Chameleon hacked?

[siceman105]

I just noticed that all my files on Chameleon have rolled back to a version from two months ago, when I contacted support I was told it was because the server was hacked.

Does anyone know more about this?

Since movnig to this server Ive had nothing but trouble and to be honest I am sick and tired of JPC, my account includes "daily" back ups, which never seem to work.

[Ron]

First off, I'm very sorry you have run into this problem. "I feel your pain" as I lost a few weeks of data myself a couple of months ago, and re-re-re-re-re-learned a very valuable lesson. Actually almost worse; my database was 2 weeks old, my filesystem was current; they need to be in sync for my main site.

You need to keep your own daily backups; the backups made by JPC are just in case of a server failure, and the approach they are using isn't very robust at the moment, though the owner has promised a more robust solution in the near future.

Good luck.

[siceman105]

Hi,
Thanks.
I have some back up from a few days ago, but im pissed off that this is the second time somethign major has happened in a few months. Chaemeleon is like a cursed server or something.

In addition, JPC made no attempt to notify me, they just rolled back all the files, almost like they are covering it up.

Im not a happy customer.

[Ron]

I don't blame you at all. Perhaps they "rolled back" your contact info, too.

[piper]

So that's what happened. I was checking the notice forum and didn't see anything for chameleon so I assumed the server just died again. I had to repair my database but everything seems fine now. I lost $$$ again this weekend due to downtime though... *sigh

Chaemeleon is like a cursed server or something.

It would seem so...

[slserpent]

i didn't see anything wrong with my databases, but then they did change the php module to cgi on chameleon. now i have to recode a lot of my site. and for what good...

[Ron]

What do you need to recode for PHP as CGI (phpSuExec)?
What's not working, and when did they make the change?

Thanks.

[slserpent]

well, it seems that less was broken than i thought. the only thing i can't fix now is getting the referer. i've tried $HTTP_REFERER, $_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"], $_ENV["HTTP_REFERER"], and getenv("HTTP_REFERER"); they all return 0. i was using the referer as a backup to javascript to keep my site in frames. obviously related to the apache functions not being available anymore, yet it shows up when i do phpinfo(). i'm wondering if messing with any php config settings will fix this.

oh, and they did the change the 22nd i think.

[Ron]

I'd open a ticket and ask Masood for help on this. Last I checked in these forums, referrer worked just fine in a series of different tests we ran.

My code also depends on server variables, so I wish you good luck!

[Vin DSL]

im pissed off that this is the second time somethign major has happened in a few months. Chaemeleon is like a cursed server or something...

Bwahahaha!

I guess Ron's PHP-CGI idea isn't working out so good, huh?

Why don't you chumps have them move you to a real server -- one running php_mod? Check out the uptime in my sig...

[mattsiegman]

Vin, you really need to stop whining about the PHP thing. It's starting to get annoying.

It's a security measure that, IMHO, is good and needed, etc.

[Ron]

You'er misreading it, Matt... He's trying to give me credit for it! I wish it were my idea, but alas only my Raison D'être.

[carl_in_Florida]

Ron, you aren't on Zeus are you? I had the same loss a little while ago. I set up a Cron Job to do a MySql backup everynight. The tarball is emailed to a dedicated gmail account.

I would recommend this to everybody.

Carl

[Ron]

That's a great approach -- I wish I could use it! My tarball would be around 6GB

I now use WinSCP to do DB dumps and a folder rsync; I have a lot of directories that have to be examined but few change. The examination takes about 5 minutes and downloading takes about another 5. It's a manual process I do every day now, but the incremental backups take about 1 to 2% of the bandwidth of a full tarball. Besides, now I don't have enough space to actually construct a single tarball anymore, I have a 10GB space limit. (I will be looking at archiving old images soon)

To recover from a loss, file-by-file uploading will take forever. My approach would be to first upload my DBs and work on getting them run back into the server, and while that was happening upload the most important script and static directories to get my site back on track. Then I'd let it run for a day (depending on how much time had passed I figure it could take anywhere from no time to a full day ) to resync my image directories.