It looks like our hosts Apache webserver is down right now because I can telnet in but I can't get to the site via the web. I just got email from Gena who's having the same problem. I'm in touch with our site hosts via email and am trying to get through via phone right now.

Now we're back up!

We're back! Thanks for the help, Terry :) [This might scare people into donating too! :) A lot of people have asked me whether the crash was connnected to the lack of money.]

Nope, not connected, is was a disk error on the server. I thought it might have been the Apache webserver, but that was not the case. I'm setting up a couple of backups for future outages, if they occur. If it's ok with the authors and denizens of austen.com, we'll tell springeurs to go check the austen.com board in the event of an outage and we'll tell austhe.com folks to post on the old austen conference on spring if an outage occurs there. It would be extremely unlikely both would go down at the same time, as they're on totally different server machines.

No need, Terry, we here at Drool have our own emergency backups--a listserv and a message board over at Insidetheweb (as does austen.com).

Yep, we have a couple off-site back-ups. We've got a couple bulletin boards at InsideTheWeb (which is why I pointed out we could move our boards off-site if costs of them became prohibitted) and we now have an off-site chat room. I was thinking, though, Terry, maybe you should write up some sort of an introduction to the Spring page. I could post it over on the Tea Room board, to give people an idea of what's available at the Spring. Right now, most probably barely know it exists.

Ann, have you tried out the chatroom facilities advertised at the top of the Insidetheweb board from a place called Beseen.com (or something like that?) Haven't been to your alternate chat sites. What's the name of it at AT&T?

beseen.com isn't good at all, we've been there.

Thanks Ann, I'll post something in the tea room. I'm trying to impart some more content besides just the conferences to the Spring.

I think I was the only one who liked the BeSeen rooms :( At ATT, we use the name "Austen". See you there!

Didn't see that in the Dropdown box.

No, you have to create it as a private room. I have instructions on the Tea Room board--with pictures and everything. Instructions on getting in.

...thanks, although when I went looking for it, the Tea Room wasn't there. ;-) And I have to register, right?

Yep, you have to register. I usually lie when I register on sites. I'm often a 50 something male janitor names Peter Shrinks.

*lol* Love your nom de guerre!

Please check the updates on your virus checker - especially if you are using MS Outlook program and Internet Explorer. Three files you should NOT open if they show up in your inbox are I LOVE YOU, VERYFUNNY, and JOKE. Check your download file for anything they might have put in there, as well.

