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1117 discussions

Example of using the rescue environment to diagnose and fix a booting issue

by Andy Smith

Hello, Here is an example of me using the Xen Shell rescue environment to diagnose and fix a booting issue with a customer's VPS. Sorry about the long pauses. It's recorded in realtime, I needed to look some things up, and you can't edit an asciinema. https://asciinema.org/a/RXb6KGR7aXGZwRhfQkeUi8RUj (7m47s) For those wanting to avoid spoilers, the next email is going to contain some comments about what the problem here actually was. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

5 years, 10 months

2GiB of backup space now included for free

by Andy Smith

Hi, Every VPS now includes 2GiB of backup space for use with our local backups service, for free. More info on the local backups service: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Backups You still need to let us know what to back up before any backups will take place, so if you are not currently a user of the backups service and wish to enable it please follow the procedure here: https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Backups#Setup If you are already a user of the backups service then 2GiB has simply been added to your quota. There is now no excuse for important configs and data to not be backed up. ☺ Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

5 years, 10 months

Fwd: [SECURITY] [DLA 1637-1] apt security update

by Andy Bennett

Hi, I've discussed this issue with Andy and he has asked me to post it here for wider discussion. I've not yet succesfully performed the upgrade yet. I'd be interested to hear what others have done or are intending to do. 8<----- I've received the attached regarding some apt security problems that involve HTTP redirects. The message says that some mirrors have trouble with it and, indeed, when I try it against the http://apt-cacher.lon.bitfolk.com mirrors, `sudo apt -o Acquire::http::AllowRedirect=false update` gives me ----- ... Fetched 15.5 kB in 4s (3,224 B/s) W: Failed to fetch http://apt-cacher.lon.bitfolk.com/debian/security.debian.org/dists/jessie/u… 302 Found W: Failed to fetch http://apt-cacher.lon.bitfolk.com/debian/security.debian.org/dists/jessie/u… 302 Found ----- and `sudo apt -o Acquire::http::AllowRedirect=false upgrade` gives me ----- ... WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated! ... ----- I guess I can follow the advice in the message and use the original server for this upgrade but I thought I'd make you aware of it. Perhaps if the cache was already populated it would work OK? Regards, @ndy -- andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org http://www.ashurst.eu.org/ 0x7EBA75FF

5 years, 11 months

Suggestions for future features and improvements

by Andy Smith

Hi, Here is a list of open feature requests and the number of votes they have received: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues?query_id=1 (You can vote an issue up or down once you are logged in and viewing it) I am currently working on making a "billing" role for the address book, so that invoices can be sent to different/multiple people. That was actually the most desired thing of the whole "address book" feature and will allow for getting rid of a few cumbersome mail aliases that we have. I can take it as said that everyone wants "better spec VPSes for less money" but after I'm done with the billing role I'll move on to something else and I will use this list of issues and their votes to help me make that decision¹. At the moment it's looking like people really want to be able to add and remove secondary DNS domains from the panel. Next up is an SMS alerting method for Nagios, which I suppose now carries over for Icinga2. I am really sceptical about this. Mainly I worry that very few people will actually use it, and every SMS sent costs BitFolk money, so is it a good use of resources? If I don't charge for it then every customer not making use of it will be subsidising those who do. And as some people let alerts just fire over and over. Charging for it brings other issues, chiefly that once real money is being charged everything becomes much more serious; I start to wonder if this may be appropriate for a service whose main purpose is monitoring your stuff, but not for one that throws in monitoring as a free perk. I would be more comfortable implementing Pushover alerts as these are free to send (within some massive limit). There is a one-off fee to the Pushover app developers per receiving device. I will not do that however unless there is at least 1 person who might use it. If you are such a person, please vote it up: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues/174 Further down the list, the configurable lead time for raising invoices it quite likely to happen. There's a couple of corporate customers who regularly complain that 30 days is not enough time to pay an invoice and are unable/unwilling to do Direct Debit. I'm not extending credit terms any further than 30 days so the solution for them will be to have invoices raised and sent to them sooner. If you have any comments on these feature requests, or ideas for new ones, ideally please submit them at: https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/projects but posting here is okay if you feel it needs a more conversational start. Cheers, Andy ¹ Though just because people want something doesn't mean that it's easy or even possible, so the feature requests made and the votes they have are only one factor, not the deciding factor. -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

5 years, 11 months

Billing role added to Panel

by Andy Smith

Hi, A Billing role has now been added to the address book in the Panel: https://panel.bitfolk.com/account/contacts/#toc-roles You might use this if you want invoices (and other emails about invoices) to go to different people, multiple people, and so on. Thanks, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

