Author: Glenn Enright

  • Looney Tunables: ld.so library local privilege escalation (CVE-2023-4911)

    Recently, Qualsys discovered a vulnerability (a buffer overflow) in the dynamic loader’s processing of the GLIBC_TUNABLES environment variable. Which can result in an escalation from local user access to root. This has been labeled as CVE-2023-4911 Running package updates on your server will address this.

  • CentOS Stream, RockyLinux and Alma Linux

    Recently CentOS8 reached its supported end-of-life for security updates. For a number of reasons there will effectively be no more stable releases of CentOS 8 or later. Instead developers are being encouraged to look at CentOS Stream as a future proof option for elX based platforms. This is quite similar to how Gentoo and more…

  • Ubuntu 20.04 LTS released

    The latest long term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu is now available for new installs. Ubuntu 20.04, also known as “Focal Fossa” 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 this release are available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FocalFossa/ReleaseNotes and will be be upstream…

  • CentOS 8 available

    The long awaited release of CentOS 8 64bit is now available with new installs from our order pages at https://rimuhosting.com/order/v2orderstart.jsp. It’s also an option to consider if you reinstall an existing VPS. CentOS8 was formally released on 24 Sep 2019. The official release notes are available at https://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS8.1905. CentOS8 will be supported until 30 Sep…

  • “Sad SACK” network protection

    Netflix has identified several vulnerabilities in the TCP networking stack that affects all Linux users with un-patched kernels. The vulnerabilities have been assigned CVE-2019-11477, CVE-2019-11478 and CVE-2019-11479. All three issues have already been mitigated for all our VPS customers. The original advisory says… The vulnerabilities specifically relate to the minimum segment size (MSS) and TCP…

  • 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.…

  • 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

  • ClamAV: mpool_malloc and disk space

    ClamAV is an open source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats. The most common use we see is to check emails for bad content. Some of our users have recently been seeing errors from “freshclam” processes that look like the below entry. These will occur quickly and will often cause…

  • Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is here!

    We are pleased to announce the availability of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server for new setups. This release has been code named Xenial Xerus. The official release notes are available from the Ubuntu team here. Our new VPS images are based on the official builds provided directly from http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com Significant updates in this release include

  • WordPress + nginx quick setup

    WordPress is a very popular blogging platform. We have a number of posts on how to set it up and keep it up to date on here already. In general those methods focus on deploying under the Apache web server. Recently we were pointed to a scripted method developed by they guys at rtcamp.com. They…