'Love Bug' Takes New Forms to Smite Users Friday - 16:30 05/05/2000, EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Copycat variants of the ``Love Bug'' virus labeled ``Joke'' and ``Mother's Day'' infected computers around the world on Friday, a day after the most widespread cyberattack ever wreaked havoc on business and government operations. Tens of millions of computers have been disabled so far, as the virus, first detected in Asia, spread around the globe, forcing network administrators to shut down e-mail systems at major companies and penetrating the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's Parliament. Security experts said the virus was far more devastating than last year's Melissa bug, with losses now counting in the billions from damaged data and the distractions of fighting the software scourge, and warned that it could take a while to stem the invasion. By one estimate, approximately 45 million computers around the world have been infected by various strains of the virus, according to Computer Economics, a research firm in Carlsbad, Calif. ``We estimate $2.61 billion of damage has been done,'' said Samir Bhavnani, a research analyst with Computer Economics. ``By Wednesday, the total can reach $10 billion. We see damages growing by $1 billion to $1.5 billion a day until the virus is eradicated.'' Other experts said actual damage estimates would be harder to pin down. Sal Viveros, group manager for Network Associates' (NETA.O) Total Virus Defense, told a conference call of reporters that his researchers have found as many of five different variants of the virus, although he didn't yet have details of the specifics of the variants. Business software maker Computer Associates International said it was relatively easy to create new strains of the virus. ``There's a potential that anyone who receives this virus can go to the Internet and (find) tools to change codes within the virus program that can give the e-mail or the attachment a new name,'' said Simon Perry, vice president for security products at Computer Associates International Inc. (CA.N). The Islandia, N.Y. is a leading maker of anti-virus software such as InoculateIT. For the time being, most of the virus variants are only cosmetically different from the original virus. ``Based on our research, we believe that the variants are coming from a number of different people,'' Perry said. LOVE BUG TAKES NEW FORMS TO TRICK USERS Technically, the software scourge is known as a worm, not a virus. ``Worms have the ability to self-replicate; viruses do not,'' said Jeff Carpenter, a security expert with the Computer Emergency Response Team, a Defense Dept.-funded clearinghouse at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. The original worm ``ILOVEYOU,'' works by enticing e-mail recipients to open an attached letter, only to cripple their e-mail systems. This so-called Love Bug continued to pop up in e-mail systems on Friday, even as variants appeared to pose new tricks for computer users. But the effect is unchanged: Upon opening the attachment using Microsoft software such as the Outlook program, it sends a copy of the worm to everyone in the user's address book and seeks to destroy a variety of files throughout a computer network, including picture and music files. The worm is being sent as an e-mail attachment and many sites are experiencing significantly increased electronic mail traffic. The worm can spread through network disk drives, Web pages, and via IRC (Internet Relay Chat), a communications system popular with computer aficionados, experts said. The damage is limited to users of the Microsoft Windows operating system, said Gene Hodges, president of McAfee, a maker of anti-virus software and a unit of Network Associates. ``We've seen no evidence of affected users of Apple, Linux or Unix operating systems,'' he added. In one new version designed to spoil the upcoming ``Mother's Day'' holiday that will be celebrated in the United States on May 14, a variant of LoveLetter sends e-mails which appear to be a confirmation of an electronic gift order. ``The Mother's Day version of this worm is quite cunning,'' said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research at computer security firm F-Secure Corp.'s laboratories in Helsinki, Finland. ``The e-mail appears to be a confirmation of an order for 'Mother's Day diamond special,' and the attached file mothersday.vbs is portrayed as if it were an invoice. With only eight days to go until Mother's Day, this attack is quite credible,'' he said. F-Secure has identified five variants so far in its efforts to keep pace with the worldwide assault. Another variant appears to have originated in Lithuania, in which the subject line reads, ``Susitikem shi vakara kavos puodukui.'' In Lithuanian, the sentence translates into: ``Let's meet this evening for coffee.'' And still another has ``fwd: Joke'' in the subject line and an attached file called ``Very Funny.vbs,'' which when opened has a similar impact as the ``Love Bug.'' One scary aspect of these worms is that they prey on behavior patterns that most people don't think twice about. ``I think everyone in the world has seen the news about the 'ILOVEYOU.' But say your computer has been affected. You're having a miserable day. And you open something that says 'Very funny,' because you need a laugh. The next thing you know, you're infected all over again.'' Anti-virus software developers scrambling to keep ahead of the mutating software have found it relatively easy so far to eradicate the copy-cat versions of the virus by comparing the variant virus codes to the original ``signature'' code. LOVE BUG TRACED TO PHILIPPINE INTERNET ACCOUNT Philippine police sources said the author of the ``Love Bug'' may be a 23-year-old man living in a Manila suburb, but computer security experts cautioned that computer hackers could write in clues to mislead investigators. Manila police were probing the case after a request from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. A Manila Internet service provider, Supernet, had earlier said the virus appeared to have first spread from two of its e-mail accounts. Kevin Mitnick, a former hacker who served nearly five years in prison for hacking, said in a U.S. television interview that the initial author of the worm could have been acting to throw off investigators, adding that it was easy to establish a mail account anywhere in the world so that it could not be tracked. Experts warned the full effects of the bug may carry through the weekend. ``We're starting to see the situation come under control,'' McAfee's Hodges said. ``Starting Monday, we should start to see the virus start to abate.''

Austen.com seems to be doing something strange. I am getting intermittent Internal Server Errors on my CGI boards. It will happen, then not happen the next time I try to click on something, then happen again, on and off. Very strange...might presage something nasty.

Austen.com's boards seem to be down completely now :(

Yesterday I had temporary trouble with FTP but it was resolved just in time for a post using an ephemeral internet source to be scribbled and replaced with the FTP'd diagram we needed to have reliably on the topic. Have not needed to use FTP today yet, so I don't know how it is faring now.

I too could not get in. This is what I get: Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, auste3@austen.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

I typed austen.com on Netcape and voila! I am in and all seems to be in working order.

voila viola, Maggie's here with me and she's rather MAD!

Spanna and maggia say HI! Bye the way, thankyou for the hug, Marcia. Here's one in return... *Hug!*

Oooh! Lovely stuff, Viola! Thanks for the hug! Sit on her and put cold compresses on her if Maggie gets too far out of hand. Can't take chances with ladies like her *grin* Aloha all! Behave yourselves and remember to say thank you and wash your hands and...

Austen is still acting weird. One minute it works and the next it doesn't. I don't understand how that happens :(

Oh dear...Terry!?! Where are you?

