BitFolk Users

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1092 discussions

by Keith Williams

I had emails returned due to no reverse address. My email server is running on one of my VPS and I have had all my VPS DNS delegated to me as well. I have been using the email server since the dawn of time, this hasn't happened before. Now after a lot of digging, these servers that rejected said no rDNS on the IPv4 address (There were infact 2 of them UKmail and BTInternet.) I think it is because they are querying the Bitfolk servers, because, of course, I only have the one IPv4 address delegated to me and they are looking for the IPv4 reverse address of Keynesmail.com at theBitfolk server. It doesn't know about that domain name - no reason it should really. So should I ask Andy for secondary DNS for that domain name, would that solve the problem? Or is there another way out of this. I have a number of very low traffic domains on that VPS, but this one domain, that of the email server is causing this heartache. I guess those 2 are the only ones we have come across using IPv4, all other addresses sent to just work fine, including Gmail and Yahoo mail. The email address having problems with the sending is one used by a small local cancer support group and both the user of it and the intended recipients are total technophobes as well as being, like me, rather advanced in years. Keith

2 years, 1 month

The upcoming Ubuntu 22.04 release

by Andy Smith

Hi, TL;DR version: The next Ubuntu LTS release, 22.04, is scheduled for 21 April. They've made some changes which mean that we likely won't have it ready in time for new installs and self-installs from the Xen Shell. It will probably be fine for an upgrade using do-release-upgrade, but you should wait a while for us to test it. Full version: In their wisdom Ubuntu have decided that Debian Installer and preseeding are no longer for them, and have gone with something else of their own devising¹ for 22.04. As a result our Xen Shell will need quite a bit of work to support that (if it is possible), and I don't expect that to get done in time for the release of 22.04. I do expect that a do-release-up[grade from 20.04 will work, but I haven't tried it yet. Unless you are prepared for potential disaster I suggest you do not be a pioneer for that. We will soon have a go with that and let you know about any issues, so I advise waiting. Cheers, Andy ¹ https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/install/netboot-amd64 This appears to involve extracting a vmlinuz+initrd from the iso file, booting those and pointing them to the iso which they download, mount and use as a live media for install. By contrast debian-installer is just in the netinstall initrd that you download, you point it at a Debian mirror and off it goes. -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

2 years, 1 month

Disable predictable network interface names by default?

by Andy Smith

Hello, The version of udev that will come with the next Debian stable and Ubuntu LTS releases has learned about Xen network interfaces and as a result they will be subjected to "predictable network interface naming": https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/PredictableNetworkInterfa… That is, you won't have an eth0 any more, it will be en123abc or whatever, based on MAC address. For new installs, either when ordered or when the customer does an install via Xen Shell, we could force this to not happen by using net.ifnames=0 on the kernel command line. The single network interface will then always be eth0. Arguments in favour of doing this: - It makes life simpler for BitFolk's post-installation scripts because they won't have to work out what the network interface will be called. - "predictable network interface names" are arguably pointless in the scenario of a BitFolk VM because the only way to get extra network interfaces is by explicit configuration either within the VM by its admin or outside the VM by BitFolk, which would include what its name is. Arguments against: - It's not the default behaviour of the Linux distribution any more. - If you upgraded a previous release with dist-upgrade / do-release-upgrade it would get these "predictable names", which is maybe just an extension of the above point. Would you have any concerns if you made a new order or did a new install and it came with net.ifnames=0? Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

2 years, 1 month

IRC channel relocated to Libera Chat

by Andy Smith

Hi, BitFolk's IRC channel has now been relocated to #BitFolk at irc.libera.chat. Those of you who were playing a game of Perpetually Against Humanity¹ in there (has been running for just over 7 years!) can continue doing so but if your nickname is different on Libera then please ask me (grifferz) to change it for you in the game's database. The scores and history have been retained. If you start playing again under a new nickname it will make fixing that difficult, so please don't! The other regular IRC bots are still there too. The channel stats web page has been broken for a while, but I hope to fix it at some point. If you are new to Libera Chat (or IRC in general), you can get started here: https://libera.chat/guides/ Cheers, Andy ¹ https://github.com/grifferz/pah-irc -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

2 years, 1 month

Whitelist mail by domain

by Hugo Mills

I've just had a brief interchange with a small charity that uses DigitalOcean for some of their systems. A password-change mail from their website was binned by my exim instance, for a score of 8.8 given to it by the Bitfolk SpamAssassin (5.0 of that for coming from Digital Ocean). Can anyone suggest how, if at all, I can whitelist mail from that particular domain in my (Debian) exim4 config, given that I'm using the Bitfolk SpamAssassin and therefore have no control over it? Thanks, Hugo. -- Hugo Mills | No names... I want to remain anomalous. hugo@... carfax.org.uk | http://carfax.org.uk/ | PGP: E2AB1DE4 |

