BitFolk Users

users@mailman.bitfolk.com

1 participants
1125 discussions

by Andy Smith

Hi, If there's any of you who are actively using an IPv6 /56 that we've routed to you, and you don't overly mind rebooting your VM to test something (maybe a couple of times) could you get in touch off-list please? Our records say there's only 19 of you so it's a bit of a long shot. I'd rather not try this with someone who doesn't normally make use of a /56 as you may not immediately spot the difference between working and not. Also I've already tested as many setups as I can think of so I'd … [View More]

6 months

Phishing emails

by Andy Smith

Hi, I do hope that none of you would be taken in by this sort of thing but just to warn you there have been a few phishing emails directed at various BitFolk addresses pretending to be from us, for example this one today which was directed at the "users" mailing list (and was caught by spam filters): https://ibb.co/MZh7p7K All emails that come from BitFolk should have SPF, DKIM and DMARC. If you notice any that don't then please let us know. And of course, we wouldn't send out emails … [View More]

6 months, 1 week

Hardware refresh and rolling migrations starting soon

by Andy Smith

Hi, ## TL;DR: Migrations between servers coming in the near future for the purposes of a hardware refresh, with an upgrade to VM specs, a bit like in 2015–2016. ## Hardware refresh In the coming weeks we hope to get started with a long overdue hardware refresh. This will include some sort of upgrade to the base VM specification, the exact details of which haven't yet been decided. The last time we did this was in 2015–2016 and I expect things to go in much the same way, although slightly … [View More]less complex as we also did some changes to VM disk layout that time. Here's more info on how that went: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Hardware_refresh,_2015-2016 Three of the existing servers have some life left in them but they do not currently have 25GE network interfaces, so it's going to be a priority to clear customers off of those first so they can be taken out of service for that to happen. Those servers are "elephant", "limoncello" and "talisker". I anticipate sending a direct email to the main tech contact for each VM on the candidate server asking if they would like to have their VM migrated to new hardware and get the upgraded specs at the same time. Past experience has shown that the majority of people won't be interested in the upgrade and would rather not have to do anything, so this communication is going to have to say something like, "if we don't hear back from you to schedule this within 15 days, we will schedule it ourselves for a date no sooner than 30 days from now". Since eventually all servers do require at least an OS upgrade even if they are not being decommissioned, it is I am afraid inevitable that all customer services will have to be migrated between servers. This is going to take many months. We will try to be as flexible as possible with people who need that. For those who have never experienced their VM being migrated between servers, it is not a big deal. We shut it down and boot it a few seconds later on its new server. At your option¹ we can also do a live migration which works most of the time² and results in no actual shutdown. Nothing about the VM changes, except that its specs will be upgraded. ## IPv6 changes We also need to change how we do IPv6 and there's no reason why we can't start doing that at the same time so unless things are getting overwhelming you might see something soon about that also. Basically we need to start assigning customer VMs IPv6 address space out of BitFolk's 2a0a:1100::/29 rather than the /48 of Jump's that we've been using since 2005. I expect to be reserving a /48 for each VM but as the majority of people use either zero or one IPv6 address, only one IPv6 address from the new assignment will initially be routed to your VM. For those wanting more we will add a feature to the Panel and/or Xen Shell to expand the routing to a /64 or the full /48 (and maybe something in between there also). The goal is for that to not require a support ticket. This sort of thing is desirable to prevent neighbour table exhaustion attacks, where someone cycles through many addresses in a /64 (or larger). I do not expect to take away the legacy assignments from out of the 2001:ba8:1f1::/48 provided by Jump from existing VMs, but after we begin rolling this out new VPS orders and new self-installs will not have the legacy IPv6 space. At some point in the fairly distant future a retirement date will be announce for that range. ## Feedback? So that's what's coming up. If you have any feedback or questions we're keen to hear them. There is no need to volunteer now to be first for upgrades or anything as you will be contacted and that will be your chance to do that! Thanks, Andy ¹ https://panel.bitfolk.com/account/config/#prefs ² There have been some rare problems with this in the past which resulted in disk corruption but in the case of migration between servers we do always have a copy of your disk on the source server, so it's pretty safe. All of BitFolk's own VMs live migrate. -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting [View Less]

