About Me

PBX I'm Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using open source software, especially Django. I teach photographers web design and professional skills. In the '90s I did graphic design for newspapers and magazines. Then I wrote technology commentary and reviews for Wired, Salon.com, Chicago Tribune, and lots of little places you've never heard of. Feel free to email me.

Book

I'm co-author of "Python Web Development with Django", an excellent guide to my favorite web framework. Its strong points include an introduction to Python, and better coverage of Django 1.0 than nearly anybody else. Published by Addison-Wesley, it is available from Amazon and your favorite technical bookstore as well.

Colophon

Built using Django, served by Apache and mod_wsgi. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive. The markup engine is Markdown.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

Spam Report

At least 67564 pieces of comment spam killed since January 2008, mostly via Akismet.

My first DOS

If you tried to reach this blog or anything else on this server this afternoon, you may not have had much luck.

A computer in Korea was hammering my server so hard (aka Denial of Service attack) that my hosting provider temporarily disabled Apache so that my instance didn't bog down the whole VPS. I was busy at work when this happened and am not sure exactly how long it was out, but this was one of the most severe outages I've had in the last three and a half years.

I've blocked the offending IP, and made some other tuning adjustments. Up until now I've had the luxury of relatively low and predictable traffic, but this incident has gotten me a bit more interested in learning how to handle high loads with Apache/mod_python without eating all memory in sight.

Thursday, April 19th, 2007
risks + web development
4 comments

Some related posts: Trying to send eBay a message? • The MySpace worm

• Comment from Cory Wright , later that day

You might also consider using `mod_evasive`, an apache module for defending against DoS attacks: <http://www.zdziarski.com/projects/mod_evasive/>

• Comment from Paul , later that day

Thanks, Cory -- a couple other people have suggested that as well, so I'm looking into it.

• Comment from justice , 5 weeks later

So you have identified the attacking IPs. Is it all? No defense against criminals who try to ruin your business ? The attack originators should be penalized by autohorities, or? I was hardly able to find any information on this so any experience woudl be appreciated.

• Comment from Paul , 5 weeks later

I did send a report to the abuse address associated with the netblock of the attacking IP, but didn't get much of a response.