*Disapproving look from T.* (The gang's all here!) Just finished a concert and maggie and Tony enjoyed my MARVELLOUS singing and timpani playing, but then again, I am Brilliant! (I can't understand why maggie is rolling around on the floor in hysterics...!)

(Marcia: maggie's not allowed to open her emails until tomorrow because we've had to lock her away for the evening. I'm sure you'll understand.)

(Marcia: Gotta go, Tony wants to drive home. Bye!! From Viola, maggie, spanna, and Tony!)

*lol*

Sorry about the pitch invasion - circumstances beyond my control! I shall send her back to Geo! (and she's not mine - honest!)

YeahYeahYeah....*grin*

The problem is still going on at Austen. Digihost e-mailed me saying it should be fixed now, but it isn't :(

OK, I'll call and email them today. I haven't experienced any problems today in some thorough testing I did. I made sure the /tmp file wasn't full.

Still getting internal server errors, but only on the tea room, everything else is fine. Totally bizarre, it happened here at drool earlier this AM as well. Don't remember what time.

I'll open a top session at austen.com and see what processes are running on austen. Maybe I can see what the problem is by this method.

All I see is that root is running a telnet session that's using 42% of the cpu process time, an unusually high amount for a telnet session. load averages: 9.21, 6.59, 4.89 16:20:23 176 processes: 11 running, 163 sleeping, 2 zombie CPU states: 27.8% user, 0.0% nice, 72.2% system, 0.0% interrupt, 0.0%idle Memory: Real: 60M/103M Virt: 582M/1385M Free: 104M PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND 1186 root 101 0 328K 452K run/0 23.1H 44.92% 44.92% telnet 4348 cmaco2 39 0 216K 540K run/0 0:02 2.59% 2.59% popper 14132 www 2 0 4568K 3232K sleep 1:49 0.93% 0.93% pnserver 9900 agenc2 2 0 208K 512K sleep 0:00 1.36% 0.68% popper 10065 root -14 0 1184K 1424K sleep 0:00 6.66% 0.63% sendmail 10063 root 30 0 1184K 1424K run/0 0:00 6.15% 0.59% sendmail 10061 root 30 0 1236K 1504K run/0 0:00 3.50% 0.49% sendmail 10066 root 10 0 1236K 1136K sleep 0:00 1.03% 0.10% sendmail 10080 root 2 0 1244K 1264K sleep 0:00 2.00% 0.10% sendmail 10059 root -5 0 1300K 1120K sleep 0:00 0.70% 0.10% sendmail 10071 root -6 0 1300K 1248K sleep 0:00 1.03% 0.10% sendmail 10069 root 28 0 1236K 1216K run/0 0:00 0.51% 0.05% sendmail 8598 www 28 0 8496K 1108K run/0 0:00 0.05% 0.05% httpd 10054 root 10 0 1300K 1164K sleep 0:00 0.35% 0.05% sendmail 10053 root 10 0 1236K 1104K sleep 0:00 0.35% 0.05% sendmail

Okay, that means next to nothing for me;) Terry, how 'bout translating?

Why is 'root' running a telnet session??? Is it necissary? can it be shut down?

Hi, fellas--can you restore the log in button to Spring's home page? Many thanks from those of us who share our computer and can't bookmark the site. :-)

Austen.com is still having tons of problems. The CGI boards are practically shut down. You have to keep trying to reload the page about a dozen times before you'll be able to get it to load :(

Log button resotred. I sent more email to the hosts. They say it's fixed now. But Ann says not. So I forwarded Ann's email to them. Send email to support@digihost.com describing what's going wrong and be sure to mention the url, austen.com.

More correspondence sent to Ann from Digihost regarding the problem, they want more specifics about what's happening.

I sent them sample URL's where there are problems and the fact that it happens sometimes and sometimes not.

Log button resotred. Thanks!

Austen.com is working again :)

Maybe they said the magic words - it more than a little resembles smoke and mirrors they way they do things at DigiHost!

I moved it from the far right side of the screen to the left side as well, I guess folks couldn't see it all the way on the right side of the screen.

Even with Netscape at full screen and my monitor adjusted to eliminate wrap-under, I still cannot see the right side unless I scroll over to do so. I still wonder if I will ever be able to see the pictures there! Without installing IE, that is...

I need to do a maor revision on the spring.net main page. I need to work with a team, are some of the folks who worked on austen.com interested in helping with this?

That would be me, Terry. Sure, I can help. Let me know what you are looking for.

Mostly, a fresh vision. It's too much of a one man show. I'd love to give you permission to just go in and revise our page! Will you have a crack at it?

Send me the password, and I can clean up the page so all the images and links work. They we can talk about what you want it to look like.

