Fran's wacky world of daIRC

Introducing AdminServ

2007-04-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

After nearly 2 years of work, we're proud to announce the release of AdminServ.

What is AdminServ?

AdminServ is a system that allows us, the operators, to grant non-operator users (#support members) operator style powers.

What does this mean to me?

With the addition of this system, this means that daIRC now has even more staff available to support you, the users, maintain your channels and just make your stay as enjoyable as possible. Staffers that are a part of the AdminServ staff will be able to assist users with ban evasion, spam, channel annoyances and spam/botnet's joinging your channel.

How did AdminServ become?

During daIRC's early years, countless abusive staffers linked/joined the network, hurting daIRC's image, making it seem like we had no control over our staff and allowed them to be abusive. A decision was made soon after to not accept leaf offers to the network and to simply absorb all costs my self. Thankfully, this stopped unwanted staff from becoming a part of our community, but also cut back on the amount of good staffers - and so AdminServ was born. After countless weeks of spec'ing the system, we finally got together a development team. After many fall outs, in some cases costing us hundreds of dollars, the system was finally completed this weekend and introduced into the network!

Who is helping take care of the AdminServ?

Currently, we've hired the following staffers to help you, the users:

Staff Member	Country (Timezone)	Work Hours
Talleh	Australia
Paul	USA	Online between 9AM PST to 9PM PST
Ether	USA	Work hours are random.
ViciousPotato	Australia
W1N9ZR0	Canada	Usually on during 3PM PST to 8PM PST
Dilt	USA	3:15 PM - (9-11 PM) CST

Horray! more upgrades~

2007-04-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

So after a lot of fighting with the first kasumi host, I decided to leave since we could get a better deal. The server was moved to FDC servers since they gave us a box for $79 and all was well for the most part. In the past two weeks, though, FDC has been breaking it self by either blowing up a router, or hosting some large ddos targets that they refuse to remove.

Because of this, we simply got tired of it and decided to finally put the box with someone would would be willing to give us a killer SLA (100% SLA on network & power), AlphaRed. The box was even cheaper than FDC by an additional $20/mo, but also gave us much better routes (Time Warner/Global Crossing/Level 3). On top of this, we finally have a IPv6 supported server.

For those that wish to play around with IPv6, maybe connect to:

2610:138:2:e0:250:8dff:fe30:3f07

It's still in very early testing, but seems to be working just fine.

This, coupled with all the upgrades we've done with the webservers, we've been able to bring our total operating costs down another $300+ /mo :-) I think it's safe to say that DA and all its sub-projects are finally in the black! Quite the accomplishment, considering that this time last year we were still running upwards of $2500/mo. I figure our current costs are in the area of $500 - $600/mo to operate everything.

On top of this, we finally have a stable sorata! Hurray! Our old friend Azuretek was able to sponsor 1U of colocation space at his new datacenter with bandwidth at no cost, meaning all we had todo was purchase a cheap server (ebay) and be golden! So, we did that.

So, for $200 one time, we cut our costs by a badass $80/mo - meaning the hardware breaks even in only 3 months - sounds good to me! I'd like to thank Azuretek & NetRiver for the colocation and helping DA become stronger!

~Francisco

New webchat!

2007-02-20T07:22:00.000-08:00

The day has finally come that we're not using that god awful, slow server to run our webchat.

We're happy to announce that after a good day of coding, we've completed our new webchat located at

http://chat.dairc.net

Not only is there a new "java" based client, there is also a faster CGIIRC client there for those that need it. It sports a new layout and can actually be read for once. On top of that, we've made it so notices finally go into the active window with the CGIIRC.

The generator will be back online later this week to help you with your webchat, it'll also sport the new layout and an easier interface to work with.

The old generated links still work, so you don't need to worry about that. No longer are the chat names put under the interface window, but now they're all placed in a nice little drop down. We're also currently looking into a way to create a "channel selector" box that shows up on the actual chat interface it self at the top, to allow you to pull down and select a new channel (and on clicking "join" it'll then push the command).