2 years, 1 month

Container vs Virtual Machines

by Samuel Bächler

Hi All, On https://boeser.ch/files/sys-arch.svg I published our sketches on different system architectures. On the various sketches you see node-1, node-2, node-A and node-B. In all sketches node-1 and 2 are always considered to be containers (lxc-1, lxc-2). node-A and B are in some sketches containers (LXC-A, LXC-B) and VMs in others (VM-A, VM-B). We have in mind two different admins for the red and the white parts in the sketches. Obviously red admin has more power than white admin. It is our primary goal to achieve a good trade off between strong isolation/security and performance. We consider the advantages of virtual machines as follows: - a VMM (Xen, KVM) is considered to be more secure than a random linux distribution that hosts containerization (LXD, Docker) - isolation between virtual machines is stronger compared to containers - probably better support to run other OS (e.g. Windows, BSD etc.) We consider the advantages of containers as follows: - efficient in both resources and performance since kernel is shared - faster startup then VMs - "build once run everywhere" Are there any reports you know of about how performance is reduced in a VMM setup compared to a container setup? Or, do you have some experience yourself? Do you have any other thoughts when looking at the sketches? Regards, Sam

2 years, 2 months

predicted network usage / "Predicted to exceed transfer quota"

by Conrad Wood

Hi, Sometimes some of my services misbehave in weird and wonderful ways. If that happens, they can use an awful lot of bandwidth. Whilst there is some monitoring that I can do (and do), I prefer to use the data "closer to source". There seems to be some data, that triggers pretty quickly and sends out an email from "xfer a_t bitfolk.com" with the heading "Predicted to exceed transfer quota". However, rather than email I'd like an API, so that I can route it to my alerting system. I do overlook emails sometimes, especially computer generated ones. My brain sometimes scans and classifies them too quickly as "deal with it later" and incorrectly flags the email as 'not important'. Having the information in my alerting system means I can route them so that they remind me/trigger me again etc. My questions are: 1. How often is that prediction calculated? 2. Is there an API I could query which gives me the data from the email? 2.1 I'd settle for a binary API (predicted overusage == true|false) 2.2 otherwise an api that gives me the following values: - predicted usage in - contracted usage in - predicted usage out - contracted usage out - Actual out - Actual in Nothing fancy required - a simple 'get' request or so would do just fine ;)

2 years, 2 months

A reminder that CentOS 8 is now EOL and they are not kidding about that

by Andy Smith

Hi, For those using CentOS 8, a reminder that it went EOL on 31 December 2021 and as of 31 January 2022 they removed all the public mirrors as well, so you can't get updates or install anything any more. This apparently took a number of projects by surprise… including some Red Hat ones! https://lists.ceph.io/hyperkitty/list/dev@ceph.io/thread/Y4HU5BQHZNGVLXLUUA… If you are using CentOS 8 I think we would recommend that you switch it to CentOS Stream 8 at least in the short term, because that is the only way you get security updates. I understand that there is a simple script to do this without reinstall and at least 1 BitFolk customer has done it. In terms of BitFolk supporting CentOS Stream 9, we're waiting for ELRepo to gain an EL9 kernel-ml package, then that should be viable. I asked you all about your plans post-CentOS 8 and didn't get a huge response. Some interest was expressed in Rocky Linux and Oracle Linux. So, those will likely be available soon. A customer also put together instructions for installing OpenSUSE Leap, which I have run through and seems to work fine: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/User:Moggers87/Installing_Opensuse Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

2 years, 3 months

What do you consider the lifetime of an OpenSUSE Leap release to be?

by Andy Smith

Hello, Owing to some fine work by a customer, we will soon be able to list OpenSUSE Leap as supported: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/User:Moggers87/Installing_Opensuse This prompts a perhaps somewhat philosophical question: In the context of our supported distros bit: https://bitfolk.com/techspec.html#toc_2_Available_Linux_distributions what would you consider the supported lifetime of OpenSUSE Leap to be? I don't know very much about OpenSUSE. From what I have been able to gather: - The current release is 15.3 - This was released 2021-06-30 - Support lasts for 6 months after the next minor release - "Support" means no major updates to packages, just security fixes or serious bugs fixed - A minor release roughly every year - So 15.3 support ends around December 2022, as 15.4 will be released around 2022-06 - In-place upgrade is supported to next minor release (or even through major releases?) - The last 15.x minor version is expected to be 15.5 in 2023 supported until some time in 2024 Do you consider that EOL 2022-12, or EOL 2024-XX? Since you HAVE to do an update or else don't get security fixes, I think that is EOL 2022-12. That does make OpenSUSE Leap look like a little worse option though unless you fully understand this. On the other hand, I'm not sure I can truthfully state that its EOL would be 2024-XX as that may lead someone who does not do the research to think they can only do package upgrades all the way out to 2024. So, erring on the side of caution, it should be listed as 2022-12, right? (The other entries are also complicated by the different tiers of support, and I continue to remain conflicted over listing Ubuntu's ESM which is free but requires registration.) Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

2 years, 3 months

Rescue VM updated

by Andy Smith

Hi, The Rescue VM needed updating as its 4.19.x kernel was getting too old, e.g. not able to mount XFS filesystems as created by CentOS Stream 8 and Fedora: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues/206 It has now been updated to a Debian 11 (bullseye) system with bullseye-backports (5.15.x) kernel. I've done basic testing but please do let us know if you encounter any difficulties using it. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

2 years, 3 months

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