Version 2.4 Messing up Database

  • Resolved SantaCruze

    (@santacruze)


    7 years, 1 month ago

    Heya there,

    Thanks for the nice plugin. It has saved me from a lot of bad bots. The new Version 2.4 seems to have a bug for me. It creates thousands of database entries per day. They look like this:

    _transient_timeout_blackhole_get_vars_(ip adress)
    _transient_blackhole_get_vars (ip adress)

    It seems that for every ip-adresse there is an entry in the database stored. I had to rollback to version 2.3. Looks like the new “vars” Feature from Version 2.4 is causing this problem.

    Sincerely

    Stefan

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    7 years, 1 month ago

    Hi Stefan,

    Glad to help. Here is how it works. In order to improve performance, the plugin now caches data (via WP transients) for each blocked bot for 30 minutes each. After 30 minutes transients are removed from the database. Also each transient is unique, one per blocked IP address. Further, the cached transients are harmless, very small in size, and help to improve the performance of your site.

    So when you say that Blackhole “creates thousands of database entries per day”, it implies the following:

    • Your site is getting hammered by thousands of bad bots daily
    • Your Bad Bot Log is increasing in size by thousands of bad bots daily
    • The plugin is working incredibly well at blocking bad bots

    It also implies that your site is either extremely popular and receives massive amounts of traffic, or it means that for some reason your site is disproportionately targeted by bad bots.

    Bottom line: the cached transients are not a bug but a planned feature that benefits the performance of your site.

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by Jeff Starr. Reason: clarity
    Thread Starter SantaCruze

    (@santacruze)

    7 years, 1 month ago

    Hey Jeff,

    Thanks for the quick reply. My Blog has around 100 K Visits each month with a blocking list of 60 entries so far.

    I know that transients arent a problem at all. But having 50 K new entries per week is a bit too much for my taste. I rolled back to version 2.3 for now. Maybe i ll activate the new version again sometimes in the future.

    Sincerely
    Stefan

    Plugin Author Jeff Starr

    (@specialk)

    7 years, 1 month ago

    If you are getting 50,000 transients per week, then (as explained in my previous reply) your bad bot log should have way more than 60 blocked bots. Also the transients are temporary and should expire after 30 minutes. So it sounds like there may be something interfering with normal WP transient functionality on your site.

    Thread Starter SantaCruze

    (@santacruze)

    7 years, 1 month ago

    Hey Jeff,

    Yeah that could be the issue. Well i rolled back to Version 2.3. All is fine now. Not sure if the Transients have something to do with the Borlabs Caching Plugin or the Nginx Caching.

    Sincerely

    Stefan

    coolph

    (@coolph)

    6 years, 11 months ago

    Hi Stefan,
    Great work! I have been using your plugin for over 2 years.

    I have updated the plugin to the latest version and my database size increased by 40 MB in just 10 days. I can’t let the database size increase like that.. Kindly add the functionality to reset the database.

    Resetting the logs didn’t delete entries from the database. For time being, I have migrated to the older version. Please provide me the SQL queries to delete those records.

    Update: I just used WP-Optimize plugin to optimize the database which reduced the wp_offa_options table size from 40 MB (149K records) to just 1.2 MB (2.2K records). There were 980 bad bots for my website.

    From my database backup –
    “INSERT INTO wp_offa_options VALUES” (148 hits in 1 file)

    Each record in wp_offa_options is occupying 296kb (taking 1000 lines in notepad++). That’s not small at all. I can send you the record(s) for your analysis.

    Thanks.

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by coolph.
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by coolph.
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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