It’s free, open source, and I hope people will make it better on github.

Please take not that it will evaluate EVERY SINGLE REQUEST through a Deny policy in Apache’s mod_access – it does not halt your performance much if you’re just running a site with few requests. But I only suggest this solution as a temporary one until you have a better integration. I am currently working on a Django middleware that will only check the client’s IP address in case it is a POST request directed at a certain URL.

Since I’ve been told that Apache doesn’t use /etc/hosts.deny, you should probably use this method instead, unless you have a webserver that actually uses hosts.deny. Another method would be to add the IP addresses to iptables, if you’re running that — this is probably more efficient than using Apache configuration policies.

This method creates a file that you can include in httpd.conf (to cover ALL your virtual hosts). The overall goal is to avoid .htaccess files since they are evaluated at runtime. Thus, you won’t have to configure each site, and you save a but of CPU time.

1. Copy the script below to a file on your server, eg. /usr/sbin/stopforumspam.py. You might want to read it quickly as it will pretty much explain itself…
2. Make the file executable, eg. chmod +x /usr/sbin/stopforumspam.py
3. Add it to your crontab for automatic execution each night, eg. crontab -e and then insert the line 0 0 * * * /usr/sbin/stopforumspam.py && /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
4. By default, we will ban an entire class C subnet if more than 5 IP addresses are in this space. You can configure this behavior by giving stopforumspam.py a single argument, ie. /usr/sbin/stopforumspam.py 10 would mean that at least 10 IPs have to be within the class C subnet to qualify it for a ban.
5. By default stopforumspam.py creates /etc/apache2/stopforumspam.conf – you can change this by editing the script.
6. Add Include /etc/apache2/stopforumspam.conf to /etc/apache2/httpd.conf (Debian/Ubuntu).
7. Caution! Make sure that you DO NOT change the Order Deny,Allow option in VirtualHost directives or .htaccess files as this unblock the deny policies.

#!/usr/bin/python
 
import re
import urllib
import zipfile
import sys
 
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
    SUBNET_THRESHOLD = int(sys.argv[1])
else:
    SUBNET_THRESHOLD = 5
 
DOWNLOAD_ZIP = "http://www.stopforumspam.com/downloads/listed_ip_7.zip"
ZIP_FILENAME = "listed_ip_7.txt"
 
HTTPD_CONFIG_INCLUDE = "/etc/apache2/stopforumspam.conf"
 
# For security purposes we test that each line is actually an IP address
IP_MATCH = re.compile(r"^(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)$")
 
filename, headers = urllib.urlretrieve(DOWNLOAD_ZIP)
 
z = zipfile.ZipFile(filename)
ips = z.read(ZIP_FILENAME)
 
ips = ips.split("\n")
 
# Remove non-ip members
ips = filter(lambda ip: IP_MATCH.match(ip), ips)
 
def get_ip_segments(ip):
    segments_match = IP_MATCH.search(ip)
    return [int(segments_match.group(i)) for i in range(1,5)]
 
def convert_ip_to_number(ip):
    numeric_value = 0
    ip_segs = get_ip_segments(ip)
    for i in range(4):
      numeric_value += ip_segs[i]*(255**(4-i))
    return numeric_value
 
# Sort everything first
ips.sort(key=convert_ip_to_number)
 
subnets = {}
 
for ip in ips:
    ip_segs = get_ip_segments(ip)
    key = (ip_segs[0], ip_segs[1], ip_segs[2])
    if not key in subnets.keys():
        subnets[key] = [ip]
    else:
        subnets[key].append(ip)
 
final_list = []
 
for subnet, subnet_ips in subnets.items():
    if len(subnet_ips) > SUBNET_THRESHOLD:
        # Ban the whole subnet
        final_list.append(".".join(map(str, subnet)) + ".0/24")
    else:
        final_list = final_list + subnet_ips
 
print ""
print "Lengh of original list: %d" % len(ips)
print "Lengh of final list: %d" % len(final_list)
 
apache_conf_file = file(HTTPD_CONFIG_INCLUDE, "w")
apache_conf_file.write("\n")
apache_conf_file.write("    Order Deny,Allow\n")
 
for entry in final_list:
    apache_conf_file.write("    Deny from %s\n" % entry)
 
apache_conf_file.write("\n")
 
apache_conf_file.close()

Use the following Python script to maintain a file in the hosts.deny syntax so that your Debian/Ubuntu box (or other Linux server) is kept undisturbed by forum spammers — COMPLETELY undisturbed, as the spammer is disallowed all access to the system.