6 months, 1 week

2024-05-23 ~20:25Z – ~20:50Z: Networking issue on host "jack"

by Andy Smith

Hi, Between about 20:25Z and ~20:50Z today host "Jack" lost all networking. All of the VMs on it became unreachable. It seems to have been some sort of kernel driver bug in the Ethernet module as it was "stuck" not passing traffic but the interface still showed as up. The hosts have bonded network interfaces to protect against switch failure, but as the interface stayed up this was not considered failed. Also they are in active-backup mode and the currently-active interface was the one that … [View More]

6 months, 2 weeks

No more 32-bit x86 kernels in Debian

by Andy Smith

Hi, This should have limited effect on anyone here as if you are still running 32-bit Debian it is long out of support so you won't be getting upgrades anyway. No more 32-bit x86 kernels in Debian: https://lists.debian.org/debian-kernel/2024/09/msg00138.html What it does mean is that there are even fewer people who are going to find and fix any bug in 32-bit x86 Linux. In practical terms for Debian it means that the next release, Debian 13 (trixie) will be the first one to not have an … [View More]

6 months, 3 weeks

Freexian ELTS repository added to apt-cacher

by Andy Smith

Hi, I've enabled deb.freexian.com on our apt-cacher. This is used for the Freexian Extended LTS project which provides security backports for selected Debian packages currently back as far as Debian 8 (jessie). This is a public repository, so nothing really special here, but you are supposed to cache or mirror it yourself so now we do that for you. More info: https://www.freexian.com/lts/extended/docs/how-to-use-extended-lts/ https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Apt-cacher Thanks, … [View More]

7 months, 1 week

Installer now available for Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat)

by Andy Smith

Hi, Self-install of Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat) is now available from the Xen Shell. Thanks for your patience on this; I'm sorry it's taken so long. More info: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Using_the_self-serve_net_installer https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Xen_Shell It remains possible of course to upgrade in place from Ubuntu 22.04 with the "do-release-upgrade" command. Thanks, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

7 months, 2 weeks

BitFolk now listed in the JSfree.org directory of all things that work without JavaScript :-D

by James R. Haigh (+BitFolk subaddress)

Hey all, Good news for BitFolk here -- I have submitted 7 additions to the new JSfree directory in the past few days, and... today, Brad there has accepted and added 5 of them into his directory -- including BitFolk! :-D My other suggestions that have been added are W3M, Lynx, Links, and Wttr.in . :-D As of yet, the Viewable With Any Browser Campaign (which now links to JSfree.org since I suggested it to Cari there earlier this month) and Andrews & Arnold (which works without … [View More]

7 months, 3 weeks

No storage space left

by Keith Williams

***This has been solved, post for others who may experience it.*** Late yesterday evening I returned hone and had a desperate message from the secretary of the local cancer support charity for whom I provide email facilities and web support. The email server seemed to be refusing emails in or out. I investigated and saw that the VPS had run out of storage space. My first act was to try to uninstall some programs thet have been there since Adam was a boy. But apt would not play ball. No storage … [View More]

8 months, 1 week

New SSH vulnerability, looks bad

by Richard Wallman

CVE-2024-6387 details a flaw in OpenSSH that could *potentially* give an attacker a root shell in "6-8 hours" It's not in MITRE yet, but Qualys have named it "regreSSHion" and you can read about it on their site There's an updated package in Debian already, but it looks like the information's still embargoed (even the openssh package changelog is 404ing) so I can only *assume* they've fixed it but can't tell anyone yet (it wasn't on security.debian.org just now either This is probably an … [View More]

9 months, 1 week

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BitFolk Users