All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXXIII

[Bob Schroeck]

Bob, I would reply to that email with "Because of privacy issues, we do not have access to that information. Please contact the stewards at our hosting service, Miraheze, for assistance. https: //meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Steward_requests/Global "

Done.

And he wrote back that he couldn't figure out how to contact the stewards through a page that practically handholds you through the process. Which strikes me as more than a little suspicious.

I've copied his email directly over to Stewards/miscellaneous, let them know I found it suspicious, but I expected them to have better tools than we did to detect and/or deal with it.

[Bob Schroeck]

I just noticed something odd in Recent Changes this morning.

A new user with the handle Numberblock Forty-Two Luluka Moria registered at 1:34 AM this morning. Less than ten minutes later, they made an edit. Was someone online and going through the Mod queue at that hour?

[robkelk]

The posting time is when it was added to the moderation queue, not when it was approved. Their second edit is listed as having been made at 1:52 AM ET, but I didn't approve it until 8:08 AM ET (when I replied to it). I believe whoever approved their first edit did so before I saw their second edit.

[Bob Schroeck]

Was that somethng that changed with the recent, rather subtle update? (The one that made other, thankfully temporary, changes to how RC displayed things.) Because I thought I remembered everything I approved in the mod queue stacking up at the top of Recent Changes where it was easy to then patrol them.

[robkelk]

I'm not in any mood to rationally analyze the edits by "Cordite455" currently sitting in the Moderation queue. (This might be related to the fact that it's 2pm and I haven't had breakfast yet, let alone lunch, and that's my own fault.) Could somebody else look at them, please? Miraheze's Content Policy might be relevant.

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, I've held off on doing anything with them for much the same reasons as you, I suspect.

[Bob Schroeck]

All The Tropes and all other Miraheze wikis are temporarily down. A pair of major security vulnerabilities have been found in PHP ("9.2 out of 10"), and the Miraheze staff shut everything down out of caution until patches are issued. According to Ars Technica, that should be by tomorrow some time.

[Labster]

You should also back up the forums now. People are already posting PHP-to-shell stuff that may or may not be legit.

EDIT: Fenwiki may need to be upgraded ASAP as well. At least they're on PHP 7, I guess.

[robkelk]

I'm only aware of the method of backing up a wiki from within the wiki itself. Is there a way for somebody other than a sysadmin to make a backup when the wiki's offline?

Oh, and somebody at Miraheze is an optimist. "We expect to be back online by 15:00 UTC on Wednesday, October 21, 2026." That's 10 AM Eastern Time - two hours from when I'm posting this.

[robkelk]

...
Oh, and somebody at Miraheze is an optimist. "We expect to be back online by 15:00 UTC on Wednesday, October 21, 2026." That's 10 AM Eastern Time - two hours from when I'm posting this.

Yeah, they missed that self-imposed deadline. Film at 11.

In addition to incident management and change management, somebody at Miraheze needs to learn the basics of client service management... as in, "don't get your clients' hopes up." It was completely unrealistic to expect that they'd be able to download the patches from a server that everyone in the world would be hitting at the same time, creating a load on the patch-host server that's equal to a DDOS attack. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they're still waiting their turn to download the patches.

Based on my ITIL experience, I would have announced 17:00 or 18:00 UTC (noon or 1pm ET) and let people be happily surprised if service was back earlier. Yes, it's Scotty's trick on Star Trek to pad the schedule, but it reduces the clients' unhappiness.

[Bob Schroeck]

You should also back up the forums now.

While I back up the forums to my local hard disk every Sunday night (and I have the last seven backups archived), I just ran a full backup again, so, done.

And with this post it is now out of date already. <grin>

[robkelk]

...
Based on my ITIL experience, I would have announced 17:00 or 18:00 UTC (noon or 1pm ET) and let people be happily surprised if service was back earlier. Yes, it's Scotty's trick on Star Trek to pad the schedule, but it reduces the clients' unhappiness.

And I would have been wrong to do so. This is going on longer than I expected; I'm starting to think that it might not be back before 20:00 UTC. One thing that I do know is that joggling the specialists' elbows right now will only delay things in the long run. It would be nice to know whether Miraheze has been able to download a copy of the patch yet, but it isn't essential for me to know that.

So... maybe 20:00, maybe 21:00, maybe later. Maybe tomorrow. Probably before the end of the calendar week, but I wouldn't put money on that.

[Labster]

Nah, it will be up soon.  Since everything was down, they decided to update everything on every server all at once, which might be crazy but you only have to test once I guess.