We're still testing on that one, but hopefully i'll have something this week ;)

~Francisco

Hurray new stats system!

2007-02-17T17:23:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to announce that we finally have a new stats system - hurray!

users are welcome to visit:

http://stats.dairc.net

A good example of how it all looks would be: #deltaanime
for the documents on howto use it.

For the lazy, here's howto enable it.

/msg botserv chanstats #mychannel on

The stats will take upwards of an hour to enable, but normally less. Statistics also update ever hour.

Users wishing to provide input on new parts we should add and things like that, by all means, let me know :)

Thanks,

~Francisco

New stats system

2006-12-29T21:47:00.000-08:00

Hi,

As many people have seen, we do have stats.deltaanime.net which provides channel stats for those wanting it. The down side to this, though, is the current system was being maintained by an oper that's run off to frolic in the meadows of Ohio.

Right now we have the following:

http://stats.deltaanime.net/deltaanime.html

Which is pretty cool to say the least.

Right now i'm working to write a new addon to services to provide easy access to any users wanting to use it - the down side? We won't have nearly as many things listed there.

What would go away?

Names attached to the last topic area
some things from "big numbers"

That being said, that doesn't mean that they wouldn't return at a later time. We're currently looking at options to add this functionality into services our selves, but never much cared for patches and the likes.

When would the new system be in place?

Depending how quickly I can learn (proper) C, I could have it done by within the next weekend or so. If I'm able to ring up some people to help code, even quicker.

The new system isn't complex at all, but because I don't know C really, it's taking some extra time.

All comments would be great

Thank you!

~Francisco

Christmas upgrades - Part 1

2006-12-24T22:33:00.000-08:00

With my new found two weeks of vacation time (kinda) from work, i've finally gotten around to upgrading daIRC. Many of the upgrades weren't really needed on a performance idea, but more to cut costs.

Money money money...money!

Like all things, daIRC requires quite a bit of cash to operate. You've noticed that on Friday (Dec 23rd) hinoto split the network in half. This move will drop our costs by about $40/mo, as well as double our servers performance.

For a full break down on cost cuts, see this table.

Server Name Old Cost New Cost
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hinoto $100/mo $60/mo
Chisa (DAT) $180/mo $0.00/mo (absorbed into the cost of the webserver)
Motoko $150/mo $40/mo (Moved UK -> Germany)
Web Chat $100/mo $70/mo (Same location as hinoto, but has 2GB RAM)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTALS: $530/mo $170/mo DIFF -> $360/mo savings

As you can see, the upgrades were very much well worth it.

There are talks right now to move kasumi as it keeps proving to be a pest of a box. Granted, it's only *fully* died twice in the past year we've had her, it's been randomly throwing up users. The host uses people like Cogent & Telia, which are just crappy providers all around. We get a uptime SLA and all, and for the most part they meet it, but I've already done a little window shopping and found a company in the same area with way better bandwidth (all TIER 1 bandwidth - InterNAP) for $30/mo less - Anyone got experience with InterNAP?

On top of those savings, one of the side communities DA does billing for has cut their costs by nearly 50% due to a change of hosts (layeredtech is a buncha bastards I tell ya!)

zBot, etc

As many saw, zBot was out for much of today due to some issues we found in the code last night after a crash out. Me and W1N9Zr0 (be sure to thank him!) spent the better part of today debugging it and speeding it up. We've done some quick calculations that are showing zbot now being 10x faster. No more will you have to wait a second or so for zbot to kick back results or anything of the sort - all now instant

zBot changes
------------------------

- Flood protection
- cleaning up of all user messages
- massive speed increase

Granted, the list isn't huge, the changes that were done were fairly big to impliment

Webchat & daIRC website!...wait..we have a website?

I've finally gotten time to make the new daIRC website (late beta at this point), and have put together the new webchat we'll be launching soon.

Users wishing to see/comment on either of them can visit

new website - http://beta.deltaanime.net
new webchat - http://beta.deltaanime.net/chat/

Yes, i'm aware the chat doesn't got daIRC at this time, for teh time being we're just using the test server they provide with the new client.

