Having Strange Errors Utilizing Gzip in WordPress 2.9 and 2.9.1?

For­tu­nately your not alone. A recent bug fix was just released which addresses an error which is received while updat­ing the Word­Press core, as well as Word­Press plu­g­ins. This error typ­i­cally effects http.php, located at wp-includes/http.php, and looks sim­i­lar to the code listed below.

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Jan 10, 2010 | Server 2003, Web Design, Wordpress | 2 Comments »

We Hate Spam, So Here’s A Fresh List of Spam Bots For Your Blocking Pleasure...

We main­tain a vari­ety of web­sites, blogs, con­tent por­tals, mail servers, and other online resources. We’re forced to deal with a daily task of Spam removal and pre­ven­tion. Be it spam-bots, human spam­mers, com­ment spam­mers, and on and on. The major­ity of the time its no more than a nui­sance, and a sim­ple admin­is­tra­tive task. The num­ber one goal of any admin­is­tra­tor is to pre­vent these spam­mers from ever accom­plish­ing their intended goal of com­ment hijack­ing or gain­ing some con­trol over web­site con­tent. But these days spam­mers are get­ting quite sneaky, in fact we’d even go as far as say­ing that some of them are quite good at what they do.

But since they bug us, we’re going to help you in the fight against them and their evil deeds. Below you’ll find a list of IP addresses we’ve per­son­ally com­piled. All the addresses below have recently spammed our servers, and have since been banned.

The first list is sim­ply a list of IP addresses that you can eas­ily load into you favorite anti-spam plu­gin. The sec­ond list is from a .htac­cess file we pro­vided to a client. Have fun, and happy com­put­ing.

Recently active spam­bot IP addresses...

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8.17.84.65
58.137.132.100
63.171.182.6
63.227.242.5
63.253.158.220
67.61.143.217
67.163.0.220
67.181.166.121
78.26.187.114
78.152.106.43
80.38.103.231
83.69.209.194
83.103.113.124
85.112.166.65
88.46.239.43
93.62.4.207
93.81.251.193
110.138.31.73
115.119.35.194
119.225.109.37
120.124.176.217
130.105.36.54
131.107.33.62
144.140.46.10
158.59.200.109
159.214.87.245
161.159.4.33
161.254.6.55
170.207.128.4
174.142.166.205
180.130.166.89
188.73.138.24
189.45.59.76
189.76.222.229
190.2.14.129
194.8.74.220
194.8.75.40 - 194.8.75.163
194.183.86.25
196.211.9.210
200.181.124.57
201.67.137.247
202.108.50.75
202.229.143.64
203.63.26.200
206.123.106.141
208.88.124.83
208.91.245.90
212.113.74.186
212.131.202.194
213.230.22.142
213.130.121.51
217.6.171.194
217.72.242.60
217.196.65.115
218.126.216.117
220.116.127.192

This list can be dropped right into your .htac­cess file...

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order allow,deny
deny from 8.17.84.65
deny from 58.137.132.100
deny from 63.171.182.6
deny from 63.227.242.5
deny from 63.253.158.220
deny from 67.61.143.217
deny from 67.163.0.220
deny from 67.181.166.121
deny from 78.26.187.114
deny from 78.152.106.43
deny from 80.38.103.231
deny from 83.69.209.194
deny from 83.103.113.124
deny from 85.112.166.65
deny from 88.46.239.43
deny from 93.62.4.207
deny from 93.81.251.193
deny from 110.138.31.73
deny from 115.119.35.194
deny from 119.225.109.37
deny from 120.124.176.217
deny from 130.105.36.54
deny from 131.107.33.62
deny from 144.140.46.10
deny from 158.59.200.109
deny from 159.214.87.245
deny from 161.159.4.33
deny from 161.254.6.55
deny from 170.207.128.4
deny from 174.142.166.205
deny from 180.130.166.89
deny from 188.73.138.24
deny from 189.45.59.76
deny from 189.76.222.229
deny from 190.2.14.129
deny from 194.8.74.220
deny from 194.8.75.40 - 194.8.75.163
deny from 194.183.86.25
deny from 196.211.9.210
deny from 200.181.124.57
deny from 201.67.137.247
deny from 202.108.50.75
deny from 202.229.143.64
deny from 203.63.26.200
deny from 206.123.106.141
deny from 208.88.124.83
deny from 208.91.245.90
deny from 212.113.74.186
deny from 212.131.202.194
deny from 213.230.22.142
deny from 213.130.121.51
deny from 217.6.171.194
deny from 217.72.242.60
deny from 217.196.65.115
deny from 218.126.216.117
deny from 220.116.127.192
allow from all