[*]<MirahezeLSBot> !log [void@puppet181] Upgraded packages on cloud16: libc-devtools, dpkg-dev, libdpkg-perl, libc6-dev, libc-dev-bin, perl-modules-5.40, libperl5.40, perl, perl-base, dpkg, libc6, base-files, bash, gzip, sed, libc-bin, logsave, initramfs-tools, initramfs-tools-bin, initramfs-tools-core, libext2fs2t64, e2fsprogs, linux-base, systemd-cryptsetup,

<MirahezeLSBot> libaudit-common, libaudit1, libcap2, systemd-sysv, libnss-systemd, systemd-boot-efi, libpam-systemd, libsystemd-shared, systemd, udev, libsystemd0, libudev1, frr-pythontools, frr, open-iscsi, libopeniscsiusr, python3.13, libpython3.13-stdlib, python3.13-minimal, libpython3.13-minimal, tzdata, sqlite3, libsqlite3-0, gir1.2-glib-2.0, libglib2.0-0t64,

<MirahezeLSBot> qemu-guest-agent, sudo, linux-sysctl-defaults, nano, libc-l10n, locales, at-spi2-common, libatk-bridge2.0-0t64, libatk1.0-0t64, at-spi2-core, libatspi2.0-0t64, busybox, librgw2, libradosstriper1, ceph-common, librbd1, librados2, python3-cephfs, libcephfs2, python3-rgw, python3-rados, python3-ceph-argparse, python3-ceph-common, python3-rbd, ceph-

<MirahezeLSBot> fuse, libcorosync-common4, libcfg7, libcmap4, libcpg4, libknet1t64, libnozzle1t64, libquorum5, libvotequorum8, libxml2, libxslt1.1, xsltproc, corosync, gpgsm, gpg-wks-client, dirmngr, gpg-wks-server, gnupg-utils, gpg-agent, gpg, gpgconf, distro-info-data, gpgv, libarchive13t64, libasound2t64, libasound2-data, libbytes-random-secure-perl,