Happy Holidays!

~Francisco

daIRC policy change

2006-12-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

As many of you may have noticed, DeltaAnime has slowly been transitioning from a network
focused primarily on the anime and private server communities to one that supports a
broader spectrum of interests and content. With this has come a number of changes including
the adoption of the daIRC namesake and a revision of general administrative
practices and policies.

One policy that is up for review is the restrictions on file sharing. Under the current policy, users are limited to sharing content that is either unrestricted by North American copyright law or that which falls under the anime or Asian media categories. It has been noted that this policy is a little backwards in that licensed anime does in fact violate copyright laws in most cases even though it seems to be tolerated by those that distribute or produce it.

After some deliberation and taking into consideration the interest some users have expressed
regarding this topic, we're entertaining the idea of lifting the restrictions on content that may be distributed from one client to another. Such transfers do not involve the network in any way beyond the initial user to user communication and as a result the network would not store nor aid in the transfer of any material that may infringe on any nation's copyright laws.

The network's stance would be one that neither promotes nor condones the use of the network for such a purpose but would not punish those that chose to do so as long as the content distributed is not of a seriously objectionable nature. The user and the group they represent would be responsible for maintaining their integrity and respecting the restrictions of the law in their area.

Of course, all administration on the network will be unable to participate in any group, community or project in any context beyond a basic user while still maintaining their status on the network to prevent bias or abuse of daIRC resources. This policy is identical to current restrictions regarding participation in L2, RO and other private communities.

As with all large network changes, we wish to give the entire network community the opportunity to vote on the outcome of this proposal and voice any comments it may have. Comments have been adjusted to allow anonymous posting. When posting, please be sure to declare your vote (Yes/No/Don't care) in the first sentence, after that you may leave a detailed comment if you wish. Alternatively, one may attempt to contact a member of the administration to provide a more detailed response.

No matter the outcome of this vote, daIRC will still continue to strive to provide a stable, feature rich environment with a supportive administration where communities and projects may take root and flourish.

~Francisco & S|napse

Server changes

2006-09-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

As many of you saw a few weeks ago, our europe side had been suffering some bad split issues.
Many fights with the host, and they finally state that we're behind in our bills. So, we look - sure enough, tehy claim as such. I check my paypal records, shows otherwise!

Said host continues to be an ass, and so since then (about 3 weeks ago) all europe servers have been connecting to the USA (and have been very stable doing so). Because the server is just temp, though, the network doesn't reconnect during any sort of split - hense what happened today. During a minor change, motoko ran away from the network, and due to their being no server connect notices, no one even noticed until freek pointed it out (an i then stabbed Mike todo it).

We've found a new host that we're looking at getting a hub with - they're pretty nice and cheap.
The current hub we had was costing 50 EUR/mo - costly over $75 CAD/mo after all taxes - yikes! For reference, our US hub, kamui, only costs $50 CAD/mo. Granted, it's "only" $25, but when there is $0/mo in donations coming in, $25 does make a difference :P The new hub is only 19 EUR/mo, which is quite a price drop.

We've also found a (possible) new shiyu in France as well. The current box is nice, stable network and all, but is costly at 49 EUR as well. The new host would be 19 EUR/mo, and would give us native ipv6 support, that many users (ok, fine, like 5 :-P) have asked for.

All hoping, we stand a chance of dropping our monthly costs by over $100/mo :-)

Currently waiting for Evan to get his ass back from work so we can go over the figures. If we decide to change out, it'll happen within the next couple days.

~Francisco

Upgrades complete :D

2006-08-12T00:40:00.000-07:00

After so much fighting, the upgrades are finally done!

As everyone saw, the network netsplit around midnight today.

The upgrade has finally brought in some much wanted upgrades!

Text Banning:

Users can now filter text being said in their channel (very good for spam control) by simply doing:

/mode #mychannel +b ~T:*@*:block:*text*

Please note that * is a wildcard, meaning it matches all around. You can control what people/ISP's can say it by adjusting the *@* spot :)

With that being said, a user with HOP (+h / %) or above will be able to say text that's banned.

