Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Vandalism

Organikum - 23-10-2004 at 01:42

Soembody is replacing pictures uploaded by me to the scipics directory with 0k pics.

In the threads about 1-chloro-2-propanone, coppercondensor and benzene as far as I saw by now.
Some pics from Mephisto are replaced also but mainly its against me as it looks.

It hurts the board more than me as I know what I have done and how I have done it.

Organikum - 23-10-2004 at 02:09

I re-upped some of the 0k´s now.


Some pictures of Mephisto and some of Tacho are also gone as I saw, there are some more where I cannot say who uploaded them.

[Edited on 23-10-2004 by Organikum]

Mephisto - 23-10-2004 at 04:46

This security-hole can be easily closed by changing the rights for scipics (upload only, no changing).

I re-upload the styphnic acid pictures now.

vulture - 23-10-2004 at 07:00

This is highly annoying, but I'm afraid I don't have enough privileges to change the server acces rights.

This is at least partly my fault.

Polverone - 23-10-2004 at 14:12

Chemoleo had noticed that some of his pictures had disappeared (they hadn't been set to 0k, but were not found at all). I saw that I had those pictures backed up in another directory, so I said "I'll just copy all the files from this old scipics directory to the current one." I did so without noticing that some of the files in that old directory were of size 0k. So I triggered the most recent disappearance of files.

The more interesting question is why some of the files were size 0k, and why chemoleo's pictures were vanishing in the first place. There might be malicious human intent at work, or it might just be the server.

You see, the server is at 100% disk usage, at least for /home, as reported by df. There is actually some space left but it is reserved for the super user to have some working space in which to fix low-disk situations. Bravidio don't seem to be in any hurry to fix the situation, since it has been at or near capacity for months now. My personal space allocation for sciencemadness gives me hundreds of megabytes free, but that's of little use when the disk itself grows full. I know that low-disk situations can cause difficulties in uploading. I don't know if they can lead to automatic deletion of files, though.

Perhaps it would be best for me to end the scipics upload capability until/unless the disk situation is fixed. I know it has been useful for many, but offering an unreliable service is in some ways worse than offering no service at all.

Organikum - 24-10-2004 at 02:09

So you replaced accidentially some of my pics with 0k pics and now think on ending the feature ?

Not good.
Then I would attach the pics and thats using exactly the same amount of serverspace. Limiting the size of pictures might be more helpful, my pics are a average of 20k, many post pics with 270k straight from the camera whats not necessary at all.

Mephisto - 24-10-2004 at 02:40

The guardian-script already limits pictures to 100 kb (on scipics).

I hope the disk-space could be saved by limiting other features (attachment-size for example), to not end up with threads with not-working yahoo-picture-links.

vulture - 24-10-2004 at 06:58

I'll keep an eye on .jpg and .gif attachment size to make sure no unnecessary large files are posted.

Please report such files if you spot them.

Pictures

MadHatter - 24-10-2004 at 23:19

All of my pictures are still there.