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Fark Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): Tech Questions

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Tech Questions

Fark looks weird on my computer.

Some people have had issues with Fark displaying strangely after our last redesign. Before reporting any issues, look here to see a screenshot of what Fark is supposed to look like. Anyone using Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari 2 or 3, or Opera 9 should be seeing something very close to that screenshot. A screensize of at least 1024x768 is recommended.

The following browsers are known to have problems:

  • If you have Internet Explorer 6 and you have Javascript disabled and you have a screen resolution less than 1024x768 may have issues, such as the right sidebars overlapping the right side the headlines section (see the screenshot above for how it's supposed to look). With Javascript enabled (the default) it should work fine. We strongly recommend IE7 though, as IE6 has a lot of CSS bugs. Vista is not required for IE7; Windows XP SP2 supports it as well.
  • Internet Explorer 5.5 will not be supported. Microsoft no longer supports it either -- upgrade to IE6 or IE7. Any platform that can run IE5.5 should be able to run IE6. To get IE7 you will have to upgrade to Windows XP SP2 or Vista.
  • Netscape 4 will not be supported, given its enormous list of CSS-related bugs -- it's over 10 years old. If you are on an old Mac that can only run classic MacOS 9 or 8, try the iCab browser, which will work far better than the copies of Netscape or Internet Explorer that Apple bundled with those older systems. For other systems, upgrade to Firefox.
  • Sony Playstations (PS3, PSP), PDA's, Smartphones, and other mobile devices using the NetFront browser should use Fark on PDA.
  • PalmOS devices like the Treo line should also use Fark on PDA, though Blazer seems to handle things better than NetFront does.
  • We have not tested versions of Opera older than 9.2.

I don't want people posting pictures from my website in Fark threads. How do I stop it?

If your webserver is running Apache put a file on your image host called .htaccess (note the leading dot) and put the following lines of text in it: 

   SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://(cgi|forums)\.fark\.com" denyimage
   order deny,allow
   deny from env=allowimage

Or possibly this version: 

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://(cgi|forums)\.fark\.com/.*$ [NC]
   RewriteRule .*\.(gif|GIF|jpe?g|JPE?G)$ - [F]

Other examples exist if you search Google for something like "blocking image linking rewriterule". There are some other tutorials here and an .htaccess generator here.

You can find examples for other webservers, like Microsoft's IIS, using Google. If you have a method for IIS that works that doesn't involve installing new ISAPI filters, let us know.

I have pictures on my own website that I want to post on Fark threads, but don't want other sites posting them. How do I stop it?

(This is the opposite of the previous question.)

If you want your pictures to show up ONLY on Fark and not be swiped by someone else, and your images are hosted on a web server running Apache, put a file on your image host called .htaccess (note the leading dot) and put the following lines of text in it: 

   SetEnvIf Referer "^$" allowimage
   SetEnvIfNoCase Referer "^http://(cgi|forums)\.fark\.com" allowimage
   order allow,deny
   allow from env=allowimage

Or possibly this version: 

   RewriteEngine on
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(cgi|forums)\.fark\.com/.*$ [NC]
   RewriteRule .*\.(gif|GIF|jpe?g|JPE?G)$ - [F]

Other examples exist if you search Google for something like "blocking image linking rewriterule". There are some other tutorials here and an .htaccess generator here.

You can find examples for other webservers, like Microsoft's IIS, using Google. If you have a method for IIS that works that doesn't involve installing new ISAPI filters, let us know.

When I view the Fark main page, I get a password popup / "authentication required" page for TotalFark every time, even though I didn't click on TotalFark. What gives?

This is a Firefox specific problem. Recent versions of Firefox have a "prefetching" feature that tries to speed up web browsing by fetching every link on a page before you click on it. The problem is, one of the links on the page is TotalFark, which is a password protected page.

See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/netlib/Link_Prefetching_FAQ.html for instructions on disabling this feature.

How come the Google search thingie on the main page doesn't work?

You probably have Javascript disabled. Try turning it back on and see if that helps.

The popular "Adblock" plugin for Firefox, with Filterset.G, is known to break our Google search tool. The workaround is to try to do a search, then go to Tools -> AdBlock -> Whitelist This Page. You may also have to whitelist the main Fark page. Also, you might try "AdBlock Plus" which may help (or, according to some reports, may not). This may have been fixed in later versions of AdBlock; please let us know so we can update this FAQ entry. :)

My firewall is registering hits from Fark. What's happening?

Usually this question is about people's firewalls registering "attacks" from img.fark.com when there aren't any. The actual issue is that your firewall's timeout for idle TCP connections is too short. Specifically, it's shorter than the HTTP Keepalive timeout.

Medium-length explanation:

When a web browser connects to a web server and pulls a page, image, or other file down, it can keep the connection open for a few seconds/minutes. This speeds things up if the browser has to get another file from the same webserver -- which is almost guaranteed when you have a webpage with a bunch of images on it -- because it doesn't have to disconnect and reconnect for every single image. But it can't leave it open forever, either, so after a certain number of minutes (or seconds) the server or the browser will close the connection.

Firewalls work by (I'm oversimplifying here) blocking all incoming traffic except what's specifically allowed. Any outgoing connections have to be monitored so that a temporary hole for the return traffic can pass back through. If a connection being monitored goes completely inactive -- like say your computer got powered off while you were downloading a large file -- it doesn't want to leave that hole open forever. So after a certain number of minutes, it removes the connection from its list of what it was monitoring.

If the web server/browser gives up before the firewall gives up, everything's cool, but if the firewall gives up first, then it'll forget about the connection the web server/browser had, and when they get around to closing down, the firewall logs it as an attack (usually a FIN scan) when it really isn't.

This sort of thing happens with DNS lookups all the time. Suppose you've got a computer behind a firewall that wants to look up a name, like www.google.com. Your firewall sees the request go out to your ISP's nameserver, and decides it'll give up after, say, 30 seconds. Now if Google's nameservers are running so slow that it takes 35 seconds to return the answer, then the firewall will log an attack from your ISP's nameserver, on UDP port 53, 35 seconds later. So don't complain to your ISP that their nameserver is attacking you -- they will laugh at you. :-)

Otherwise check the settings on your firewall. On Cisco PIX and ASA 7.x and 6.x for example, look at the "timeout conn" command. On Cisco's IOS firewall, look at "ip inspect tcp idle-time". (And "ip inspect dns-timeout".) It might also help to get the latest version of your firewall software -- Sonicwalls in particular used to be excessively paranoid about this sort of thing and getting the latest firmware from Sonicwall helps cut down on the false alarms.

Anyway, to work around paranoid firewalls like this, we've set our web server's keepalive timeout unusually short, and the complaints about this issue have largely disappeared.

What platform do you run all this on?

The software is all homebrew stuff, written in-house in mod_perl and back-ended by MySQL, all running on about a half-dozen FreeBSD boxes. It was cobbled together as a quick hack, which then evolved over the years into an even bigger hack. There are other systems out there with more/better stuff, but, hey, we like being unique. :)

The hardware is co-located at Blueone.net here in Lexington, Kentucky. Offsite backup is co-located at Servint Internet Services in northern Virginia. They're both very cool ISP's.