BitFolk Users April 2021

users@mailman.bitfolk.com

6 participants
9 discussions

by Hugh Frostick

Hi, I am a (delighted!) relatively new BF user and run two dozen websites under Centos and Virtualmin, with no email as I keep email off my webserver. I am fed up with Cpanel in multiple ways and want to drop the server where I currently have all my email and mail forwarders. Is another VPS on Centos with Virtualmin a good route to manage my and my clients’ email? Or is there a better solution for a mail server? Cheers Hugh

3 years, 1 month

Reminder: major scheduled maintenance starting in about 20 minutes

by Andy Smith

Hello, A reminder that the greater part of the scheduled maintenance is happening shortly at 23:00 BST (22:00Z): https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Maintenance/2021-04-Re-racking You can follow along the progress on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bitfolk though there's a lot of work so it may be less verbose than usual. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

3 years, 7 months

Destruction of domain failed

by Lisa Singh

Hi All, I was hoping I can get a bit of help with my xen shell. I'm trying to get into an otherwise defunct VPS I have. When I try to get into rescue mode I get the following error: libxl: error: libxl_domain.c:81:libxl__domain_rename: Domain 228:Domain with name "rutabaga" already exists. libxl: error: libxl_create.c:975:initiate_domain_create: Domain 228:cannot make domain: -6 libxl: error: libxl_xshelp.c:201:libxl__xs_read_mandatory: xenstore read failed: `/libxl/228/type': No such file or directory libxl: warning: libxl_dom.c:54:libxl__domain_type: unable to get domain type for domid=228, assuming HVM libxl: error: libxl_domain.c:1038:libxl__destroy_domid: Domain 228:Non-existant domain libxl: error: libxl_domain.c:993:domain_destroy_callback: Domain 228:Unable to destroy guest libxl: error: libxl_domain.c:920:domain_destroy_cb: Domain 228:Destruction of domain failed Does anyone have an advice for getting into rescue mode. I don't want to do much, just copy the contents of my home directory to my local machine. Don't care what happens to the contents of the VPS after that. Thanks

3 years, 7 months

Emergency reboot of jack.bitfolk.com, 2021-04-25 ~06:47Z

by Andy Smith

Hi, After receiving a number of alerts for VMs hosted on server "jack", I investigated and found the server largely unresponsive. Unfortunately I had no option but to forcibly reboot it, which I did at about 06:47Z It's now 07:01Z and monitoring says everything is back up, except for two customer VMs which are waiting for a LUKS passphrase on their console. This problem was the same as what was experienced with some of the other servers a few months ago. With the months-long gap I had hoped it was some undiagnosed kernel issue which we had got past, but apparently not, as "jack" is on the latest available kernel package. I'm pursuing some ideas about a config change that may help, and I managed to put that into place before "jack" was rebooted - it does require a reboot so if it does help it won't be able to take effect on the others until next reboot. On the other hand it doesn't hurt either, so I've made the same change elsewhere also. If that doesn't fix things then the next line of investigation will be an upgrade of the hypervisor to latest stable release, though that is a rather major undertaking. Apologies for the disruption. It is challenging to debug a problem that can take several months to occur, with no reliable way of triggering it. :( Thanks, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

3 years, 8 months

Further relocation of servers, likely to be evening of Thursday 27 May

by Andy Smith

Hi, We don't have 100% firm date for this yet and I don't want to announce it properly while the other moves are happening but I also want to try to give a month of notice: The servers that are not getting relocated today & 27 April will very likely be relocated on 27 May. That is: - elephant - limoncello - snaps - talisker Now because of the movement of individual customers that is still taking place, it is very likely that everyone who's currently on "snaps" will be moved off of it before then, in which case we will relocate it at a time convenient to us as it won't affect anyone. The other three have already had an OS upgrade so they definitely will be relocated all together on the same night, which as I say is very likely to be 27 May. As before I will send another mail here when we have confirmation and then we will send a direct email a week before to everyone who will be affected. And as before it will be possible to have your service moved about ahead of time at a time of your choosing. While I'm here a reminder that: - Server "hen" is being relocated tonight at some point between 21:00 and 23:00 BST (20:00 to 22:00 UTC). Those affected would have received individual notifications about that a week ago. - Servers "clockwork", "hobgoblin", "jack", "leffe", "macallan" and "paradox" will be relocated on 27 April and later today all those who will be affected will receive a direct email about this. The full details of those works are at: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Maintenance/2021-04-Re-racking Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

