RimuHosting Blog

Tag: Linux

  • 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…

  • LCA2019 round up

    Every year the staff at Rimu look forward to the latest Linux.conf.au conference. Some of us go in person, some watch online, but we all love it, and love to catch up with whats going on. This year it was in Christchurch and Juan and I (Liz) went down to attend in person. CULTURE Christchurch…

  • 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…

  • 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

  • Using Ansible to manage your VPSs – Part Two

    In this post I’m going to introduce playbooks, and show you how to customise the /etc/resolv.conf file on each server.  I assume you have followed Part One of this series and have created a hosts file and files in ~/myansible/host_vars/. Tasks, playbooks, groups and roles A note on terminology.  A task is something done on…