BitFolk Users October 2010

users@mailman.bitfolk.com

23 participants
19 discussions

Support this weekend / Ubuntu Lucid LTS release

by Andy Smith

Hello, This weekend I'm off to OggCamp - http://oggcamp.org/ - if you're there too then do say hello! :) Whilst there will be support cover and I should be available in emergencies, this is also awkward timing because the next Ubuntu LTS release is due for tomorrow. Firstly I would say if you do have a support issue you need doing before next week you should put it in now. Secondly, if you are considering upgrading an Ubuntu VPS to 10.04 I would recommend waiting until after the weekend. I haven't tried it yet myself, though I do hope to do so. I think it should work, but there might be some gotchas, and a lot of people breaking their VPSes at once will stretch things this weekend. Plus if it does break all I'll likely be able to do is put you back to 8.04 or Debian. Don't forget that I can snapshot your filesystem before you do a major upgrade so if it all goes wrong we can roll it back to before you started fairly easily. But you have to ask first. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

12 years, 8 months

Ubuntu 10.10 release

by Andy Smith

Hello, As you may be aware, Ubuntu 10.10 has just been released. BitFolk will be offering it as a supported VPS image, but it's not ready yet. You should be able to upgrade to it, but I would urge caution. Ubuntu's support of Xen has not historically been that great and something unexpected could happen. If you are going to try this then I would strongly urge you to email support and ask for a snapshot to first be made of your block devices. If all goes wrong then it can be quickly and easily rolled back. When the 10.10 image is ready we should also in most cases be able to provide you with a new VPS running 10.10 concurrently with your existing VPS for two weeks at no additional charge, for you to migrate to. You would need to pick a new account name, and IP addresses will change. Please contact support if you wish to do that. Please note the support schedule for Ubuntu releases and that 10.04 as currently offered by BitFolk is an LTS release, unlike 10.10. If you upgrade to 10.10 then you're most likely going to also have to upgrade to every other release in turn, to get to the next LTS. If there is no external requirement to upgrade to 10.10 then you might consider it prudent to wait until the next LTS is released instead. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "I am the permanent milk monitor of all hobbies!" -- Simon Quinlank

12 years, 10 months

Having issues with dpkg

by Daniel Case

Hi guys, I seem to be having some issues with getting postfix installed on my VPS, I have been to the Ubuntu forums, the mailing list and IRC just now. The problem is laid out here: http://pastebin.com/umgcf0iM dpkg seems to be having problems, here is what the people on IRC suggested, all of which worked to no avail: -Change to official repos (rather than the bitfolk ones) -apt-get remove postfix, apt-get clean, apt-get update, apt-get install postfix (All of which worked to no avail) -df -h - showed 78% full, 1.6GB left And finally: $ dpkg --contents /var/cache/apt/archives/postfix_2.7.0-1_i386.deb dpkg-deb: failed to read archive `/var/cache/apt/archives/postfix_2.7.0-1_i386.deb': No such file or directory So, I'm out of ideas :S ...whats going wrong? Daniel

12 years, 11 months

2010-10-22 2136Z: Switch power failure caused ~10 minute networking outage for barbar, dunkel, kwak

by Andy Smith

Hi folks, At approximately 2136Z this evening, unrelated provider maintenance work in the colo dislodged a power cord to one of the switches, causing approximately 10 minutes of network outage for customers on the following servers: barbar dunkel kwak Host corona in the same rack was unaffected because it is connected to a different switch. There are two switches in each rack in order to provide redundancy, but unfortunately it has only recently become part of our standard install procedure to use bonded network interfaces. kwak and corona are due for an OS reinstall and when this is done they will be set up with bonded interfaces. The same goes for these older hosts in the other racks: curacao kahlua obstler dunkel and barbar will not require a reinstall for quite some time, but this is not the first time that switch outages have bitten us and I'm not happy with that, so I will be scheduling a short maintenance in the next couple of months to reconfigure these hosts for bonded network interfaces. This also goes for faustino. The newest servers, urquell and cosmo, have both been installed with bonded network interfaces; this is our standard install practice at the moment. Please accept my apologies for the disruption and be assured that we have learned some lessons from this. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

12 years, 11 months

ssh + https client

by Max B

Hi All, does anyone have any experience with any ssh client that operates through https? Ideally, I'd use it for hotels or net cafes which do not have a windows putty client, to log into my VPS. I'd host the server on myvps.com, so <https://www.myvps.com> would take me to log in to my VPS. Any help appreciated. Cheers, Max