3 years, 8 months

Re: [bitfolk] Dynamic Updates to BitFolk Secondary

by Chris Marr

Sorry if I'm a bit slow responding - work is hectic and the work/life balance is a little skewed! I'm using a TSIG key and DNSSEC mechanism to update the zone - I've been using the zytrax books as reference: https://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/xfer.html#allow-update But as the names are dynamically updated, there is no change to the Serial number Chris > 1. In the zone on your server is the serial number greater than the > > copy on the Bitfolk DNS Servers (dig soa domain.com > > @a.authns.bitfolk.co.uk) - repeat for each, including your own? > > This is what I thought of too. To phrase it a bit differently, when I > first started doing similar to you (not dynamic DNS, but a 'hidden > master' with my VPS/A&A as secondaries which actually get used by > machines on the internets), I initially was forgetting to update the > serial sometimes. Then the NOTIFY gets sent, but the transfer doesn't > happen properly because the other side thinks there's nothing for it to > fetch. > > Maybe that's what is happening here too. > > Cheers, > > -- > Iain Lane [ iain(a)orangesquash.org.uk ] > Debian Developer [ laney(a)debian.org ] > Ubuntu Developer [ laney(a)ubuntu.com ] >

3 years, 8 months

Dynamic Updates to BitFolk Secondary

by Chris Marr

This is a bit out of scope for BitFolk support, but I feel like I'm treading out of my depth a little here. I've setup Bind9 and it's chuntering away quite happily, with BitFolk name servers happily serving up DNS for my little corner of the internet. Now I'm trying to setup a RFC 2136 client for Dynamic DNS, so that my home router can connect and notify the outside world what my current IP is (via an A or AAAA record), so that I can remote in from outside. I'd also like to use wildcard SSL certificates from LetsEncrypt, but that too likes to play with Dynamic DNS these days (TXT records). I know that it's apparently working - I cna see the log entries for Bind9 reporting the new updates, and I see a .jnl file for my dynamic zone. I've setup "notify yes;" for the dynamic zone, and made sure that I only send AXFR (by default, IXFR is enabled, I've tried turning it off but I get the same result), but I can't see if those updates are getting sent (should I see that update going out in the logs?). If I dump the cache, I can see that as far as the master is concerned, everything is complete. Can anyone help guide this poor soul?

3 years, 8 months

Major maintenance scheduled for 2021-04-20 (1 server) and 2021-04-27 (another 6 servers)

