System upgrade - and password reset issues

[ted]

Hi guys. Ted the system guy again.

I just completed an enormous system update last night. It brought the Operating System software up to date from a version I'd been running for almost ten years. The vendor is going to stop releasing security patches so I knew I had to get this done. It also was a move to new hardware. So it was A LOT of changes at once.

To cut out a lot of drivel about the details of the move, I'm pretty much done. It's taken weeks of prep and 6 hours of work tonight.

Unfortunately, it seems to have broken the Logo in the corner, which I've asked Bob to set back up. And, oddly, the forum thinks all of our passwords are broken (expired?). i had to reset my password and could see that others were. I re-imported all the data to see if I could fix that. It didn't help. So something between the much older operating system and the newer operating system caused that to break. So don't think you were hacked or anything. Unfortunately, you won't see me tell you that until you've already reset your password and logged in.

I'd keep digging but its 4 am and even us computer guys have to get sleep. Everything else I took a minute to test seems to be working.

The good news is that the operating system vendor has declared that an update of this size won't be needed until 2032! Less work for me and less disruption for the forum.

I'll check back to see if you hit more problems I didn't find yet.

ttyl

[Scott]

Many thanks for this and all you do for the site!
S

[Robert Lees]

Thanks Ted!
I didn't need to reset my password or log back in...just carried on as if normal!

Rob

[3Dreaming]

Same here for me.

[ted]

You guys didn't need to reset your passwords?! Well, that's fantastic!

I have two accounts I use for testing and both told me my passwords were bad and that I had to reset them. Makes it even more mysterious but if that means it was not everyone who was impacted, then I'm a bit relieved to hear that. I was afraid something was broken site-wide and I just couldn't find the cause.

[sully]

No reset here.

[ted]

No reset here.

That's great! Somehow I must have drawn both the short straws for both my accounts to act expired. I'm happy to be incorrect about that. Thank you for confirming that.

[Bigdog]

I had to reset mine. I'm former IT so I get it. Not a problem. I can also appreciate the work you put in. Thank you.

[sully]

OK. So I logged out and tried to log back in.
Had to reset password.
Old password too short.

Sully

[ted]

OK. So I logged out and tried to log back in.
Had to reset password.
Old password too short.

Sully

Odd. I haven't made any changes to the forum since before noon.

And the vbulletin software that runs the forum is the exact same software release as before. I didn't even reinstall, just moved files. So there shouldn't be a new feature causing it to detect short passwords.

I'm confused on this one. But yeah, if that's the worst thing to break, we're doing pretty good.


And thank you to everyone for the 'thanks'. Fortunately, the forum doesn't take too much help from me so it's rarely a burden to make changes. I'm pretty stoked at all the changes I was able to implement elsewhere when bringing the software and hardware up to date.

Another somewhat transparent change is that I'm now routing the traffic through a system called CloudFlare that is supposed to detect and prevent attacks. I'm hoping it cuts down on the bots creating new accounts for Bob. It will occasionally pop up a message for forum members that says something like "checking if your system is secure" and then let you into the real site within about 3-5 seconds. So if you see that, it was just a new security change for the forum.

[Mark Bowden]

Ted, also many thanks for keeping things running. The upgrade you described is a heavy lift, if you are tracking issue on passwords... When I visited the site, I could navigate as normal. I tried logging out and back in and when logging back in I needed to reset my password.

The reset worked fine.

[waltermrich]

Really appreciate you keeping up with all of this , Thank you for your efforts. All is well here.

[Peterroy]

Thanks Ted.

[Mark Bowden]

Hi Ted,
I think there is another issue. Any post I go to with photos posted the links to them are broken. No photos or thumbnails are visible or active.
I also logged off and then back in and it is the same.

Thanks, Mark

[ted]

Hi Ted,
I think there is another issue. Any post I go to with photos posted the links to them are broken. No photos or thumbnails are visible or active.
I also logged off and then back in and it is the same.

Thanks, Mark

Thanks for the problem info!

I found out that the directory for vb attachments had to be reconfigured. And data copied from old to new spots. So I just did that.

I think I always saw the photos on Desktop. But I think they were missing on Mobile. Maybe... Attached is what I see on mobile, I'm not sure if those are supposed to be images or icons on the left.