Jan 10, 2010 | Magento, Server 2003, Web Browsers, Web Design, Wordpress | Leave A Comment »

The Correct Way To Set Up gzip with Magento

We wrote this arti­cle in response to post­ings offer­ing advice to users of Magento, an open source ecom­merce sys­tem. The advice is being given with good inten­tions, and the intent is only to assist their fel­low Magento users. But the advice being give may actu­ally have the poten­tial cause harm to the users site, or at the least a good deal of down time. The advice being offered is to help speed up Magento by enabling a server side caching sys­tem called gzip. What peo­ple don’t real­ize is that their being told to enable two sep­a­rate caching sys­tems. These two sys­tems tend not to play well together, and could cause harm to your install. While most peo­ple see pos­i­tive results, there are a rare few see­ing server side errors, data­base errors, and are stumped as to why.

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Nov 30, 2009 | Magento, Server 2003, Wordpress | 1 Comment »

“Help and Support” is missing after you upgrade to Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

After you upgrade a Microsoft Win­dows Server 2003-based com­puter to Microsoft Win­dows Server 2003 Ser­vice Pack 2 (SP2), Help and Sup­port is miss­ing when you click Start. Addi­tion­ally, the Help menu is miss­ing in pro­grams that are run­ning on the Win­dows Server 2003 SP2-based computer.

Addi­tion­ally, when you type msinfo32.exe or Helpctr.exe at a com­mand prompt to try to start Help and Sup­port man­u­ally, you receive the fol­low­ing error mes­sage:
Win­dows can­not open Help and Sup­port because a sys­tem ser­vice is not run­ning. To fix this prob­lem, start the ser­vice named ‘Help and Sup­port’.
How­ever, when you start the Ser­vices Microsoft Man­age­ment Con­sole (MMC) snap-in, the Help and Sup­port ser­vice is not listed.

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Nov 22, 2008 | Server 2003 | Leave A Comment »

Setup failed while installing sub-component Exchange ActiveSync with error code 0xC0070643

In the process of set­ting up a new 2003 Exchange Server, we were con­fronted with the fol­low­ing error while installing Ser­vice Pack 2.

Setup failed while installing sub-component Exchange ActiveSync with error code 0xC0070643 (please consult the installatoin logs for a detailed description). You may cancel the installation or try the failed setup again.

Dig­ging into the instal­la­tion logs we see that the setup is fail­ing while attempt­ing to install MSXML:

[18:52:22] Calling MSXML installer with command line: "msiexec /i msxml3.msi /q reboot="ReallySuppress""
[18:52:22] Process created ... waiting (-1)
[18:52:23] Process has exited with 0x000643
[18:52:23] The command

msiexec /i msxml3.msi /q reboot="ReallySuppress"

failed, returning error code 1603 (Fatal error during installation.). -- ID:31136 -- ScCreateProcess (f:\tisp2\admin\src\libs\exsetup\hiddenw1.cxx:1821)
Error code 0XC0070643 (1603): Fatal error during installation.

The event logs sub­se­quently tells us:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MsiInstaller
Event ID: 1013
Description:
Product: Microsoft XML Parser -- Your system has newer version of MSXML3 SP5 than the version you are attempting to install. Setup will quit.

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Nov 22, 2008 | Server 2003 | 4 Comments »