by Andy Smith

Hello all, A web version of this email with any updates that have come to light since posting is available here: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Maintenance/2021-04-Re-racking == TL;DR: We need to relocate some servers to a different rack within Telehouse. On Tuesday 20 April 2021 at some point in the 2 hour window starting at 20:00Z (21:00 BST) all customers on the following server will have their VMs either powered off or suspended to storage: * hen.bitfolk.com We expect to have it powered back on within 30 minutes. On Tuesday 27 April 2021 at some point in the 4 hour window starting at 22:00Z (23:00 BST) all customers on the following servers will have their VMs either powered off or suspended to storage: * clockwork.bitfolk.com * hobgoblin.bitfolk.com * jack.bitfolk.com * leffe.bitfolk.com * macallan.bitfolk.com * paradox.bitfolk.com We expect the work on each server to take less than 30 minutes. See "Frequently Asked Questions" at the bottom of this email for how to determine which server your VM is on. If you can't tolerate a ~30 minute outage at these times then please contact support as soon as possible to ask for your VM to be moved to a server that won't be part of this maintenance. == Maintenance Background Our colo provider needs to rebuild one of their racks that houses 7 of our servers. This is required because the infrastructure in the rack (PDUs, switches etc) is of a ten year old vintage and all needs replacing. To facilitate this, all customer hardware in that rack will need to be moved to a different rack or sit outside of the rack while it is rebuilt. We are going to have to move our 7 servers to a different rack. This is a significant piece of work which is going to affect several hundred of our customers, more than 70% of the customer base. Unfortunately it is unavoidable. == Networking upgrade We will also take the opportunity to install 10 gigabit NICs in the servers which are moved. The main benefit of this will be faster inter-server data transfer for when we want to move customer services about. The current 1GE NICs limit this to about 90MiB/sec. == Suspend & Restore If you opt in to suspend & restore then instead of shutting your VM down we will suspend it to storage and then when the server boots again it will be restored. That means that you should not experience a reboot, just a period of paused execution. You may find this less disruptive than a reboot, but it is not without risk. Read more here: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Suspend_and_restore == Avoiding the Maintenance If you cannot tolerate a ~30 minute outage during the maintenance windows listed above then please contact support to agree a time when we can move your VM to a server that won't be part of the maintenance. Doing so will typically take just a few seconds plus the time it takes your VM to shut down and boot again and nothing will change about your VM. If you have opted in to suspend & restore then we'll use this to do a "semi-live" migration. This will appear to be a minute or two of paused execution. Moving your VM is extra work for us which is why we're not doing it by default for all customers, but if you prefer that to experiencing the outage then we're happy to do it at a time convenient to you, as long as we have time to do it and available spare capacity to move you to. If you need this then please ask as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. It won't be possible to change the date/time of the planned work on an individual customer basis. This work involves 7 of our servers, will affect several hundred of our customers, and also has needed to be scheduled with our colo provider and some of their other customers. The only per-customer thing we may be able to do is move your service ahead of time at a time convenient to you. == Rolling Upgrades Confusion We're currently in a cycle of rolling software upgrades to our servers. Many of you have already received individual support tickets to schedule that. It involves us moving your VM from one of our servers to another and full details are given in the support ticket. This has nothing to do with the maintenance that's under discussion here and we realise that it's unfortunately very confusing to have both things happening at the same time. We did not know that moving our servers would be necessary when we started the rolling upgrades. We believe we can avoid moving any customer from a server that is not part of this maintenance onto one that will be part of this maintenance. We cannot avoid moving customers between servers that are both going to be affected by this maintenance. For example, at the time of writing, customer services are being moved off of jack.bitfolk.com and most of them will end up on hobgoblin.bitfolk.com. == Further Notifications Every customer is supposed to be subscribed to this announcement mailing list, but no doubt some aren't. The movement of customer services between our servers may also be confusing for people, so we will send a direct email notification to the main contact of affected customers a week before the work is due to take place. So, on Tuesday 13 April we'll send a direct email about this to customers that are hosted on hen.bitfolk.com, and then on Tuesday 20 April we'll send a similar email to customers on all the rest of the affected servers. == 20 April Will Be a Test Run We are only planning to move one server on 20 April. The reasons for this are: * We want to check our assumptions about how long this work will take, per server. * We're changing the hardware configuration of the server by adding 10GE NICs, and we want to make sure that configuration is stable. The timings for the maintenance on 27 April may need to be altered if the work on 20 April shows our guesses to be wildly wrong. == Frequently Asked Questions === How do I know if I will be affected? If your VM is hosted on one of the servers that will be moved then you are going to be affected. There's a few different ways that you can tell which server you are on: 1. It's listed on https://panel.bitfolk.com/ 2. It's in DNS when you resolve <youraccountname>.console.bitfolk.com 3. It's on your data transfer email summaries 4. You can see it on a `traceroute` or `mtr` to or from your VPS. === If you can "semi-live" migrate VMs, why don't you just do that? * This maintenance will involve some 70% of our customer base, so we don't actually have enough spare hardware to move customers to. * Moving the data takes significant time at 1GE network speeds. For these reasons we think that it will be easier for most customers to just accept a ~30 minute outage. Those who can't tolerate such a disruption will be able to have their VMs moved to servers that aren't going to be part of the maintenance. === Why are you needing to test out adding 10GE NICs to a live server? Isn't it already tested? The main reason for running through this process first on one server only (hen) is to check timings and procedure before doing it on another six servers all at once. The issue of installing 10GE NICs is a secondary concern and considered low risk. The hardware for all 7 of the servers that are going to be moved is obsolete now, so it's not possible to obtain identical spares now. The 10GE NICs have been tested in general, but not with this specific hardware, so it's just an extra cautionary measure. The 10GE NICs will not be in use immediately in order to avoid too much change at once, but this still does involve plugging in a PCIe card which on boot will load a kernel module so while the risk is considered low, it's not zero. === Further questions? If there's anything we haven't covered or you need clarified please do ask here or privately to support. -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

3 years, 8 months

Some support tickets mistakenly opened - ticket content is still correct

by Andy Smith

Hi, This doesn't overly matter hence why I'm just sending it to users@ and not announce@, but at around 03:12 BST (02:12Z) I mistakenly opened support tickets with all customers hosted on "snaps" regarding moving their service to a different server. Although that move *does* have to happen at some point, we can't do it until after the maintenance on 27 April is completed because "snaps" isn't actually involved in that maintenance. If we went ahead with doing what the ticket says, we'd be moving customers away from a server that won't be affected onto one that will, which is something we said we wouldn't do. It was just a confusion on my part, forgetting that "snaps" wasn't involved. The reason why it doesn't really matter is that everything mentioned in the tickets I'm talking about is still correct, it's just that it gives you the impression that if you do nothing then the work might happen as soon as a week from now. In reality it won't happen until some time after 27 April. I only mention this so that you don't wonder why you got the support ticket and then nothing happened for weeks. When I realised my mistake I then opened tickets with everyone on the *correct* server ("leffe"). That happened at about 05:42 BST (04:42Z). I'm sorry about this confusion. If anything is not clear please say so. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

3 years, 8 months

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BitFolk Users April 2021