<MirahezeLSBot> libcap2-bin, libcom-err2, libgbm1, mesa-libgallium, libglib2.0-data, libgraphite2-3, libharfbuzz0b, libhtml-parser-perl, libjs-extjs, samba-common, libtalloc2, libtevent0t64, libsmbclient0, smbclient, libtdb1, libldb2, samba-libs, libwbclient0, mariadb-common, libmariadb3, libmpg123-0t64, libnvpair3linux, libprotobuf32t64, libproxmox-acme-plugins,
<MirahezeLSBot> libproxmox-backup-qemu0, libslirp0, pve-qemu-kvm, qemu-server, libpve-storage-perl, libproxmox-acme-perl, pve-manager, libpve-common-perl, libpve-guest-common-perl, libpve-network-api-perl, libpve-network-perl, libpve-rs-perl, libpve-notify-perl, libpve-cluster-api-perl, libpve-cluster-perl, pve-cluster, libpve-access-control, proxmox-firewall-data,
<MirahezeLSBot> pve-firewall, libpve-apiclient-perl, librados2-perl, libxml-libxml-perl, proxmox-backup-client, proxmox-backup-file-restore, smartmontools, proxmox-termproxy, pve-edk2-firmware-legacy, pve-edk2-firmware-ovmf, lxcfs, lxc-pve, pve-container, pve-ha-manager, socat, novnc-pve, proxmox-enterprise-support-keyring, proxmox-mail-forward, proxmox-mini-
<MirahezeLSBot> journalreader, proxmox-widget-toolkit, pve-docs, pve-i18n, pve-xtermjs, pve-yew-mobile-i18n, pve-yew-mobile-gui, spiceterm, vncterm, libqt5core5t64, libqt5dbus5t64, libqt5network5t64, libsndfile1, libss2, libssh2-1t64, libtasn1-6, libuutil3linux, libxpm4, libzfs7linux, libzpool7linux, openvox-agent, pve-firmware, proxmox-kernel-7.0.14-25-pve-signed,
<MirahezeLSBot> proxmox-kernel-7.0, proxmox-default-kernel, proxmox-kernel-6.17.13-21-pve-signed, proxmox-kernel-6.17, proxmox-kernel-helper, proxmox-ve, pve-edk2-firmware, pve-nvidia-vgpu-helper, python3-cryptography, python3-idna, python3-jaraco.context, python3-protobuf, python3-requests, rsyslog-gnutls, rsyslog, wireguard-tools, xfsprogs, zfs-initramfs,
<MirahezeLSBot> zfsutils-linux, and zfs-zed
<MirahezeLogbot> An exception was raised while trying to log your message, MirahezeLSBot
<MirahezeLSBot> !log [void@puppet181] Upgraded packages on cloud17: libc-devtools, dpkg-dev, libdpkg-perl, libc6-dev, libc-dev-bin, perl-modules-5.40, libperl5.40, perl, perl-base, dpkg, libc6, base-files, bash, gzip, sed, libc-bin, logsave, initramfs-tools, initramfs-tools-bin, initramfs-tools-core, libext2fs2t64, e2fsprogs, linux-base, systemd-cryptsetup,
<MirahezeLSBot> libaudit-common, libaudit1, libcap2, systemd-sysv, libnss-systemd, systemd-boot-efi, libpam-systemd, libsystemd-shared, systemd, udev, libsystemd0, libudev1, frr-pythontools, frr, open-iscsi, libopeniscsiusr, python3.13, libpython3.13-stdlib, python3.13-minimal, libpython3.13-minimal, tzdata, sqlite3, libsqlite3-0, gir1.2-glib-2.0, libglib2.0-0t64,
<MirahezeLSBot> qemu-guest-agent, sudo, linux-sysctl-defaults, nano, libc-l10n, locales, at-spi2-common, libatk-bridge2.0-0t64, libatk1.0-0t64, at-spi2-core, libatspi2.0-0t64, busybox, librgw2, libradosstriper1, ceph-common, librbd1, librados2, python3-cephfs, libcephfs2, python3-rgw, python3-rados, python3-ceph-argparse, python3-ceph-common, python3-rbd, ceph-
<MirahezeLSBot> fuse, libcorosync-common4, libcfg7, libcmap4, libcpg4, libknet1t64, libnozzle1t64, libquorum5, libvotequorum8, libxml2, libxslt1.1, xsltproc, corosync, gpgsm, gpg-wks-client, dirmngr, gpg-wks-server, gnupg-utils, gpg-agent, gpg, gpgconf, distro-info-data, gpgv, libarchive13t64, libasound2t64, libasound2-data, libbytes-random-secure-perl,
<MirahezeLSBot> libcap2-bin, libcom-err2, libgbm1, mesa-libgallium, libglib2.0-data, libgraphite2-3, libharfbuzz0b, libhtml-parser-perl, libjs-extjs, samba-common, libtalloc2, libtevent0t64, libsmbclient0, smbclient, libtdb1, libldb2, samba-libs, libwbclient0, mariadb-common, libmariadb3, libmpg123-0t64, libnvpair3linux, libprotobuf32t64, libproxmox-acme-plugins,
<MirahezeLSBot> libproxmox-backup-qemu0, libslirp0, pve-qemu-kvm, qemu-server, libpve-storage-perl, libproxmox-acme-perl, pve-manager, libpve-common-perl, libpve-guest-common-perl, libpve-network-api-perl, libpve-network-perl, libpve-rs-perl, libpve-notify-perl, libpve-cluster-api-perl, libpve-cluster-perl, pve-cluster, libpve-access-control, proxmox-firewall-data,
<MirahezeLSBot> pve-firewall, libpve-apiclient-perl, librados2-perl, libxml-libxml-perl, proxmox-backup-client, proxmox-backup-file-restore, smartmontools, proxmox-termproxy, pve-edk2-firmware-legacy, pve-edk2-firmware-ovmf, lxcfs, lxc-pve, pve-container, pve-ha-manager, socat, novnc-pve, proxmox-enterprise-support-keyring, proxmox-mail-forward, proxmox-mini-
<MirahezeLSBot> journalreader, proxmox-widget-toolkit, pve-docs, pve-i18n, pve-xtermjs, pve-yew-mobile-i18n, pve-yew-mobile-gui, spiceterm, vncterm, libqt5core5t64, libqt5dbus5t64, libqt5network5t64, libsndfile1, libss2, libssh2-1t64, libtasn1-6, libuutil3linux, libxpm4, libzfs7linux, libzpool7linux, openvox-agent, pve-firmware, proxmox-kernel-7.0.14-25-pve-signed,
<MirahezeLSBot> proxmox-kernel-7.0, proxmox-default-kernel, proxmox-kernel-6.17.13-21-pve-signed, proxmox-kernel-6.17, proxmox-kernel-helper, proxmox-ve, pve-edk2-firmware, pve-nvidia-vgpu-helper, python3-cryptography, python3-idna, python3-jaraco.context, python3-protobuf, python3-requests, rsyslog-gnutls, rsyslog, wireguard-tools, xfsprogs, zfs-initramfs,

[*]<MirahezeLSBot> zfsutils-linux, and zfs-zed

EDIT: Fenspace wiki is patched (based on Special:Version)

EDIT 2:

18:55 UTC: We are beginning to reboot our servers following patching. We expect to be down for at least the next 1-2 hours.

The next update will be no later than [5:00 PM EDT].

[robkelk]

Nah, it will be up soon.  Since everything was down, they decided to update everything on every server all at once, which might be crazy but you only have to test once I guess.

That, I understand. Better to patch everything than patch one thing and forget to come back and patch everything else. If you have the trained staff to do it that way, it's a good way to operate.

(I'm getting better at my predictions, by being pessimistic. 21:00 UTC and they're still down... but I didn't expect them back before 21:00 UTC anyway.)

[Bob Schroeck]

We're back.

[robkelk]

Likewise the freebie wiki and the KanriKyara wiki. (Are all three on the same server?)