Strange hobbes.nmsu.edu behavior.

[Ian B Manners]

Hi Valery,

Nothing personal against any country in particular but some countries do have a habit of allowing people access to whole 255.255.255.0 ranges or bigger and being very slow to act when those ranges are abused   as to hackers, Russian or otherwise is irrelevant (real hackers would be using bounce services from Romania, VietNam or other country's anyway - just saying), its the bored kiddie scripter's that do more damage to services like Hobbes especially as it has free access to upload files. ISP's have driven down the price of access that they themselves often are no longer interested in abuse reports unless it affects them, which is why so many people block entire ranges, even the entire ranges of one ISP (OVH France was a regular early 2010's).

Policing the upload directory at Hobbes takes time and is dependent on volunteers as there is only one person at nmsu.edu that looks after it, and it is but one of many things on his plate.

I've blacklisted ranges of IP's in Eastern bloc countries in the past but I have also blacklisted ranges from USA, France, Canada, China, Malaysia,  Italy, Germany, Seychelles etc. ISP's with new staff are often either far to 'innocent', or the ISP's are happy to take the money while they can get away with it. USA is the largest representive country in my email RBL's at present as they "do not take heed of spam reports unless they are from customers" Amazon are the worse with moving reporting goalposts, followed by sendgrid.net with allowing spammers easy access and claiming that I need to complain to MY upstream ISP, not to them. Both of those companies use ranges scattered all over the place, and are happy to move customers around. Even Microsoft and Google are now only concerned about abuse if it affects their customers, unless it is something large scale that might attract media attention.

It is the resources needed to police services and maintain adherence to a countries laws that so many different 'free' services have given up as it gives no return on effort. I do not want to see Hobbes go in the same direction.

I will see if it is easy to get an IP banned list from hobbes and what we can do to address any access problems to do with those banned IP's. Not promising anything as I'm not Hobbes but if I offer to do the work for them it maybe more likely to happen. I can see what IP address that you and others are posting from so that gives me something to use in checking if I can get access to the list.

The Hobbes server is a different machine to nmsu.edu.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Ian

I don't know if you have a direct contact with the hobbes archiver, but I'm experiencing an issues that affects me a little bit on posting the news on OS2World.

1) I usually link hobbes files not directly, but with the search URL. Why? because when I post the news the files are on the incoming directory and later moved to a different location. I prefer to put a link to the search so the link don't get outdated with time.
Now I have the problem that the files inside the hobbes incoming directory does not get indexed for the search as it used to work on the past. The search is no longer working for files on the incoming directory.

2) The search link URL has changed from the old hobbes to the new one.
It used to be something like:
- "https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/h-search.php?key=<NameOfTheFile>"
now it is:
- "https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?&search=<NameOfTheFile>"
I think the new one is better (shorter) but it automatically broke the links of the older news on OS2World.com.
It is not a big deal since I can adopt the new URL without problems (and I prefer the new one), but maybe some "forwarder" can be set for links that goes the old search way.

Regards

[Ian B Manners]

Hi Martin,

Will add it to my list
It should be possible to alias h-search.php so both URL's will work, I actually thought that Curtis had already done that but it must have been for only incoming.

[Tom]

Some differences I notice when searching for dfsee.
Background information: in /pub/incoming is dfsee166.zip (not yet processed), and in
/pub/os2/util/disk is dfsee165.zip (already processed).

https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?search=dfsee

gives 3 search results in /pub (!): dfsee165.zip , dfsee165.txt and hdd_vhd.zip (the last one contains the string "dfsee" in the description field, and is in /pub/os2/util/file).
Note that dfsee166.zip (which is in /pub/incoming) is not returned as a search result.

https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/?dir=/pub/incoming&search=dfsee

gives zero search results in /pub/incoming , although that is the current location of dfsee166.zip

Conclusion: /pub/incoming seems to be excluded from the search , even when /pub/incoming is passed as the searchpath.