I see you're on right now :)

I see my e-mail isn't right here...it should be ann@austen.com

Will changes on the main Spring page affect my Bucket pages? Or have you figured out how to exclude my directory?

There is a new conference at Spring. Please check it out... http://www.spring.net/yapp-bin/restricted/browse/crafts/all/new Terry, is there anything I know enough about to be helpful to you? I am ever willing but also know my limitations...

You know about a lot of things - radio, sports, earth sciences, hawaii that are helpful to my understanding of these topics. Crafts is a real good conference idea. I wonder if you could get some crafts websites to link to it by emailing the folks that run them?

Wolfie is the webring expert - I'm still hunting for one for Geo which is appropriate. I'll let her connect us with the outer world. Thanks for the suggestions and the compliments *blush* Right now I am on the laptop because I installed Norton Utilities anti virus and it has frozen my big PC and I cannot get it to reboot completely - keeps shutting me down. Any suggestions???

Okay, I went ahead and reformatted the front page of the site. I hope I have all the links and images working, and have everything formatted so that it all fits on everyone's screen. The only thing I didn't get working was the hit counter at the bottom. Any one having problems with the new formatting?

Hmmm, the Real Player things aren't working on the front. For some reason they are trying to access something on the austen.com site. I'm getting a file not found error for: pnm://austen.com:7070/auste3/live.ra Don't know what that's doing in there. The only thing on the page that refers to Austen is the link in the what's cool section.

Wow, that's a great start Ann. Do you find it hard reworking Frontpage stuff? Feel free to get more creative and throw in plugs for Austen, Firth or whatever you like.

Terry: What's going on? These Internal Server Errors keep popping up. Have to hit Reload several times and then it goes through.

It is very spotty. I still have to go to main before I can get anything but the error message. Ann, I can see your front page! Thank you forever for that. My Geo globe is finally visible! Yippee!!!

Karen, thanks for suggesting hitting the reload button to get the posts through. It really works...*whew*

It does work but it's a pain, I'm looking at the server now.

Terry, this sounds like the same problem Austen.com was having last week. Our HTML pages were working, but our CGI pages weren't.

It just took me 7 hits of the reload to read your message - still not fixed even if Mike of DigiHost is logged on...

I noticed the same thing Ann about your pages too. My Bucket HTML pages were OK, but the Conference (yapp-bin stuff) wasn't. Might help isolating the problem.

This is a royal drag....Is the problem with Digihost? Spring? How come Pemberley never has that problem?

I checked running non-yapp programs like Digihosts own administration program and was getting the same errors, this would indicate that it's not a Yapp problem rather a server problme.

slippage.

Is anyone home there? I see that Mike at DigiHost is logged on most of the time. It makes me wonder if he just turns it on and leaves, giving the semblance of being active when he is not, in fact...

I've been fiddling with the front page again: http://www.spring.net Any ideas folks? Any suggestions?

Looks great! I like the way you put the login and signup on the left on the table with the conference titles. (Can you add Crafts, please?) Like the smaller font used at the bottom and the spacing, as well. Not sure about the middle - it needs to be renewed fairly often if we are going to go for post from certain conferences - but that is Terry's call and this is just my opinion.

Go Ann, Go. Stands up and cheers. Can I be your cheerleader section! Go wild! Make some big changes! Give me an A. Give me and N. Give me another N! Go Ann!!!!

Please get in touch with me if you have any ideas for courses we could run online and tie in with the Spring conferences. This may be the mmost important project the Spring has ever undertaken and is vital for our future growth. Please pass the word around about this. We're looking for courses based on topics in all our conferences and courses around the works of Jane Austen and her novels and adaptations. This will become a growing venture within the Spring with funding going to the community as a whole and the participants in the project. Scale of importance: Extremely high priority, urgent!

I'd really like to get a preliminary proposal together by Friday and would love to see some discussion of this around the Spring.

