RimuHosting Blog

  • Debian Stretch and old installs

    We have had Debian 9 images available since shortly after it became available. But missed announcing it. So here it is, Debian 9 is code named “Stretch” and is available as a setup option on all our plans. As with other newer images, there is only a 64 bit image for new setups or re-installs.…

  • Ubuntu 18.04 available

    The latest long term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu is now available for new installs. Ubuntu 18.04, also known as Bionic Beaver can be ordered at https://rimuhosting.com/order/v2orderstart.jsp. It’s also an option to consider if you reinstall an existing VPS. The official release notes for version of Ubuntu are available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes. This release of Ubuntu…

  • Drupal Exploits – script to detect versions

    We are currently seeing a high volume of Drupal exploits running a lot of arbitrary code, including crypto mining, attacking other servers and similar due to this exploit  https://www.drupal.org/sa-core-2018-002   If you want to find out if you have any vulnerable Drupal installs quickly and easily i wrote a shell script for that . Just run…

  • 32 to 64 bit distro crossgrades for Debian and Ubuntu

    The demise of 32 bit distros is nigh! Some distros are dropping or reducing support for 32 bit versions.  e.g. only providing 64 bit ISO downloads. Some software makers are no longer putting out 32 bit versions of their software.  e.g. Since version 9 Oracle have only released a 64 bit version of Java. In…

  • Modernizing your ancient server distro

    RimuHosting has now been providing VM servers for over 15 years. Back in the day the state of the art distros we setup for customers included 32-bit Debian 3- and Ubuntu 6-based servers. Things have moved on.  By default all new orders are setup with 64-bit distros.  And Debian is up to version 9, while…

  • Spectre and Meltdown article roundup

    Spectre and Meltdown article roundup

    Our team is working on the best approach to secure our customers’ systems against the recently reported Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities.  Our first step is to understand the problem and its mitigations.  This post provides a roundup of discussions and work on the topic with a focus on mitigation for the Xen hypervisor. The vulnerabilities…

  • Kernel 4.14 LTS released

    We have added the latest 4.14 kernel to our list of stable kernels for 64bit VPS servers. The 4.14 kernel includes a large number of performance enhancements, including … filesystem io block_mq scheduler improvements new selectable scheduler options for disk io improved cryptographic performance cgroup2 support merged

  • Letsencrypt with Zonomi and Rimuhosting name servers using hooks

    SSL is good, you should use it everywhere! Letsencrypt it is a project that allows you to obtain signed certificates for free (you should consider donating though) to secure your website. Big efforts have been done to make this accessible to anyone. In order to issue SSL certificates Certificate Authorities will check that you can control…

  • Virtualmin Changes binding from ip:80 to *:80 and breaks older configs … FIX

    We have found some virtualmin installs will change the format of new virtualhosts from ip:80 to *:80 sometimes which breaks virtualhosts as the *:80 overrides the ip:80. This can result in websites showing another website content, and usually shows up right after you add a new domain in virtualmin.

  • Reboot-less Xen patching

    Recently there have been two sets of Xen vulnerabilities.  One being disclosed in September, the other earlier today.  Historically we have had to organize host updates which required downtime to reboot VMs. For these last sets of vulnerabilities we have been able to use a recently introduced live patching feature in Xen to mitigate the…

RimuHosting Blog