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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 43
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Joined: Jan 2004
Posts: 43
About an hour ago my site started listing all users as unregistered and their sig files were not showing. The users names are still "saved" somewhere so when they post they dont have to type in their name (same as when they are logged in). When I post it shows the LOG OUT option and the board remembers who I am but my post displays with no avatar or sig file and I am listed as unregistered.

I can no longer access the control panel because none of the users are listed: No record for that login name was found. I cant get in through any admin user names at all

My members folder on the site still has all the member cgi files listed.

Without admin access to the control panel I am totally at a loss. Nothing was done to the board for the past few weeks.

added: I just browsed my files and compared some to a backup I have. I notice that my MEMBERSLIST.cgi file is empty now but my backup was loaded with names. Can this be the only error? Just upload the backup?

Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 611
Former Developer
Former Developer
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 611
Have you had any odd error messages lately?
Have you run any of the metadata rebuilds?
Have you deleted any users recently?


Charles Capps
Former UBB.classic Maintainer
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No erros what so ever. Last rebuild was a few weeks ago when I had duplicate user names. I never delete users.

I uploaded the backup memberslist.cgi file and the site seems fine. BUT, I did some editing of the file which maybe I should not have? I browsed the file before uploading and saw 1 space between 2 member names. It was a randome location...so I removed the space. I also saw 1 line of weird characters so I deleted that. The file is now just members listed in numberical order.

I think the problem is solved. If you look at my older post from a few weeks ago you will see that I probably caused this error. In the past I had opened a cgi file and renamed a member which accidentally duplicated another member name and caused an error a few years later.

What is the default permissions for memberslist.cgi? 755?

For anyone reading this - I HIGHLY recommend backups of the ubb folders.

thanks

Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 611
Former Developer
Former Developer
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 611
my /members/memberslist.cgi is CHMOD 777.


Charles Capps
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thanks

Joined: Jul 2006
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Pooh-Bah
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 2,143
You should run a member stats / member metadata rebuild with that old memberslist in place. That will rebuild it.

You could also have opened up a support ticket for this - we have a quick script that will rebuild the file in case it gets corrupted.


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Joined: Jan 2004
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Strangely the problem occured again this morning. This time I did the following:

uploaded the memberslist.cgi from a backup

rebuilt the member data (which wasnt done yesturday)

edited my lastnumber.cgi and lastused ??? something like that. All of the files related to the member count were not matching. Even after meta rebuild the counts werent accurate. The usednumber and lastnumber were something like 50 less than the actual members count and members files count.

Another thing I noticed is that my usednamelist file has many of the members listed twice. Like this:

joeschmo
joeschmo
waltrman
waltrman

Dont know if thats a problem. The list appears to match the names of the members but I cant get an accurate word count (also member count) within this file because some names are not duplicated

Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 611
Former Developer
Former Developer
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 611
At this point, I would recommend a support ticket


Charles Capps
Former UBB.classic Maintainer
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 2,143
Pooh-Bah
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 2,143
Having dupes in usednamelist is OK.

But yes, having a critical file nuked twice in a row is bad. Ticket time - something may be wrong with your board. <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


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just a very late update. The problem was solved since my last post months ago. I had to manually correct the .cgi files that had the member counts, member total and last number used. This is not something anyone should have to do but since I caused the error by editing a file I shouldnt have, then it had to be fixed. The files were just a number that I changed so they all matched as far as member count (this wasnt corrected through the control panel for some reason)

Then I ran the rebuild options through the control panel again just to be safe and checked the files again which were matched correctly

I did not change the usednamelist

Note to self - dont edit the members list file

Joined: Aug 2004
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To my horror, I logged into the site this afternoon and found that everyone was listed as unregistered. Even I couldn't login.

After connecting to the site, I noticed that the memberslist.cgi file was smaller than usual. I downloaded and checked it. Only to discover that it had a single entry in it. Obviously the last person to register on the site today.

Luckily, I had a backup of the file from a few weeks ago. So I uploaded that to the site and rebuilt the member metadata. This rebuilt the .cgi file.

Does anyone have ANY idea why something like this would happen or was the board hacked by someone who then deleted that file?

Our board is over here.

Joined: Dec 2003
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journeyman
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Posts: 55
sounds like a hack job - we had something similar happen at ubbdev, but that was using a version previous to 6.3 and a script kiddie was automatically registering hundreds of people per minute, it corrupted the memberslist.cgi file and started writing over the older member files. Infopop fixed it soon after and I re-wrote 20-30 member files by hand :/

Anyways, be sure you have some sort of flood protection turned on, even if it's just 10 seconds - that'll foil most kiddie hackers so that at least it doesn't happen to you <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

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stranger
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Yeah, I figured that it may have been a hack job, but I'm at a loss as to how it could have been done. If he could hack into the site, why not just delete the user data files?

Joined: Dec 2003
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journeyman
journeyman
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Beats me... it could still be a bug, but one I haven't heard of yet <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />


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