RimuHosting Blog

Tag: Server administration

  • Tuning apache for production use

    Apache is probably the most common web service our customers use. It is an amazingly powerful and mature tool for serving all your website needs. And is very easy to get up and running with Our team is often asked to tune apache to run more smoothly, more quickly, and more reliably. With a few…

  • deghost ridding the world of the ghost vulnerability one host at a time

    As part of our mission to wipe the ‘ghost’ vulnerability (CVE-2015-0235) from our customers servers we have created ‘deghost’. Deghost is a cross-distro script to determine the vulnerability of a libc library on a server and then patch that where possible. https://github.com/pbkwee/distrorejuve In most cases this is as simple as apt-get install libc6 or yum…

  • Replace webmin self-signed certificate to avoid sec_error_invalid_key error

    Recent browser versions (e.g. Firefox 33) refuse to work with older Webmin installs. They give a sec_error_invalid_key error, offer a ‘Try again’ button, but do not offer an option to add an exception. Firefox 33 no longer supports certificates with private keys smaller than 1024 bits. You can replace your webmin certificate with a new…

  • CPU usage graphs

    A quick new feature:  You can now view CPU graphs for your VMs the RimuHosting control panel.

  • SSLv3 and securing against Poodle

    If you are using SSL in your web server, you probably want to read this. Google recently published details about an attack that targets SSLv3. The exploit first allows attackers to initiate a “downgrade dance” that tells the client that the server doesn’t support the more secure TLS (Transport Layer Security) protocol and forces it…

  • Centos 7 Release – Whats New

    Hot on the heels of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 release the Centos team have put out Centos 7 and now we are happy to offer a Centos 7 VM image on our control panel.  You can select it on new installs and also on re-installs. This has been a long awaited update due…

  • Connecting to MySQL from external sources + IPTables

    By default, MySQL only allows local connections. This is due to security, and for the most part works just fine for most people. Ideally you can use things like PHPMyAdmin for things like this, or even command line. Occasionally people need to connect from externally, either from a web front end, or some other PC,…

  • Preventing brute force WordPress login attacks

    Over the last month or two we have seen an increase in WordPress brute force login attacks. The symptom is typically higher CPU usage on your server (often resulting in slower page load times). It can be particularly painful on servers running php through fast CGI (like Plesk server setups). For a good summary of…

  • NTP servers and DoS Attacks

    NTP servers have been in the news over the New Year, as security sites and social media talk about potential attacks. This is important because many linux servers run ntpd to help keep their clock time correct. One of the first reports and some solutions are clearly described on litnet … In LITNET we recently…

  • CPanel Upgrades break Cookie IP validation

    A few people have done upgrades on their WHM/CPanel found the default change to ‘Cookie IP validation’ is now giving them the message that their IP address has changed. The easy fix is to change this from Strict to Loose, however if you are unable to login to the admin panel this may be a…