This could cause problems here too.... Magnetic storm may disrupt pagers, broadcasts It's caused by the eruption of a giant sunspot, scientists say By Helen Altonn Star-Bulletin A magnetic storm this weekend could disrupt radio transmissions and satellites and produce colorful northern lights visible over most of the mainland. Islanders aren't likely to see the aurora, which is rarely visible this far south, said University of Hawaii astronomer Donald Mickey. A full moon also would make it difficult to see, he said. As for whether television, pager and radio reception will be affected, he said: "We don't know how to forecast these effects in enough detail so far to be able to tell whether TVs will be affected." He said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasters in Colorado expect the storm "to be large, but probably not devastating." NOAA scientists reported that the solar flare already has caused some radio blackouts. The sun may be nearing the peak of its 11-year cycle, known as solar maximum, Mickey said. "You never know (if you reach the peak) until it starts going down again." A giant sunspot eruption just after midnight Hawaii time yesterday triggered the magnetic storm. Billions of tons of plasma and charged particles were ejected into space, some at 3 million miles an hour, NOAA scientists said. The mass ejection was expected to hit the Earth's magnetic field this afternoon and cause the geomagnetic storm. Mickey said the eruption was the biggest this cycle but there haven't been many. "We've been sort of wondering, expecting more big flares, and that hasn't happened so far." Sometimes larger flares happen later in the cycle, he said. The latest eruption occurred in a very complex magnetic region near the visible part of the sun, Mickey said. "When a large flare like this is at the surface, sometimes -- and this is one of those cases -- an amount of corona gets ejected into interplanetary space, leaving sort of a hole in the corona and sending basically a cloud of plasma out away from the sun," he said. Cameras on the NASA spacecraft SOHO, positioned to look continuously at the sun, showed the ejection "and within minutes, the cameras were hit by clouds of very fast protons that showed up as snow on the images," Mickey said. A severe solar storm in 1989 knocked out power stations serving Canada and northeastern states, and an electrical transformer in New Jersey. UH astronomers are collaborating with scientists around the country to study the solar maximum. Mickey said they're setting up interdisciplinary studies "that will try to understand this all the way from the sun to Earth and how it affects things we do in our daily lives."

I wonder if this will affect local vhf/uhf?

Nothing noted here.....but it is not yet over. Would love reports of any adverse effects from this extraordianry event.

Help! Help! Help! The counter I installed on my Bridget Jones page stopped working yesterday. I've had it up there since July 5 and then suddenly yesterday it stopped. The message within the counter reads: "could not create data files /var/Counter/data/x.dat" I tried another counter from the Webhosting features page, but got the same thing. Looks to me like something isn't working on the server. Here's the url of my Bridget page. http://www.spring.net/karenr/mdbro/bjd.html Also, how do I look at stats?

I can install the Frontpage 2000 counter if you like, Karen. Would you like me to do this? Do you have Frontpage?

No, I do not have Frontpage. But why did the counter stop working? Aren't those digihost counters? I'm kind of particular about the design of the counter. Where can I see samples?

I'll set up a counter test page and get the url to you.

Have contacted Digihost and they have fixed the problem. My counter now works. Thanks anyway.

Good news!

The Spring went down earlier tonight and I got on the phone long distance to Kaylene Thaler in Seattle and after and exchange of emails she fixed the problem. I'm going to run a little fundraiser to help pay her expenses for keeping this community's software running. Sure, thanks for helping again as you have many times before, Kaylene. Terry > > It's fixed. Your license file had been trashed. I'm not > sure how it happened but it is fixed. By the way, I have > been holding onto the invoice for transfering you to this > new system to give you time to figure out your cash flow, > and to make sure everything was running smoothly. > How are things looking now? I'd like to send out the invoice > for the help to move systems, as well as the unpaid invoice > for the upgrade on your license file to the current use level. > > Kaylene > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: sprin5@baldur.domainnameservers.net > > [mailto:sprin5@baldur.domainnameservers.net] > > Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 3:43 PM > > To: kaylene@armidalesoftware.com > > Subject: error on spring.net > > > > > > baldur:/tmp $ bbs > > Invalid checksum > > Couldn't get license for baldur.domainnameservers.net > > baldur:/tmp $ > > > > How do I fix this Kaylene, the Spring is down. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Terry > > > > >

Gotcha Terry - I 'll try my best to help

After some more checking, it seems that you may have hit the license limit yesterday. (note the error log said you ran out of hits with about 3 minutes left to go) this is probably related to the problem with your licence file. The usage history seems to indicate that on most days you are between 3000 and 5000 hits, but occationally you get up in the 6000 + range. If you pay for the 64 user license (which you currently have), I'll consider bumping the hit limit substanially at no additional charge. Kaylene

Kaylene, that would be fantastic! Long live Yapp software and the esteemed creators. Hawaiian Hugs!

The hits are cumulative of all the users. Right now you have paid for the 16 user/ 1600 hit licence. ( I don't mind if places need a 3000 hit license for the occasional heavy day safety net). However, you are consistantly above the 3000 hit level, and periodically above 6000 which definately takes you well into the next license level. I will cushion the 6400 so that if you average around 6400, and have an occational heavy day you are still fine, but you need to pay for that level of a license. Kaylene