1. Copy the script to a file on your server, eg. /usr/sbin/stopforumspam.py
2. Make the file executable, eg. chmod +x /usr/sbin/stopforumspam.py
3. Add it to your crontab for automatic execution each night, eg. crontab -e and then insert the line 0 0 * * * /usr/sbin/stopforumspam.py
4. Add the path to the file containing the ip list to /etc/hosts.deny by inserting this line: ALL: /etc/hosts.deny.stopforumspam

The script itself is here, modify it as you need.

#!/usr/bin/python
 
import re
import urllib
import zipfile
 
DOWNLOAD_ZIP = "http://www.stopforumspam.com/downloads/listed_ip_7.zip"
ZIP_FILENAME = "listed_ip_7.txt"
 
HOSTS_DENY = "hosts.deny.stopforumspam"
 
# For security purposes we test that each line is actually an IP address
IP_MATCH = re.compile(r"\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+")
 
filename, headers = urllib.urlretrieve(DOWNLOAD_ZIP)
 
z = zipfile.ZipFile(filename)
ips = z.read(ZIP_FILENAME)
 
deny_file = file(HOSTS_DENY, "w")
 
for ip in ips.split("\n"):
    if IP_MATCH.match(ip):
        deny_file.write("%s\n" % ip)
 
deny_file.close()

Add this to your code to set.js inside your settings object:

{name:'Insert footnote',
	beforeInsert: function(h) {
		instructions = "Type in the number of the footnote:)";
		if (!h.last_footnote) {
			h.last_footnote = prompt(instructions);
		} else {
			if (!isNaN(h.last_footnote))
				h.last_footnote = parseInt(h.last_footnote) +1;
			else
				h.last_footnote = prompt(instructions);
		}
		h.footnote_content = prompt("Type in the text of the footnote:");
	},
	closeWith: function(h) {
		return '[^' + h.last_footnote + ']';
	},
	afterInsert: function(h) {
		h.textarea.value += '[^' + h.last_footnote + ']: ' +
			h.footnote_content;
	}},

And put this icon in the set’s images folder:

After that be sure to modify style.css so it says something like (if 14 was the placement of the footnote button):

.markItUp .markItUpButton14 a	{
	background-image:url(images/footnote.png);
}

Simply do the following:

cp -R /usr/share/python-support/python-django/django/contrib/flatpages my_project/my_flatpages

views.py

1

from my_project.my_flatpages.models import FlatPage

middleware.py

1

from my_project.my_flatpages.views import flatpage

urls.py

3
4
5

urlpatterns = patterns('my_project.my_flatpages.views',
    (r'^(?P<url>.*)$', 'flatpage'),
)

my_project.my_flatpages.middleware.FlatpageFallbackMiddleware has to be added to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES and my_project.my_flatpages to your INSTALLED_APPS and you’ll need to run manage.py syncdb, possibly changing the table name in models.py, so it doesn’t conflict with the old flatpages table. That’s basically it. After that you can work on the templates as described in the other howto’s, but now you have your own model to extend.

This is what you usually do: Copy text to some file on a LAN share, send yourself an e-mail, an SMS or even worse: You write it on paper!

Well, now you won’t have to do that anymore! With your new OSS PHP Clipboard you can just type in whatever you like and press save. Your content will then remain accessible until you choose to save something else.

Go try the demo or download it and put it on your own server:

• Demo
• Download tar.gz

Installation is easy! Just put the .php file on your webserver somewhere safe from people and bots. Chmod the file 777 and it’ll work.

This is an early version, but please help me develope the idea and the code. Right now I’m thinking that it should be able to do optional IP and/or login checking. And maybe there should be a file upload feature, too…

Anyways, check out the game or grab a version with readable, commented JS.

Important update: I fixed a bug showing off solutions for every field in “field info”. It was worth a few laughs, though =)