Channels can have 15 of these types of bans for the time being. If there is a large demand for a higher limit, i'll increase it.

Adjustments to channel modes +c +S:

Before, these modules just removed/blocked colour from being said. We've now expanded the module so it strips bold, underline, and whatever reverse is.

Better PM controlling:

A feature enjoyed on efnet and rizon was the ability to set who can pm you when you're in a no pms mode. We've now introduced this, known as callerid. With this new addon, users that aren't on your accept list will be told that you're in such a mode. On top of this, users will be informed by server-notice (check your status window) informing them of the user/hostmask that pm'd them.

To use it, simply do.

/umode +I
/accept Nick

The 'accept' list is a per connect time basis kind of deal, meaning you can't set your list and it's saved (at this time anyways). If a user wishes to remove someone from their PM allowed list, simply do:

/accept -Nick

Bigger ban list for massive damage:

With our central hub now upgraded, starting tomorrow, users will be able to enjoy having a 200+ (either 200 or 250) entry ban list to manage their channels.

Upgrades will be coming to services introducing timed bans and some others :)

~Francisco

webchatters

2006-08-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

One of the many issues we see with people using the webchat is that they insist on setting their channels to +R (registered only can join). This is an issue as our webchat doesn't inform the user of the following:

- That the channel is actually +R (it goes to the status window which is confusing).
- how does one register?

How would people feel if we made it so webchatters got marked +r, even if they aren't registered?

It would allow for them to at least get past +R and the likes.

Some people are afraid of things like spambots and the likes. We've been considering using a image verification deal on the webchat to help with this.

Another option to this is to add a bar to the top of the current webchat (that or even changing the 'HELP' menu) where it would be a drop down where the user can select a help topic. On select it would pop up a quick help documents.

Input?

yay! DNS upgrades!

2006-08-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

Hurray!

Finally, our DNS upgrades are done.

after some quick tests, we found out that the geo has a 'otherwise goto' type part, where if a region isn't declared, it's sent to our 'world' view (our US based servers).

Once I found htis out, I simply made our DNS load the 'world' and 'europe'. By doing this, we cut the ram usage from a nasty 46MB to 13MB, only a couple megs above stock :)

We've also added a Germany DNS server to help with dns pickup times - hurray!

Users should notice a speed up (we hope).

We're currently considering another 1 more DNS server over in Texas, but haven't decided yet.

webchatters & floods

2006-08-04T15:59:00.000-07:00

Webchatters

Many people have found, and seem to enjoy, the webchat we provide at http://chat.deltaanime.net

I must admit, it's quite useful and works quite well (when it wants to). Alas, those "when it wants to" are becoming a rather large annoyance to many of the people in #deltaanime

To help with this, we'll be doing the following:

- Trying to make it pass the channel name in the users real name field (hopefully).
- introducing #webchat to help as a guidence center to help users get in the right direction.

Users that wish to help in #webchat will be welcome to talk to either Dilt or I to trial to help on it. We don't need many people, but a people that can speak other languages will be very useful.

Floods

We now are in possession of the addon to provide the network with some well needed protection from these kiddies. Testing will begin tonight on our testnet (IP will come later) while we try to trigger it.

Any user that will be able to help stress this is welcome to talk to me on IRC to help testing how well it works!

DNS & Botnet floods

2006-08-03T02:20:00.000-07:00

Just to annoy indigo/dilt, i'll start off by stating it's been a wacky week!

The new DNS testing has completed and now pending final installation :)

It uses a tad (*cough* a lot more *cough*) RAM that we originally planned for:

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND

5426 named 20 0 80120 45m 1852 S 1.0 18.4% 0:08.94 named

So ya, around 46MB of ram used - yikes!

With such a huge footprint on RAM, I'm now wondering if it's truely worth it to run our DNS like we plan. Granted, the other DNS server we have has 512 ram, 46MB of ram just for that still sounds steep - compared to the current 9MB footprint we're using.

Advantages: Resolve times will be much quicker as it doesn't need to contact the GeoDNS server to find out IRC IP's.