12 years, 11 months

IPv4 reverse DNS update now possible from the panel

by Andy Smith

Hi, As requested in issue #25: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues/25 I've implemented the editing of reverse DNS for your IPs. See: https://panel.bitfolk.com/dns/ You can update simple reverse DNS entries or set a delegation to other DNS servers. I am aware that the method for setting up a delegation is a bit clunky, but it works. My reasoning for deploying it in this state is that typically you set up a delegation once and then leave it alone, so it's not like you would be using this part of the interface very often. A more pleasing interface would be a more complicated HTML form where you can dynamically add and delete rows. I didn't want the deployment of the simple reverse DNS update feature to have to wait for that. I've created a new issue for that: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues/43 Again, IPv6 support isn't present yet either, for similar reasons: very few customers appear to be actively using IPv6, even fewer have IPv6 reverse DNS set up. Reverse DNS delegations for this will continue to be set up by support ticket for now. The same page also currently has a read-only display of the DNS domains you have set up for secondary DNS on BitFolk's nameservers. That's part of issue #2: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues/2 and will eventually become the place to add, modify and delete those settings instead of having to create a support ticket. I think the next most pressing issue is #7, "Reimage VPS from panel": https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues/7 so that's what I'll focus on next. That's a pretty big one though so I'll probably also try to get some of the other things done at the same time. As usual, please feel free to have a browse of the issues list: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/projects/bitfolk/issues?query_id=1 Log in with the usual credentials to create new issues and to vote existing ones up/down. I can't promise to always implement things in the order wanted, but knowing which features are most desired is very useful. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

12 years, 11 months

Help diagnosing bind9 problem

by Michael Corliss

Hello, I'm running bind9 on Ubuntu 10.04. It seems to start up normally, but it doesn't return anything when I try to check that it's serving the right zone file: $ dig ilovephilosophy.com @212.13.195.254 ; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-APPLE-P2 <<>> ilovephilosophy.com @212.13.195.254 ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 3625 ;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;ilovephilosophy.com. IN A ;; Query time: 105 msec ;; SERVER: 212.13.195.254#53(212.13.195.254) ;; WHEN: Wed Oct 13 14:22:04 2010 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 37 The 'SERVFAIL' and the lack of an answer section suggest something's wrong, but how can I find out what specifically is missing? Thanks, Mike

12 years, 11 months

how do *you* deal with ssh attack ?

by Max B

Hi All, I received several ssh attacks over the past week, and wonder how, if at all, to deal with them. Are they just script kiddies? One address resolves to 'server.pamperedpawsdogboutique.com', a domain registered with godaddy. Do I contact godaddy? This attack did not start until 7pm on a Friday... I might create a blacklist of IP addresses... for example, to filter /var/log/auth.log into /etc/hosts.deny... (but that might grow too large) Or if I have confidence that my passwords are secure, do I simply ignore them as a fact of life? My aim here is to do productive work, not to fart around with nuisances. Any help appreciated! Cheers, Max

12 years, 11 months

GovSpark / Isabell

by Andy Smith

Just in case you've not seen, I hope you will permit me to say.. Congratulate BitFolk's own Isabell Long: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/09/isabells_id… http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23885908-schoolgirls-site-ca… Perhaps you have been fortunate enough to have had a support ticket answered by her when she's been taking time out from saving the planet. ;) Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "The electric guitar - like making love - is much improved by a little feedback, completely ruined by too much." -- The League Against Tedium

12 years, 11 months

iptables SNAT

by Robert Gauld

Further to my earlier question today I have a netbook which connects over wireless to a pptp vpn on my vps's 3rd IP. When I try to connect to apache running on my vps's first IP address rather than appearing to come from my vps's 3rd IP it instead comes from the netbook's 'local' address. (Numbers below if this is not clear). It would appear that in order to get this working how I want that I need to tell SNAT to use eth? rather than eth?:?. Am I missing something or do I need to ask Andy about linking that IP to a second virtual NIC. It works just fine for IPs not on my VPS so I think I'm missing something o tell ubuntu not to try being efficient (ie only use 192.168.254.x when I enter a 192.168.254.0 destination address). Netbook: WLAN IP: x.x.x.x IP on VPN: 192.168.254.x VPS: Apache runs on y.y.y.73 VPN runs on y.y.y.75 Running a simple CGI to report the remote IP (from apache's perspective) reports 192.168.254.x where I'm after it being y.y.y.75 -- Robert Gauld http://www.robertgauld.co.uk

12 years, 11 months

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BitFolk Users October 2010