20, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
:Yep. I don't get quite the same error message, but "PEAR mail package is not installed" seems to be a problem. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:50, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

::An OS update broke part of the wiki. That's okay it made me site down and upgrade the wiki anyway. Sadly, the upgrade broke the lspace skin. I'll be working over the next few days to fix that. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 03:42, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

==Outage==
So the wiki was down all day today, I knew about it this morning but wasn't able to work on this until I got home tonight. I had the wiki's database server in the wrong pricing tier and it blew through the budget for the billing cycle so things shut down. I've got things straightened out now though so everything is in the proper place at the proper price. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 03:02, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

== Morag's fate ==
She's a buzzard owned by Nac Mac Feegle, especially by Hamish, although in "Monstrous Regiment" she's owned by Corporal [[Buggy Swires]]. However, in she's still with Nac Mac Feegle in "The Shepherd's Crown". What's her fate then? That's pretty important to me.
--[[User:Ves|Ves]] ([[User talk:Ves|talk]]) 15:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
:The obvious answer is: nobody knows. The next point is that this is not the place for content discussion, so I'm copying it to [[Talk:Book:The Shepherd's Crown]]. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 23:40, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

==Spam filter...again==
Somebody noticed that the spam filter doesn't work on the page titles. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 23:04, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

==Citations==
Has anyone looked at stuff like [[wikipedia:Template:Cite book]] and [[wikipedia:Template:Cite web]] and thought about converting them over to here? I looked at them and they are extremely bloated and over-complicated with code-spam on Wikiped, and in fact I saw that someone else already tried to make [[:Template:Cite web]] years ago in an aborted attempt, it doesn't work and no one is using it, so I tried to mark it for deletion ( but there is no proper category or template for that either :) )

I looked in the history of Wikipedia's versions to find the old-school simple template versions of them without all the pages of code-spam but the 2008 version can't be used here because it triggers the spam filter ("Spam protection filter - The text you wanted to save was blocked by the spam filter. This is probably caused by a link to a blacklisted external site. The following text is what triggered our spam filter: display: n0ne") ( I HAD TO EDIT THIS OUT OF THIS PAGE MESSAGE EVEN :) )

I then copied their 2006 version of <nowiki>{{Cite book}}</nowiki> but this doesn't seem to work on [[Book:Discworld's Assassins' Guild Diary 2000]] and I see the <pre><ref></ref></pre> tags visible on the page because I guess those aren't added to the mediawiki version Lspace has or something? :(

I think if these were added however possible it'd add a lot to pages, to be able to easily see where stuff is sourced from

[[wikipedia:Template:Webarchive]] is also really good because most websites aren't around a few years later ([[wikipedia:Link rot|Link rot]]) --[[User:Rise Up Against the Ribbon|Rise Up Against the Ribbon]] ([[User talk:Rise Up Against the Ribbon|talk]]) 12:12, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

==Time for an upgrade?==
Is it time to upgrade to the latest version of the wiki software? Also, how about requiring all new accounts, and I really mean new ones, to have a valid email address specified.--{{User talk:Myrtonos/sig}}
:Please, no more "upgrades"! We haven't recovered from 2017. As for requiring email addresses, we want to encourage new contributors, not threaten them with spam. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 17:02, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
::Note that nearly all internet forums do require email addresses.--{{User:Myrtonos/Sig}} 02:41, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
:::An upgrade will be coming. To many security holes not to do so... Just not sure when. --[[User:Osiris|Osiris]] ([[User talk:Osiris|talk]]) 03:08, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

==Emporium images==
The [[Discworld Emporium]] will allow use of their published material with the acknowledgement "© Discworld Emporium". Thanks to [[User:Discworld Emporium|Discworld Emporium]] --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 04:25, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

==Miner sign up issue==
when signing up i noticed a mishandled ampersand it displayed as & on screen on the screen that you enter your sign up details on (unsigned comment by [[User:Feldegast|Feldegast]] 22 Jun 2020)
:How odd. I just noted (see my user page) that that problem had disappeared after some years. I can't guess why you have it now. Also, please add new entries to the bottom of the page (and sign your posts). --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 03:27, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Discworld & Pratchett Wiki:Mended Drum/Archive 7 - Revision history

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