New Blog
I have decided to create this new blog. This blog will be where I write about my hobbies.
My previous blog since 2016 was hosted by Blog Mahasiswa UI, but it was getting unusable. I noticed since 2021-03-08 that I was unable to log in due to password mismatch. Weird, considering:
- I used KeePassXC to store my password (so no possibility of entering wrong password).
- The password is long and complex (so it is very unlikely that someone successfully bruteforced it).
I reported the problem via https://kelola.ui.ac.id, but there was no action. To make things worse, since 2021-03-23 the entire Blog Mahasiswa UI went down. Not just mine, there was probably a hundred blogs in Blog Mahasiswa UI, and the entire thing went down. To the day I make this blog and write this post (2021-04-10), it is still down.
Looking back, that was not the first time I encountered a problem with Blog Mahasiswa UI:
| № | Incident Noted | Incident Description | Incident Fixed | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2019-05-04 | Expired TLS certificate. | 2019-06-14 | Note that they fixed it after more than one month. |
| 2 | 2019-09-01 | Expired TLS certificate. | 2019-09-17 | They fixed it after more than two weeks. |
| 3 | 2019-12-16 | Expired TLS certificate. | 2019-12-26 | Ten days this time. I also begin to note the trend of slow reaction time and the trend of expiring certificates. |
| 4 | 2019-12-30 | DB error (WordPress failed establishing DB connection). | 2020-01-07 | More than one week to fix this error. To be fair it occurred during end of year and new year holidays. |
| 5 | 2020-06-08 | Expired TLS certificate. | 2020-06-09 | What in the world did they do to the Let’s Encrypt certbot program that made it continue to fail renewing certificates? At least this time only one day to fix this error. |
| 6 | 2020-12-29 | I reported an inappropriate blog on Blog Mahasiswa UI to the admin. | 2021-01-13 | This time it was not a technical issue, but the slow reaction time returned. It took two weeks to handle that. This also happens during the end of year and new year holidays, but still, two weeks. |
| 7 | 2021-03-08 | Login failure. I think this issue was just for my account, because I can see other accounts/blogs at Blog Mahasiswa UI still posted new posts. | Still not fixed today, in fact the next problem happens. | |
| 8 | 2021-03-23 | Weird TLS issue (PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR), and then DB error (WordPress failed establishing DB connection). This was what I meant with “the entire thing went down.” | 2021-04-14 (After this post was first published) | Also still not fixed. (Edit: back online 4 days after this post was first published. That means it took more than 3 weeks to fix this issue.) |
| 9 | 2021-04-20 (After this post was first published) | DB error (WordPress failed establishing DB connection). | Not fixed yet. |
Further back, I also experienced problem with IT infrastructure before I was a student at UI. Before I got in to UI, I was a student at UGM. Back then in 2004 I was allowed a CPanel account and given a subdomain (jrocky.web.ugm.ac.id). I used it as a blog, not using HTTPS back then. They even let students keep the CPanel account and the subdomain after graduation. In 2016 I moved my blog to Blog Mahasiswa UI, and installed GNU Social and FreshRSS at my UGM subdomain. In late 2017 UGM automatically installed TLS certificates for the CPanel subdomains. Everything was going well.
Then all of a sudden on July 2018 UGM reduced my storage allotment to 1 MiB (prior to that it was 300 MiB). When I messaged the admin, they replied with something along the line of:
Due to internal policy and resource efficiency, CPanel access are no longer allowed except for work units.
To be fair they offered to host alumni blogs at Blog Mahasiswa UGM. However at the time my blog was already at Blog Mahasiswa UI. UGM no longer offered CPanel access, UI never even offered CPanel access, that meant my GNU Social instance and FreshRSS were now gone. With the 1 MiB allotment, I uploaded a page that tell others where my blog was now at Blog Mahasiswa UI. Nowadays though, the jrocky.web.ugm.ac.id subdomain appears to be misconfigured and is not redirecting properly. I tried logging into UGM CPanel to see if the issue is something that I can fix, but it appears now my account has been deactivated (“The login is invalid”).
For a year I only had the blog at Blog Mahasiswa UI. Starting July 2019 I began trying out paid CPanel account from a commercial provider, but I still blogged at Blog Mahasiswa UI, because why not. Well as you can see above, that’s why not.
So that’s how and why this site is now my blog. We’ll see how it goes.
- 2021-04-14 Update: Incident #8 is now fixed. Blog Mahasiswa UI is now back online. The post above has been edited to reflect this. Incident #7 persists.
- 2021-04-20 Update: Blog Mahasiswa UI is offline again, so I added incident #9 in the table above. Incident #7 not fixed yet.
- 2022-08-23 Update: I just checked, it is still offline but with different problem. Checked using Firefox: “Unable to connect”. Checked using curl:
I give up. They might as well remove the DNS record.
joshua@joshua-t530:~$ curl -v https://mhs.blog.ui.ac.id/ * Trying 152.118.24.183:443... * TCP_NODELAY set * connect to 152.118.24.183 port 443 failed: Connection refused * Trying 2403:da00:1:3::b7:443... * TCP_NODELAY set * Immediate connect fail for 2403:da00:1:3::b7: Network is unreachable * Trying 2403:da00:1:3::b7:443... * TCP_NODELAY set * Immediate connect fail for 2403:da00:1:3::b7: Network is unreachable * Failed to connect to mhs.blog.ui.ac.id port 443: Connection refused * Closing connection 0 curl: (7) Failed to connect to mhs.blog.ui.ac.id port 443: Connection refused