Downside: The increase in resouces could prove to be an issue, depending on how quickly we grow.

As for the botnet flood, we're needing hte module quickly and waiting on donations just wouldn't
work out. We've now purchased the module off my credit card where i'll probably end up having to ride it there for a bit.

With that being said, though, donations do help and it would be wonderful to be able to pay for that module full out!

Users wishing to donate even $1 to help with it, may do so by sending paypal funds to delta@deltaanime.net

Botnet's suck :(

2006-08-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

Well.

Today, around 6PM PST everyone saw as kasumi split from the network, and sorata dumped the majority of her users. At this same time, #l2-paradise took a large (1000+) botnet causing the boxes to max outta RAM.

We've had this problem in the past and so we increased all the ram allotments on the servers to help with this. Since DA is still a small community, though, we don't have enough servers to absorb that kinda of sudden increase without causing some issues :(

We've found a solution at - http://www.vulnscan.org/customcoding#ConnThrottle

Alas, DA is short the cash to afford this.

Anyone wanna donate? :P

DNS emo fest part 2

2006-08-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

After much fighting we've finally built a fully custom build of BIND in a nice little RPM that we can easily patch on top of cpanel w/o issues.

The way it works, though, is confusing in parts.

The way the GeoDNS works is that we split each continental region into what's known as a 'view'. Each view is then told what countries to actually manage for (this views don't know them selves, hense why we need to define them).

Now, views are odd in that if you are defining a zone (a domain), the zone must be mentioned in each view - very annoying :(

Since our hosting is always expanding so much these days (at times we get 5+ accounts a day, a shame none of them pay :P), we can't just do a full switch over - cPanel just doesn't allow for this. The way cpanel works is that it allows no wiggle room for these things so all the customizing we've been doing, we'll have todo again - boo!

To accomidate this, what we've done is have a 'included' file that cpanel updates, which is then included into the real named.conf - hurray!

We've done a test of this and it worked fairly well so far.

The only down side is that with low-end hardware (the new germany server is only a 733 Mhz P3 w/ 256MB ram), booting up of the nameserver isn't a snap like it was originally. With the way 'views' work, is that the zone is loaded once for every zone - we have 1600+ zones & 8 regions = 12800 zones to load - D'oh!

Initial startup of this was a little shy of 1 minute on the old hardware, with loads of 1. Once it was loaded, though, we had 195MB of RAM free and loads at 0.00 :)

Depending on how work goes, i'll be implimenting this sometime tomorrow.

DNS makes me wanna /wrist my self.

2006-08-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

Well after a lot of checks over the past month have proved my question that our dns is wacky at best.

Our host, staminus has some of the best filtering for ddos and the likes. But, due to these filters it slows our DNS resolving time down.

People in the USA aren't having it too bad, but anyone that has weaker connections to the USA (south america, asia region and hunks of europe) are just not getting our IP's.

Our solution? Install another DNS server. Since a month ago when we noticed lower user numbers we purchased a server in Germany to provide another resolving point.

To try to speed it up even more, we've been trying to merge all of our different servers together to make it as fast as possible. Issue? bind is really really lame.

So lame, in fact, i've spent the past 2 weeks at work during breaks and at night trying to get it working. When we finally get it working, other domains will stop working.

Ugh!

If there is anyone good with BIND, lemme know on IRC? :P

Edit

Well, after some more testing it seems this can be handled by doing the following:

- For each view present (currently 1 view per region), do an include for a list of all the domains we currently are authoritative to.

The only issue with this is that since we host so many domains (1600+), on a slower server (like the new germany DNS server), it will take upwards of a minute to get it to be fully loaded.

It's either this or simply just put the DNS server in the pool and just hope it picks up in time.

Then again, a 1 minute startup time on the DNS isn't bad, since we'll almost never have to reboot the DNS unless there's either a powe-outage or we're upgrading it.

~Francisco

Wee!

2006-08-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

So the wonderful members of #deltaanime have harrased me to try to get together a blog to keep them updated with all the countless things going on with DA and the likes.