Currently we are being inundated with scans and exploits looking for new machines to take over, most of these are using insecure phpmyadmin installs.
If you are unsure if your box has been hacked then the things to look for are similar to this…
Exploited VPS? phpmyadmin?
August 19th, 2010Old versions of PHPMyAdmin and Automated Scanning
August 9th, 2010It has come to our attention that we have had a decent number of alerts about machines scanning on our networks in the last day. All of them have been running hacks from /tmp named things like /tmp/dd_ssh etc. These files are owned and run by the apache user, and on further investigation all put there by an old PHPMyAdmin install.
If you run something like PHPMyAdmin then this is the time to upgrade it. If you get stuck or are unsure in any way then we are happy to help out.
It always pays to keep your system up to date to prevent excessive traffic or downtime.
WordPress Mass Upgrade Script 3.0.1
August 2nd, 2010This script will search /var/www (changeable in a variable) for any wordpress installs and make sure its upgraded to the latest version.
It will run a backup to /root/wp_upgrade/ of all files and database before doing anything with the site in case of major catastrophe.
It pays to check each site after the upgrade to make sure plugins all worked (and upgrade plugins before the upgrade works also!).
Let me know if you have any bugs at all, or any problems.
Here’s your script to upgrade them all.
wget http://b.ri.mu/files/wordpress-upgrade-3.0.1.sh sh wordpress-upgrade-3.0.1.sh
Pingability Facelift
July 29th, 2010While I was kicking back camping in Yosemite Justin here has been ‘messing about’ with CSS on our Pingability web check and alert service. Bringing it from my 2003 design to something a little more contemporary. Thanks, Justin.
Before
After
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Pingability lets you monitor your websites pages, check that things are running OK, and alert you (via email, txt or phone) when they are not. It supports SSH actions (so you it can, say, SSH in and restart apache/mysql or reboot your server) if a web page stops responding. And it can check things like email servers are working, DNS is returning results, and ports are open. There are free and paid options.
66% off .org domain name registration anyone?
July 27th, 2010We use gandi.net internally for some of the domains we have. Gandi have given me a few ‘promo codes’ for 66% off .org domains.
Upgrade your RimuHosting VPS to a VPS on a dedicated server?
July 21st, 2010Want to upgrade from a VPS on a shared host to a VPS on a dedicated server? More memory, more disk space, dedicated CPU and disks? We have a great offer for a few of you…
We have a few ‘old’ servers (only a couple of years old). Most are retired host servers or dedicated servers returned from customers who no longer need them. These server specs are mostly ones we no longer offer on our ordering pages.
Rather than let them gather dust, we thought we would offer them to customers who are currently have a VPS on a shared host. And would like an upgrade to a dedicated machine. You would get (most likely) more memory; more disk space; and, most importantly, less contention. The CPU and disk IO is dedicated solely to you. See also http://rimuhosting.com/knowledgebase/rimuhosting/vps-setup-on-dedicated-servers
Virtualmin on the command line
July 1st, 2010We often encourage our users to use software which is better, and does things in a standard way. When it comes to control panels we prefer Virtualmin. It works with the distro you are using and the packages that come with it rather than setting up things in its own odd way and tieing you into using strange configs that lock you into using it.
Also it imports from all other platforms nicely (cpanel, plesk etc) which is handy to those who are locked into a lot of the more overpriced web panels. But the best thing yet is that its a reasonable price, in fact the GPL version is free and fully functioning!
By default it uses FCGI for PHP, which is a great option, however we had a customer who was struggling to keep ram usage down so wanted to convert to mod_php which was slightly faster and used less memory. Since he had more than a few domains this could have been painstaking, in fact it was until i emailed one of the creators of Virtualmin.
Not only did i get a great response, but i got it within minutes!
I had wondered if Virtualmin had a command line interface, and thus asked if there was any command line way i could do it, i got this reply.
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WordPress & WordPress MU mass upgrade script 3.0
June 23rd, 2010Sorry for the slower than usual update this time. I was rather busy/sidetracked and left it for a day or two before doing it. Since it wasn’t a exploit fix release i figured it wasn’t a major.
Anyway, here goes the new wordpress mass upgrade script. I no longer have a wordpress MU available to test on, it should technically work, but let me know if there are any problems at all with it.
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Free memory upgrade anyone?
June 17th, 2010Want some more memory on your RimuHosting VPS? Guess what? It is a RimuHosting free memory upgrade day!
Here is how it works…
inode problems and full disks
June 4th, 2010Today we had a customer who had an interesting problem. They were getting the message ‘disk is full’ despite having plenty of free space. Luckily for him, my first thought was ‘inodes?’
I logged in and checked his inode usage
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