Woooah! Mystery related to Backup mySQL

[RodG]

Wow. Man, I hope that's it.

Probably. That table can get very large very quickly.

I did a text comparison of the two files about an hour ago, looks like most of the difference was the admin log.

I'd take this as pretty conclusive evidence that this is the reason.

But the weird thing is that weight of my backups have been growing steadily as I work, NEVER losing weight.

This is normal and expected.

And I have purged the admin log before. I always backup just before purging and just after.

The purge should always make the database smaller. If it doesn't then something has gone amiss (or there was nothing to purge).

If I were to clutch at straws for an explanation I'd suggest you possibly had some kind of error relating to this table and your 'abrupt error (Server Internal Error 500)' caused the server to restart and in doing so initiated an automatic 'repair tables' and things are now back as they should be.

Cheers
Rod.

[Feznizzle]

If I were to clutch at straws for an explanation I'd suggest you possibly had some kind of error relating to this table and your 'abrupt error (Server Internal Error 500)' caused the server to restart and in doing so initiated an automatic 'repair tables' and things are now back as they should be.

Wow. Very plausible explanation. I hadn't considered that. And if that is what happened, then this debacle is actually a good thing! :)

Thanks, Rod!

It's been a while, hope all is well. Are you guys still experimenting with SEO?

[RodG]

Are you guys still experimenting with SEO?

I don't know about the others, but I'm sill carrying out the occasional comparison tests with the "Wurldbitzer Debibulator" products. (One static, the other having the various changes).

Google search for the 'standard query':
"Wurldbitzer Debibulator" +"Lain"

Search Results
(About 317 results)
1) Wurldbitzer Debibulator V3 : VCSWEB Online Store!, You never ...
shop.vcsweb.com › Odds 'n Sods‎
2) Wurldbitzer Debibulator : VCSWEB Online Store!, You never know ...
shop.vcsweb.com › Odds 'n Sods‎
3) Wurldbitzer Debibulator V5 : VCSWEB Online Store!, You never ...
shop.vcsweb.com › Odds 'n Sods‎
4) Wurldbitzer Debibulator - The Art of E-commerce
w w w.p r o m-m a rt.c o m/demo-2/wurldbitzer-debibulator-p-183.html‎
5) Wurldbitzer Debibulator - Tomatocart 1181
w w w.p r o m - m a r t. c o m/tomatocart.../3.../22-wurldbitzer-debibulator.html?...‎

'tomatocart' takes the next 300 or so top spots, but they all give a server not found error, and many of them look 'spammy' in that the URL's are pointing to locations unrelated to the search query.

As we know, the order of the results will vary depending on location, and from my part of the world, the #1 spot is still being held by the store using ZenCart native URL's with no special SEO techniques/enhancements of any kind. The #3 spot has a 'friendly URL' (not that you can tell from the google display), and this is the one I've been trying to 'optimise' to take the#1 spot (without success). The #2 spot is the zencart native URL of the page redirected to by the 'friendly' URL of the #3 spot. IOW, if these results are to be trusted, and all else being equal (as they are between #2 & #3), the zencart native URL trumps the the re-written 'friendly' URL.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. :)

Cheers
Rod

[Feznizzle]

I don't know about the others, but I'm sill carrying out the occasional comparison tests with the "Wurldbitzer Debibulator" products. (One static, the other having the various changes).

That's good to hear, Rod. I'm glad you are still toying with it, I still think it a worthy endeavor despite naysayers~! Carry on, sir! :)

It's not uncommon for that to happen if you use certain words/phrases that your server's security administrator (usually via the mod_security module in Apache) has deemed dangerous, such as words often used by hackers attempting SQL Injections.
As with any 500 INTERNAL SERVER ERROR, the details will be in the server's logs.

Hmm. I wonder how I could have triggered that? I was writing html by hand, no wysiwyg.

But funny you should point that out. When I opened the SQL, I found some 56 notes in the admin activity log that said this: "ALERT: Please review for possible XSS activity:"

All (that I looked at) had my ip in front of them.

Should I be freaked out by that?

[RodG]

When I opened the SQL, I found some 56 notes in the admin activity log that said this: "ALERT: Please review for possible XSS activity:"

All (that I looked at) had my ip in front of them.

Should I be freaked out by that?

I would be. If I was trying to hack into my own system and didn't know I was doing it I think that would be cause for concern. What other sites are you hacking into that you don't know about. (Don't look now, but I think you might be a sleeper agent for ........


aatghh. vv

they


got



me

[DrByte]

I would be. If I was trying to hack into my own system and didn't know I was doing it I think that would be cause for concern. What other sites are you hacking into that you don't know about. (Don't look now, but I think you might be a sleeper agent for ........


aatghh. vv

they


got



me

[Again you're forcing me to put on my moderator hat ...]
Enough with the NSA innuendo nonsense, both here and in your posts in other threads.
A joke is one thing. Twisting it into slighting others by alleging that they don't know what they're doing is another. ergo last week.

[Feznizzle]

rofl (at Rod's joke)
++++
I think (*hope*) I figured it out. I had created a bunch of tables in openoffice, turned them into html, then grabbed all the <tr> cells and dumped them into preformatted product cross-referrence sheets. The hotlinks were all domain nuetral, went something like this:
<TD STYLE="border-top: 1px solid #000000; border-right: 1px solid #000000" WIDTH=105 ALIGN=CENTER><U><A HREF="/Material_Handling_Storage/Bins_Boxes_Totes/Storage_Containers/SomeCategory">VIEW</A></U></TD>

However, due to some quirk, openoffice kept giving me hrefs like this:
<TD STYLE="border-top: 1px solid #000000; border-right: 1px solid #000000" WIDTH=105 ALIGN=CENTER><U><A HREF="file:///Material_Handling_Storage/Bins_Boxes_Totes/Storage_Containers/SomeCategory">VIEW</A></U></TD>

I just the current admin log sql, found a single warning pointing at "file://" as being the trigger.

I will def be keeping a close eye on this, can't imagine how someone could highjack my sessions! Or why, for that matter. The thought is that either it was just that "file://" business (most likely, I hope) or there was a trojan in my template or one of my mods (yikes!).

[DrByte]

I found some 56 notes in the admin activity log that said this: "ALERT: Please review for possible XSS activity:"

All (that I looked at) had my ip in front of them.

Should I be freaked out by that?

Freaked out? No.
Should you look at them? Yes.
That flag is set when it discovers that someone using your Admin has submitted data in an <input> form field that contains potentially risky content like < and > symbols such as could be used to stuff <script> tags into content.
The flag is set to tell you to make sure that you knew about the content being submitted, by basically alerting you to pay attention to those log records specifically.

If you did post the content it mentions and intended it to contain whatever it contains, then of course there's nothing to worry about.

[DrByte]

Is your "backup mystery" resolved now?