i have run several forums in the past,
i like the smf functionalities, so thought of giving it a try,
launched a new forum, now it's quite busy one,
and to my surprise the forum just bans people randomly
i have to change cookies and clear cahe everytime i know of a ban, and tell the user to stay.
but how many bans go unnoticed!!!
i have at least 1 incident of someone telling me about a ban every 48h, i wonder how many users get banned and silently chose to go to another site !!!
the biggest challenge is growing the userbase, this software works against webmasters !!!
and i have seen this problem reported before 2011 -2013 ...
and not yet resolved , what a joke
i am now looking to transfer my forum to another forum software, because if such a huge problem is not taken care of, i wonder what is!
SMF doesn't ban users by default, so there should be something on your side that's caussing the issue. What mods do you have installed on you forum? Are there other people with privileges to ban users?
As d3vcho says, what you indicate is not and never has been an actual issue in this software.
You say that you saw it reported 2011-2013 -- I can't find such threads, but, I guarantee that, if you actually read the whole thread, you will find that the issue was always due to a badly coded or misconfigured mod - not anything in the core product.
SMF does not EVER auto-create bans in the core product, therefore, any instance of bans being auto-created would be due to some mod or changed code that you implemented. Any instance of you being caught up in someone else's ban also suggest that you are using a proxy service (which means that you should avoid IP bans entirely)
I have been running SMF from 2005, and been around this forum since 2007 I think, and can not for the life of me think of what issue you are referring to. I've never seen anything like what you are describing, occur in a vanilla installation.
When I installed Smf a couple of days ago it banned me right away :D
Joking aside, Smf does not auto ban users the way that you described. Have you installed any modification against spamming or any other security mod that has banning as an option if certain things occur?
Quote from: doug_ips on February 22, 2018, 01:51:32 PM
When I installed Smf a couple of days ago it banned me right away :D
Oh, but that is completely intentional. That's the brand new "Are you actually qualified to run a forum?" -test, done on all new installations. But that's not what the OP is talking about I think.
( Sadly, I think I need to clarify that this post is a joke. No such test exists in real life. )
here you go guys some reports i found while looking for a solution :
https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=515794.0
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=515223.0
this needs to get addressed urgently.
mods installed:
1. Log Karma Actions 3.0
2. Ad Managment 3.3a
3. Misc Anti Spam 1.0
4. Yet Another YouTube BBCode Tag 4.7
5. SMF_Points 0.2
6. Referrals System 3.2
7. SMF 2.0.15 Update 1.0
8. Fake Topic Views 0.1
9. Advance Fake Guests n Users Online (fguo) 1.0
Now, both of those are support requests with very little data to work with - and one of them for 1.1, the other for 2.0.
What kind of bans do you have in place right now, and what do you use as triggers?
IP addresses? Ranges? Hostnames?
Quote from: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on February 22, 2018, 02:27:54 PM
Now, both of those are support requests with very little data to work with - and one of them for 1.1, the other for 2.0.
What kind of bans do you have in place right now, and what do you use as triggers?
IP addresses? Ranges? Hostnames?
i use email bans no ip bans,
this is not an issue based on triggers
the banned people do not even appear banned for admin, they simply can no longer login and get the
"Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!
This ban is not set to expire."
there is no record whatsoever of this ban on the system, thus the amount of people banned is actually unknown
OK, then when people get this message - does it show in your forum's error log? It should, if it was SMF causing it.
Who are you hosted with? I'm thinking, this could just be a caching issue caused by a cache your host is running.
i don't know , it is probabbly logged.
PS: it might be of use: i use cloudflare for ddoss attacks prevention or traffic surge
you need to check if it is logged or not, it could be your cloudflare that is blocking users.
Strange, I've used this 'worst software ever' for a dozen years, and never encountered any ghost activity.
Am guessing: server caching (host).
Been here since '05, never once been banned on my own forum. I don't think, lol.
just to reiterate: You say "This needs to get addressed urgently" and yet we have never actually seen anyone have this issue. Some of us have been running SMF for over a decade.
With the threads that you linked:
1 was almost certainly due to one or more of their mods -- but the user never confirmed what the issue was. However, since the user had a working site shortly after that post, obviously, it was corrected without any further input from us.
the other is clearly an IP ban gone wrong.
If you use Cloudflare or a proxy with an IP ban, you can indeed ban EVERYONE form your site, because all incoming IPs appear to be the proxy server, not the originator.
However, without something from the SMF log, we can't really help much.... none of your mods look like they would affect bans - but you could always just remove all bans to start with....
I do hope your experience of this the official support forum of the worst forum software ever has at least shown that we do not just ignore reports like this.
Quote from: wtfwtf on February 22, 2018, 02:59:38 PM
i don't know , it is probabbly logged.
Please, if you want us to look further in to this issue, do make sure of this and let us know.
So, when you next encounter this issue, check your logs, and tell us if there is anything that might be related.
Without those log entries being generated, it is almost certainly not an issue in SMF, which then would mean you should talk to your host and ask them what kind of caching they have setup. Specifically you may want to ask if they are running Varnish, and if they could disable it for your forum installation.
users randomly banned are appearing in the ban log
but also found out many ips are being banned, there are no ban triggers on these ips
thus i suspect it's the same issue.
If they appear in the ban log, then they must have hit a trigger.