[Ian B Manners]

Hi Tom,

Conclusion: /pub/incoming seems to be excluded from the search , even when /pub/incoming is passed as the searchpath.

That is correct, with people occasionally uploading php, scr, jpg, iso and other non hobbes related files (sometimes copyright protected programs), incoming is on purpose excluded from hobbes internal and external search results. Incoming content is deemed to be of a transient nature.

The majority of people automatically check the incoming directory for the latest files already so it would have been viewed as very minor not to have the contents indexed in the search database.

My websites /incoming and /new directories are also excluded from search indexing but that is because the directories are automatically cleared at the end of every month so the content is transient and should not be included in search engine index's.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I also got the feeling that search inside "Long Description" are also not working (the "Long Description is not getting indexed).

For example I try to search for "aic7870.add" and get no results, while this "Long description" has it.

Regards

[Pete]

Hi Martin

Try without the ".zip" ie just "aic7870"

I seem to recall that hobbes search does not want the ".ext " bit of a filename - works for me.


Regards

Pete

[Sergey Posokhov]

I can see what IP address that you and others are posting from so that gives me something to use in checking if I can get access to the list.

Exporting IP address lists from forums like OS/2 world and OS2.org seems to be a good idea.

These who active in the forums could receive full access to Hobbes...

[Martin Iturbide]

Try without the ".zip" ie just "aic7870"

I seem to recall that hobbes search does not want the ".ext " bit of a filename - works for me.

Hi Pete. I think that without the ".zip" finds the file because it is on the name of it, not in the "longer description". the idea will be that hobbes can also search inside the "long descriptions" so people can find things easily. On the files I uploaded/reorganized, I also tried to include the file name of the driver (like aic7870.add) on the long description to help people that are looking for that specific file.

Regards

[ivan]

Hi Martin,

Just an observation but is it wise to post drivers for equipment that is no longer manufactured and, I suspect, no longer working?

[Neil Waldhauer]

At Warpstock 2019, we gave away 8 well preserved IBM PS/2 Computers. All were running. Hobbyists restoring old computer want OS/2. There are people who stockpile old hardware.

And then there are commercial operations who I cannot name still using PS/2 computers.

Keeping the legacy support files is Hobbes mission, or at least one of their missions

[ivan]

I was thinking of such things as CD drives that are no longer made and when their drive belts break and stop working because there are no replacement parts.

I am all for trying to restore antique systems but as an engineer I find it sad when some things are no longer repairable and must be scrapped.  Maybe there needs to be an historical section on hobbes for the software for such items.

[Martin Iturbide]

Just an observation but is it wise to post drivers for equipment that is no longer manufactured and, I suspect, no longer working?

Hi Ivan.

I already talk about it on "Martin: please do not upload outdated drivers to Hobbes" (very direct subject).

Regards

[ivan]

Hi Martin,

What do you think about my idea of an historical section on hobbes as the repository for such items?  That way it would make the older items easier to find.

[Ian B Manners]

What do you think about my idea of an historical section on hobbes as the repository for such items?  That way it would make the older items easier to find.

That would have its own set of problems as it would require a lot more manual intervention. In saying that, what I have done with os2site.com is to add a subdirectory for old/replaced files.

The main aim of this post however is to let you know that hobbes is being looked at and changes being made.

A web interface for file uploads but still retaining FTP access for uploads/downloads
Looking at a recycle/replaced files area
Add files from incoming to the main file areas at time of upload, this means the files will be added to the database immediately (for searches etc).

I have also mentioned the banned IP's.

Re hobbes mirrors

http://www.os2site.com/mirrors/hobbes.nmsu.edu/ It does require a valid UA browser string or user access but that will change soon as I'm ready to send off os2site.com contents to somewhere that will not require user authentication to access the website. [added: the hobbes mirror at os2site.com is mirrored whenever hobbes incoming directory is cleared]

os2site's incoming directory which does not require user authentication always mirrors hobbes incoming within the time differences, ie, os2site.com's /incoming contents are moved to /new at the end of every month.