Geeklog Forums

I had more than 5,000 submissions (all spam) today. Spamx isn't working with GL1.4 When I try to access the admin section to clear them out I get a 30-second timout.

What's the best way to:
1. Clear out all the spam
2. Keep it from happening again

Of course it is.

What sort of submissions are we talking about? Comments, stories, events, ...? Do you have the keywords in your blacklist?

bye, Dirk

There were more than 5,000 submissions last night, and now there are more than 14,000. I can't access the admin section to see what they are (articles, comments, links) or to set the blacklist words...

Hmm. It shouldn't really timeout there ...

Anyway, check the database directly (using phpMyAdmin for example). See what's in your submission tables (gl_eventsubmission, gl_linksubmission, gl_storysubmission). You can clear out those tables if you want (i.e. delete their content, not the tables themselves) - you would only risk losing any legit submissions buried between the spam.

bye, Dirk

Thanks Dirk. I retuncated the gl_eventsubmission table with phpMyAdmin and by the time I could get back to the homepage to see if it worked there were three more. It's all spam from casino and gambling sites. Now that I know how to clear them out (thanks) what's the best way to shut this type of activity down? Blacklist keywords?

Yep, blacklist the usual keywords.

You could also switch on the email notifications for spam postings. The emails contain the HTTP header of the spam submission which may provide additional information to feed for the filters (e.g. IP addresses, user agents).

Since you seem to get a lot of those, you could also try out one of the more experimental Spam-X modules.

bye, Dirk

Sorry about the blocking. You better not use the C word here on the site

bye, Dirk

Ok. I'll just call them Ka zee no's or something . Anyway, I now have the site running 1.4.0sr4 but I still can't get spam-x to work. When I try to get into it from the admin panel I'm getting an error message saying there's an "SQL" error and to check the log, but when I do it's not showing up as far as I can tell... So I still can't get into spam-x, but at least now it installed.

Without the actual SQL error message, it's impossible to say what's happening. Make sure your error.log is writable.

bye, Dirk

OK, I got the error log working, and the error I got was "Mon 14 Aug 2006 08:48:09 EDT - 1146: Table 'panamax_geeklog.gl_spamx' doesn't exist. SQL in question: SELECT COUNT(*) FROM gl_spamx WHERE name = 'MTBlacklist' "

This error was also causing me problems with the site statistics, and when I disabled spamx then the stats came back on.

How did you manage to delete the gl_spamx table but keep the plugin intact? Since that's what is happening: It's trying to access the Spam-X plugin's table - which is not there. But it wouldn't do that if the plugin would have been uninstalled properly ...

Suggestion: Create the table again (see sql/mysqltableandata.php for the table structure) manually. But it would be empty then, i.e. you seem to have lost all your blacklist entries. A database backup would come in handy about now.

bye, Dirk

Actually, I'm not convinced that I ever managed to get a correctly functioning spamx install. I've created the table (thanks...) and now spamx seems to be working. I'm also not getting the error when I ask for the stats anymore. But my problem (and question) is just migrating downstream. I still have a bunch of old comments in the database that are spam. What's the best way to re-populate the blacklist and clean house?

Feed URLs and spammy keywords that you find in those comments into the personal blacklist, then use the Mass Delete Comment option to get rid of those comments.

bye, Dirk

Does Spam-X work with forum posts?

Actually, the question should read "does the forum use Spam-X"

Yes, it does. At least the current version - not sure when exactly Blaine added it.

bye, Dirk

Sooner or later I'm going to get this thing working.

Now, when I try to add words to the personal blacklist, I get the following error in the log:

"Tue 15 Aug 2006 08:32:37 EDT - 1062: Duplicate entry 'Personal' for key 1. SQL in question: INSERT INTO gl_spamx VALUES ("Personal","kkkkk")"

I put "kkkkk" where the word I'm trying to blacklist appeared to get past your filters.

What's going on now?

Sounds like you have a primary key specified for the name field. There should be no primary keys just one index called spamx_name on the name column.

I would suggest maybe uninstalling and reinstalling spam-x if you are having these problems.

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One of the Geeklog Core Developers.