5 years, 11 months

snaps unexpected reboot 2019-01-09

by Andy Smith

Hi, Host snaps unexpectedly rebooted approximately 15 minutes ago. I'm not in front of a computer at the moment so will have to investigate later. I believe it will be the same bug that has plaguedusers of "hen". If so then at least snaps has now booted with the settings that are hoped will avoid the issue in future. Apologies for the disruption. Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

5 years, 11 months

Hivemind - MITM email for delivery to multiple servers?

by Murray Crane

Folks, I've been tasked with finding a way for our directors emails to be delivered to two servers (somewhat simultaneously). They use their "work email addresses" as personal accounts, as well as business accounts (don't get me started), and they don't want to be reliant on connectivity to the corporate Exchange servers, so I've set up a Docker mail server on their home network, but getting their mail delivered to both that MTA and the Exchange servers is above my knowledge grade. I've patiently tried to explain that "that's not how SMTP works", but I'm being met with recalcitrance and "you need to be a solutions provider", so I thought I'd put this in front of the hivemind and see if any of you know of an easy way to do this? Bit of background to help - the only way that I can think of possibly doing this is to MITM it (stick another MTA server outside our network, have it send the emails for the directors to two destination servers and just pass all the other mail to our Exchange infrastructure, if that's even possible without darkweb solutions), and I won't be allowed to use a cloud email service to do this as they are vehemently opposed to "The Cloud" (again, don't get me started). Kind regards Murray Crane

5 years, 11 months

"Data Transfer" role added to the address book

by Andy Smith

Hi, You can now add contacts to the "Data Transfer" role of the address book: https://panel.bitfolk.com/account/contacts/#toc-roles If you do that then these will be the only addresses that receive emails about your weekly data transfer stats, predicted overage, actual overage etc. I am also going through and rewriting documentation to reflect the new policy that no overage will be allowed without prior confirmation, i.e. we'll turn off your network rather than allow you to run up a bill, unless you indicate otherwise. If you spot any that's out of date after a few days from now, please do let me know. (Those handful of customers that regularly incur overage bills should assume that this will continue to be the case. I'm talking about for people we haven't spoken to about overage before.) I hope to get on to splitting out the billing functions into a billing role next. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

5 years, 11 months

[andy@bitfolk.com: Re: Host "hen" crashed again (Was: Re: Host "hen" unexpectedly rebooted 2018-11-26 22:24)]

by Andy Smith

Oops, I've just noticed that this only went to users@, not announce@. Sorry about the extra copy some of you are now getting. :( Cheers, Andy ----- Forwarded message from Andy Smith <andy(a)bitfolk.com> ----- Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2018 14:49:34 +0000 From: Andy Smith <andy(a)bitfolk.com> To: users(a)lists.bitfolk.com Subject: Re: [bitfolk] Host "hen" crashed again (Was: Re: Host "hen" unexpectedly rebooted 2018-11-26 22:24) User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) Reply-To: users(a)lists.bitfolk.com Hi, This happened again a few minutes ago. IPv6 failover appears to have happened correctly due to some fixes since last time - hence no v6 outage until manual intervention. hen has now booted with some settings which it is hoped will avoid the problem in future. I'm not in front of a computer at the moment so later today I'll review what was logged. Apologies for the ongoing hassle. Cheers, Andy _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

5 years, 11 months

Disabling password auth for Xen Shell

by Andy Smith

Hi, There's a long-standing request to implement a way for customers to disable password authentication on their Xen Shell SSH accounts (i.e. ssh username(a)username.console.bitfolk.com): https://tools.bitfolk.com/redmine/issues/116 This has now been implemented¹, so if you go to: https://panel.bitfolk.com/account/security/#toc-allow-xen-shell-ssh-access-… you can set that if you wish. You will first need to have added at least one SSH public key, as that is the only way you'll be able to log in to the Xen Shell after that. I don't anticipate many people using this or it changing frequently, so I haven't bothered to implement immediate update of our SSH config. Instead you might have to wait up to 30 minutes for the sshd_config on the host machine to actually be updated. The other already existing way to further secure your Xen Shell login is to use 2 factor authentication, as described on the same page. Enabling that will require you to supply a code from a TOTP app such as Google Authenticator, 1Password, etc. Cheers, Andy ¹ 11 days short of 5 years since it was requested, woohoo! -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting _______________________________________________ announce mailing list announce(a)lists.bitfolk.com https://lists.bitfolk.com/mailman/listinfo/announce

5 years, 11 months

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