Hi Augustin, I had a similar problem some time ago, and ended up writing the very simple 'trackback_blackhole' module which solved the resources issues for me. The module is distributed with the v2 spam module, available here: http://kerneltrap.org/jeremy/drupal/spam/#downloads You can download the whole tarball, and then just install the trackback_blackhole module without installing the spam module. I hope that helps. Cheers, -Jeremy On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:14:49 +0800 "Augustin (Beginner)" <drupal.beginner@wechange.org> wrote:
Hello,
I am curious: is anyone using the trackback.module and allowing incoming trackbacks?
Spammers have a vicious script designed for Drupal, that submits spam trackbacks in a loop, every few minutes, 24/24h.
Even though not ONE of their trackbacks has EVER been published on the site, once your site is entered into their registry, they'll never bother take it off. It seems the only human intervention is to ADD new sites to spam in the robot's registry, never to remove any. Even though I have disabled the trackback.module weeks ago (!!!), my logs are still flooded with "warning page not found trackback/$nid not found. "
In such a situation, I wonder how anyone could be using the trackback.module for any length of time.
My particular concern at this time is server resources. I know there is a spam module that can automatically delete spam trackbacks, but it won't solve the resources problems.
My site hasn't had any new content for a week, and the Drupal cache should be working at its best, and the CPU load should be at its lowest. However, the opposite is true.
--------------------------------------------- | For the week | For the day | | rank - % | rank - % | --------------------------------------------| cpu | 86th - 0.216% | 190th - 0.107% | hit | 504th - 0.032% | 543th - 0.030% | Bandwidth | 404th - 0.045% | 370th - 0.030% | ---------------------------------------------
See the high cpu usage compared to hits and bandwidth. The relatively lower cpu rank for the day is only due to a server upgrade which rendered spamming impossible. Now, I have already noted a few weeks ago that the cpu usage of a Drupal site is higher than the cpu usage of other sites. Another Drupal site I have and which has never used the trackback module (and therefore never been entered in the spammers' registry) is showing the same pattern of a higher cpu usage. However, it is not as bad as this site.
For the sake of the other web sites co-hosted on the same server, I'd like to drastically cut down on cpu usage. I'd like to add a directive at the top of .htaccess that ends straightaway any request to trackback/$nid (so that Drupal never gets bootstrapped).
Would that work? What would I need to add to .htaccess?
If you have some insights on the wider spam issue and trackback spam in particular, please do share.
I repeat that the spam.module is not an option: it would increase even further the cpu usage when I want to minimize it.
thanks,
Augustin.