evolt.org server outage June 20 2001

Posted on June 20, 2001

in Commentary & Society

by Bob Davis (bobdavis)

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Bob Davis

Member info | Full bio

User since: August 02, 1999

Last login: January 10, 2000

Articles written: 15

On 20 June 2001 someone we invited into our community decided to show their contempt for the generosity and openness that have defined evolt.org since day one.

Unfortunately, this person took it upon themselves to use their members.evolt.org account to temporarily derail all of the lists (thelist, thechat, etc.), the web browser archive (browsers.evolt.org) and wipe out a couple hundred GB's of data. Fortunately, because we practice what we preach, we do have backups and all of the data can be restored. The lists are back up, but all "non-essential" services on that machine have been shut down.

We are sorely disappointed in the actions of this member and the downtime that it has caused. Until the log files have been looked through and the data that were lost have been restored, all of the members.evolt.org accounts will be off the air. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience that this might cause.

As you might know, evolt.org has been providing free web site hosting for our members on hardware that was donated by the community, maintained by top-notch admins in their spare time, using bandwidth that is the result of further generosity. Accounts were available to anyone who wanted a no-cost place where they could learn, experiment with technologies that might not be available to them otherwise, and share their knowledge with the rest of the community.

Evolt.org is an open community. We invite all to participate, and give willingly of our resources to help each other out. We actively encourage the sharing of knowledge and opinions, we work hard to help each other be the best web developers we can be, and we care deeply about the craft we practice. Out of our caring, beliefs, and generosity we have created a community that is thousands strong and looks after itself. Someone apparently doesn't like that. Someone abused our generosity and openness. Someone has forced us to re-evaluate our policy of freedom, sharing, inclusion and trust.

Hopefully we won't need to take any drastic measures, but measures will be taken to prevent this from happening again. To all of you that make evolt.org as great as it is, thanks again. You are the reason we all care so deeply for this community and why it causes us such pain that someone that we invited into our house would cause such destruction. To the person responsible...well, you'll find out what we feel about you soon enough.

Bob's just this guy who lives in San Antonio, TX and works as the web guy at a hotel and freelances. He writes, codes, plans, manages, cooks, learns, reads, and sometimes drives too fast.

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Update..

Submitted by djc on June 21, 2001 - 10:22.

Thanks for posting this for everyone bob.. Theres a lot more that can be said about the issues of trust and stuff, but at a later time perhaps. Just to let everyone know, the data base been restored, the hole patched, and the person responsible dealt with.

Thanks to everyone for the encouragment and kind words. We will be keeping the members.evolt.org accounts alive, but some new restrictions are going to be put in place on new accounts. All the websites are back up and running. Thanks again for everyone's patience in this matter :)

Curious...

Submitted by armando on June 21, 2001 - 10:35.

Without giving away too much info, was the compromise done maliciously by an actual account holder or was the account holder account compromised by someone else? Just curious... Thanks for getting the sites back up. This is a wonderful resource guys.

RE: Curious

Submitted by djc on June 21, 2001 - 10:49.

It was done by the person who had the account, and it looks like the sole purpose of them getting that account was to write the script that did this, since there were no other files in their directory.

I'm seriously perplexed as to why exactly someone would delete a bunch of web developers accounts/data that are only used to test out new technologies and learn. If it's a 'statement' thing, I'm wondering just what the hell their point is..

biting the hand that feeds...

Submitted by dan_2001 on June 22, 2001 - 02:03.

As a relatively new user of PHP and MySQL I have depended on the help of other open source / *nix based people with the knowledge to help me learn. As I have learned more and gained more experience I have tried to help others in a similar position to what I was those few months ago. The community that is based around web technologies and open source is self-supporting, there is always someone who can help, even with the most obscure questions people can point you in the right direction.

It seems such a shame to me that someone would go out of their way to be malicious and hinder fellow web developers in their own quest for knowledge. For a community that is based on trust, this kind of incident just eats away a little at that trust.

I'm not professing to be an expert of any sort, I don't know anything about setting up webservers (I just telnet into MySQL and it works ;) ) but I know that this must have caused a fair amount of work to you guys at evolt and you have done really well in getting the sites back up again. Much praise and respect to you :)

Think I better stop before I turn into a preacher... Keep it going fellas. :)

Dan

a good time to say...

Submitted by sabrina.dent@ap... on June 25, 2001 - 01:41.

Thank you.

Thank you to all the people who donate the resources that make evolt possible; thank you to the gurus who keep it up and running and improving at an alarming and admirable rate in often ground-breaking ways; thank you to those voices on the thelist who give so much more than they get; and thank you especially to those who speedily, informatively and responsibly cleaned up after somone who spat on the spirit of evolt. A pox on his/her motherboard.

Keep the information flowing; this is vastly more interesting than Eastenders these days.

--Bri

sob

Submitted by quicksilver on June 25, 2001 - 02:27.

*hugs the members.evolt.org server and sobs* I love you all! :) Sincere thanks to everyone here.. really

Hmm.

Submitted by quicksilver on June 25, 2001 - 02:38.

That was a little brief..

I really want to make that clear. I have never before seen a group with such a generous and open philosophy as evolt. It is a good time to say thank you. It sickens me that someone has to ruin it for the rest of us.

On a (slightly) off-topic spin, I was wondering: is there a reason why evolt uses a email-based list instead of some sort of forum system? Personally, I've always found email lists to be overwhelming to deal with. It would be a lot easier to answer and ask questions if they were in a more organised format. Additionally, I never know where to go if I just want to put out a thought, one that isn't important enough for an article and too off-topic for the list (a thought like this one). Just wondering.

Thanks a bunch once again to you all, - Linus

RE: Hmm.

Submitted by djc on June 25, 2001 - 08:58.

First off, thanks for all the kind words everyone, it means a lot :)

To answer a couple questions, we've always found email to be a more meaningfull form of online communication compared to web based formus. It also adds some accountability and responsibility to thelist(s) that I personally haven't seen in a lot of web based forums.. Thats a whole different story though.. We have several lists available for people to use. The most well known one is thelist, our main email list for discussion of web development. We have other lists though - one that deals with the development of our website called thesite where anyone is welcome to help out building what you're seeing now, and one called thechat(orginal huh?! ;) which is for totally offtopic banter among evolt members. Someday soon, we'll update the lists.evolt.org website to reflect these other lists, but there's the scoop right now ;)

Again, thanks for everyones understanding and kind words during this time :)

Accountability on a forum

Submitted by quicksilver on June 25, 2001 - 14:57.

I see what you mean. Maybe if the forum's user database was linked with that of evolt?

Sorry for the continued off-topic-ness.

- qs

Re: Hmmm

Submitted by ebyryan on June 27, 2001 - 18:43.

I really like the fact that evolt provides such a service. Hopefully I will get around to donating a few bucks eventually. Unfortunately the server went down the day or day after I finally applied for an account so I fear my application may have been lost. As for quicksilver's question. I prefer email but I know many like forums. Would something such as Yahoo Group's setup where you can access it from both possible in the future of evolt. It obviously could use some tweaking but I think this would be nice and could tie in to the archive. -- Eby

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