If you look at Admin -> Members -> Ban List -> Browse ban triggers
Is there any trigger that seems to have an unusual amount of hits?
Are there any triggers that use wildcards?
This happened to me once, when I logged into an IP that I banned for testing purposes. It was a disaster.
However it doesn't happen randomly, it was my fault technically.
With a subject line like that I'm surprised you've gotten so much help. You might want to actually read the responses and accept them as fact.
Quote from: Steve on February 23, 2018, 02:46:35 PM
With a subject line like that I'm surprised you've gotten so much help. You might want to actually read the responses and accept them as fact.
i'm not looking for sympathy, i'm looking for a solution to a problem.
the title was intentionally chosen to get response
Quote from: wtfwtf on February 23, 2018, 03:12:28 PMi'm not looking for sympathy
And I wasn't trying to give you any. Quite the opposite in fact.
Courteous requests for help work better than slanderous, untruthful, and disrespectful declarations and demands.
Also around since 2005 and hmm can't think of anything ever and I would calculate I built about 35 of these suckers
for myself and others and never a ban issues, makes me wonder if this is on a server trigger of some kind as well.
Do you have any blocks setup on your server for certain conditions ?
Subject titles like that definitely come across as being negative. As a past user of YaBB who converted to SMF sometime around 2012, I can also tell you that I have never experienced that problem. I would have to agree that it's somethibg on your end, possibly with your host, that's causing the problem. I currently have several forums running on SMF without the issues you speak of.
Good luck. Hope you solve your issue. If you do, you will find that SMF is great to work with and support is top notch!
SM forum is sweet. troll ?
So, did you look at the triggers?
Quote from: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on February 23, 2018, 09:09:34 AM
If they appear in the ban log, then they must have hit a trigger.
If you look at Admin -> Members -> Ban List -> Browse ban triggers
Is there any trigger that seems to have an unusual amount of hits?
Are there any triggers that use wildcards?
I am going to make a wild guess here (being the most inexperienced of all of you guys around)...
IP!!!
Meaning that one-way or another, when he/she banned something, or did set up triggers, he/she used IP as a trigger; hence, everything from that IP (or the IPs) gets banned.
The other thing that pops in mind is email triggers...
i.e. something like that: *@gmail.com (if I typed it wrong please correct me guys)...
These are the only two things that come to my mind, which could actually cause "mass-banning" and may appear to him/her as random ban of his/her members...
Over and out! :P
IF this guy is for real then i can't see why SMF would do that so the only thing that remains, aside from host issues because i don't know anything about hosts, is .htaccess (IF you use Linux).
so if you (OP) ever come back then please check or publish it.
but why doesn't this guy reply ? (that seems a bit, you know ...)
... because SMF auto-randomly banned him from here too ? [i jest]
Being the thread has not been responded by him/her even though they have logged on just yesterday.
One has to think this was just trolling, as lots of good advice was given and not a response, my spider sense tells
me why the issues maybe are true, but me thinks something else...
aegersz,
question: can "messing" with the .htaccess actually ban users from your forum (as suggested by the OP)?
No, I don't think htaccess can cause what the OP is describing.
htaccess can cause trouble and block people, but they would not reach SMF banning logic then at all I think.
Now, if the OP would respond back we could continue this discussion, otherwise - I'd kindly ask people to just let this topic die on it's own.
Seems like a waste of time and effort at this point.
OK...
thanks Aleksi... :)
No problem. :)
you are correct, he says that SMF reports them as banned, i didn't read carefully enough.
he should setup a cloned DB, freshly installed system in a subdirectory and try it or just a new system with a fresh db and mass compare sources.
or he could unload his live DB and look for the ban tables to see what's going on.
i still can't imagine what could be wrong but a cloned system would be ideal as he could reinstall the mods, one by one and test it each time.
the OP has many options available if he has the time and skills.
if he is for real then he may allow someone to access his forum as admin as well as phpmyadmin ... that may be risky or a step too far, of course
Quote from: ninik on February 28, 2018, 09:15:46 PM
I am going to make a wild guess here (being the most inexperienced of all of you guys around)...
IP!!!
Also my first guess :D. I haven't checked the "Ban by IP" settings in SMF, but I guess it should have a "Ban by IP range" (CIDR notation most likely) section... or as some of you pointed out, a wildcard option.
If not that, a hosting issue...
Quote from: ninik on March 02, 2018, 01:53:07 AM
question: can "messing" with the .htaccess actually ban users from your forum (as suggested by the OP)?
No, it just blocks http access to a certain directory in your webspace. If it's the root of your forum, your browser wouldn't load the page... simple.
Quote from: Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen on March 02, 2018, 02:01:08 AMNow, if the OP would respond back we could continue this discussion, otherwise - I'd kindly ask people to just let this topic die on it's own.
Seems like a waste of time and effort at this point.
Request change of title and lock of this post
I have strong reasons to believe it was my fault, precisely a couple ips of very fertile spammers were blocked, and probably they use a xrummer software that uses proxy. since these ips were unblocked haven't heard of any case.
thus i can assume this was my fault.
and it would be unfair to keep such a title.
Apology accepted :P
Thank you.
I at least personally appreciate the gesture. I hope you have learned something from this too.
Will mark the topic solved, but for now I see no real reason to edit or lock this - issue has been identified, and corrected.