Has anyone successfully used the version of certbot in jessie-backports
to install https certificates from letsencrypt on Apache?
The reason for asking is that I haven't :)
It doesn't help that the version there is older than the one covered by
the documentation at <https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html> - there's
no 'certificates' command, for example.
Ian
Hi all,
I was looking to upgrade my VPS to the latest Ubuntu release this afternoon but ran across a problem. Whenever I try to run "do-release-upgrade” I receive the following error:
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
Get:1 Upgrade tool signature [836 B]
Get:2 Upgrade tool [1,265 kB]
Fetched 1,266 kB in 0s (0 B/s)
authenticate 'xenial.tar.gz' against 'xenial.tar.gz.gpg'
gpg exited 1
Debug information:
gpg: Signature made Wed 07 Dec 2016 09:10:01 GMT using RSA key ID C0B21F32
gpg: /tmp/ubuntu-release-upgrader-r7c80csz/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: BAD signature from "Ubuntu Archive Automatic Signing Key (2012) <ftpmaster(a)ubuntu.com<mailto:ftpmaster@ubuntu.com>>"
Authentication failed
Authenticating the upgrade failed. There may be a problem with the network or with the server.
Searching online<http://askubuntu.com/questions/842706/how-to-upgrade-ubuntu-if-i-get-authen…>, this looks like it could be a problem with the xenial.tar.gz file on the local repo cache. Has anyone else had similar problems, and if so, how did you resolve them?
I suppose beyond that, has anyone successfully upgraded their Ubuntu VPS to 16.04? Were there any problems along the way?
Thanks,
Paul
Hi,
If you do not use BitFolk's Entropy service and have no interest in
doing so then this email will be of little interest to you can be
safely ignored.
If you haven't heard about the Entropy service before, please see:
https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Entropy
If you *do* use the Entropy service though, I'm interested to know
what software you have that actually uses /dev/random (and not
/dev/urandom).
Some background to this question:
To provide the Entropy service we use hardware entropy generators,
currently exclusively a pair of EntropyKeys manufactured by a UK
company called Simtec Electronics Ltd.
Despite the fact that these were extremely popular little devices
(compared to other fairly niche little gadgets), Simtec always had a
supply problem and then Simtec imploded as a company, so as far as I
know these are now impossible to obtain, the IP is lost forever etc.
Although I have one spare EntropyKey ready to put in service should
one of the two in service ever die (I've not experienced that yet),
that left me slightly worried as to what I'd do if I needed to get
more.
Then I saw the OneRNG kickstarter, and decided to pledge. So now I
have 5 of (the internal USB version of) these:
http://onerng.info/
I've not yet gone any further than verifying that they keep the
entropy pool full on the machine they're plugged into, but that's
good enough for now. Could be a decade before one of my existing
EntropyKeys dies.
I have since heard that this device proved far more popular than its
manufacturer expected (sense a theme?) and they're now extremely
difficult to get hold of because they need to get a new batch made
in China. I've had multiple people contacting me on the basis of a
tweet I did about getting these, asking me to sell them mine (which
I would, but they didn't want internal USB).
The point I'm trying to make here is that the world of hardware
random number generators is not one with reliable supply lines,
unless you want to spend a fortune on some black box.
So when I came across:
http://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom/
I was sad that the nerdery that is the Entropy service may be
misguided, but also happy with the possibility that I might never
have to source a hardware RNG again.
Let's just take the argument posited by the article, that all
(Linux) software should just learn to love /dev/urandom¹, as true.
If you don't agree with this claim, you are disagreeing with some
pretty big names in crypto. The Hacker News commentary on the
article may also prove of interest:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10149019
At the very least, I feel the Entropy article on the BitFolk Wiki
needs an update in light of this. To justify the service's
existence, if nothing else.
Going further, the question becomes, well, what software is there in
existence that forces use of /dev/random with no configuration that
would allow otherwise? Because even if we agree that all software
*should* be using urandom, if some popular software *refuses* to
without recompile, then we're still going to have to provide an
Entropy service, because doing so is easier than running
non-packaged software.
So Entropy service users, what have you got that uses /dev/random?
Cheers,
Andy
¹ A more correct summary of it is probably, "urandom is fine all the
time except for on initial boot when a small amount of entropy
from outside the CSPRNG is desirable."
On shutdown all fairly modern Linuxes save the current entropy
pool to the filesystem and load it up from there on boot, so it's
only essential on first boot.
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Hi,
Occasionally I get non-technical people saying things to me like:
You know about computers. I want a web site. Who should I talk
to?
Clearly these people aren't in the market for a VPS. :) And the
hosting companies that I do use don't tend to offer low end shared
hosting either, so I can't give personal recommendations.
Of course, something like Squarespace is most likely going to be a
better fit for people making these types of enquiries, but it might
be nice if I could mention some companies that host with BitFolk.
So, if you sell shared web hosting running off of BitFolk
infrastructure could you message me off-list and next time I'm
asked I'll point them in your direction.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Hello,
Unfortunately some more serious security issues have been uncovered
in Xen which affect versions and configurations which we have
deployed.
These were pre-disclosed yesterday, with full public disclosure
coming two weeks later on Thursday 12 October as normal.
So, we're going to have to patch everything and reboot before then.
This will very likely be taking place over three nights starting in
the early hours (BST) of Tuesday 10 October, but we will be sending
out an individual email to every customer confirming when they will
be affected.
For those unaware of what this entails, it means that at some point
within an hour-long maintenance window we will shut your VPS down
cleanly as the machine it's on is shut down, and then boot it again
once the machine has booted up. It typically takes 5-10 minutes.
As a reminder, you are able to opt for your VPS to be suspended to
and restored from SSD if you don't like losing program state:
https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Suspend_and_restore
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
_______________________________________________
announce mailing list
announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com
https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce
