jnorden

As usual, wow! Heliohost definitely has the fastest, most responsive customer service of any tech-related organization that I've ever dealt with! --- It's no problem having an additional firewall ssh rule for you to use for administration. Shortly after I set up the vps, I noticed a huge number of (fortunately unsuccessful) ssh login attempts from all over the world. That's why I set up the firewall. There is also an alternate ssh port that I use when I'm away from home. I was surprised at how high a port number I needed to use before scanners failed to find it. --- I knew that setting the gateway was probably the problem, but a google search didn't seem to give any consistent advice on how to set it. A few pages suggested using the link-local address, but that doesn't work with heliohost. Now that I look at it, setting the last 64-bits to 0:0:0:1 makes sense. It seems that systemctl can't/won't restart the network on my vps. This is fine with me, the less stuff under systemd's control the better. I used 'ifdown ens192; ifup ens192' a couple of times, but worried that ifdown might succeed followed by ifup failing. So, I switched to using ens192:0, which seemed safer, and was going to remove the :0 once it was working. When I noticed that 'ifdown ens192:0' left the interface still flagged as 'up', I looked up a few more things and then tried the 'ip link set' command. It occurred to me that this was a bad idea just as I was pressing the 'enter' key, but it was too late. Initially, you wouldn't have been able to ssh in, since the ethernet interface was off. But the firewall hole will help if there is some other request that I have in the future. Thanks again! -Jeff

Hi Kyrdos, Please either reboot my vps, or log in and re-start the networking. -------- Last Sept, there was a dns problem (below), and you added an IPv6 address for me. I was trying to configure it --- thought I was being careful and tried to use an alias device, ens192:0 so I could use ifup and ifdown without getting locked out. But I noticed that ifconfig still said "up" after running 'ifdown ens192:0', so I tried 'ip link set ens192:0 down' and immediately realized that would actually turn off the ethernet :-(. Much less urgent than re-booting - can you give me any info on how to configure the IPv6? I think I just need to add a new section to /etc/network/interfaces. It seems like the netmask is usually 64 bits, so I added address 2001:470:1:1ee::15/64 But I have no idea how to figure out what the gateway should be. I tried a link-local address which was suggested on a web page I came across: gateway fe80::1 but it didn't seem to work. Thanks! -Jeff Norden

Thanks for the (as usual) lightning speed at which this was fixed! -Jeff

The norden.heliohost.us dns entry for vps15.heliohost.us seems to be on ns1.heliohost.org, but *not* on ns2.heliohost.org. Below is what I get from the command line using the simple 'host' command. The 'dig checker' confirms the problem as well. This isn't urgent, but is sometimes a bit inconvenient for me. Thanks! -Jeff --------------------------------------------------------------- jeff@up:~$ host norden.heliohost.us ns2.heliohost.org Using domain server: Name: ns2.heliohost.org Address: 64.62.211.133#53 Aliases: Host norden.heliohost.us not found: 3(NXDOMAIN) --- jeff@up:~$ host norden.heliohost.us ns1.heliohost.org Using domain server: Name: ns1.heliohost.org Address: 65.19.143.3#53 Aliases: norden.heliohost.us has address 216.218.228.92 norden.heliohost.us mail is handled by 0 norden.heliohost.us. --- jeff@up:~$ host vps15.heliohost.us ns1.heliohost.org Using domain server: Name: ns1.heliohost.org Address: 65.19.143.3#53 Aliases: vps15.heliohost.us has address 216.218.228.92 vps15.heliohost.us mail is handled by 0 vps15.heliohost.us. --- jeff@up:~$ host vps15.heliohost.us ns2.heliohost.org Using domain server: Name: ns2.heliohost.org Address: 64.62.211.133#53 Aliases: vps15.heliohost.us has address 216.218.228.92 vps15.heliohost.us mail is handled by 0 vps15.heliohost.us. ------------------------------------------

Kyrdos: Thanks for the info. A few things came up and I didn't get a chance to check on this till now. It took me a bit to figure out how to log in with ...ejeff@gmail. I found the orig email from when the vps was set up, and that worked. The overall dashboard layout looks good. Obviously it will be more useful when things work automatically, but even the current links about opening support tickets are helpful. The upgrade page is convenient for checking prices for different configurations (and even lets me know that I'm currently enjoying a "grandfathered" sale price). Here are some ideas for down the road, if/when there is time to implement more features: Ability to reboot the vps and at least watch the console output during the reboot. Doing a reboot via ssh is always a bit dicey, you just get disconnected and have to hope that no fatal error occurs during the boot. Being able to interact with the console during reboot would obviously be quite helpful. Ability to change the email address and password for the vps account, similar to the helionet "account settings" page. Ability to add/delete foo.heliohost.us dns alias entries. I seem to recall this was possible under cpanel, so it is probably possible from plesk as well. In addition to canceling a subscription, it would be nice to be able to change the payment source. It would also be useful to be able to see the date when subscription is scheduled to renew. Also, the upgrade option could provide a way to switch between the monthly and six-month subscription options. Thanks again for all the work you guys are doing. If there is something I can do to contribute to the efforts, please feel free to call on me. -Jeff

Is there something special we need to do in order to login to the new VPS dashboard? When I try to login to heliohost.org, I just get the "Plesk ETA" screen. Maybe it is because there is still a stale account for me on ricky - I can still get to it via sshfs. You can completely delete that account if you like. I'm not using it and I've backup up anything worth saving. Thanks, -Jeff PS: Glad to see things are moving along! Hope everyone is doing well.

Sorry to hear about the problems you and your dad are experiencing. When you get back to working on heliohost, please don't hesitate to call on those of us who have offered to help out, if there is anything that we can do to make things easier for you and the staff. On the positive side, serious medical issues can sometimes be an opportunity to gain new perspectives on life. I was hospitalized last summer for about 10 days with neurological issues. Seeing some of the other patients in the hospital neuro-unit made me realize how lucky I am to just be dealing with vision and balance problems (as frustrating as they were/are). I made a solemn vow to *never* indulge in feeling sorry for myself again, which has been a really positive thing for me. Regards, -Jeff

Sorry to be trouble while you are still busy with plesk. I seem to have screwed up my old vps46 vm, and I'm not quite done with it yet. It won't even respond to a ping, so it may just need a hard reboot. But, it died immediately after running 'ufw enable', so there is a chance it needs to be broken into to disable the firewall (although 'ufw show added' clearly said that ports 22, 80, and 443 would be open). Also, does the data center and/or vmware provide any outside firewall? To protect, eg, against ddos attacks? Thanks again, and no hurry on this. -Jeff

I think I've got my new vps mostly configured. When you have a minute, please change norden.heliohost.us to point to vps15 (216.218.228.92) instead of vps46 (65.19.141.203). As far as I can tell, there is no way for me to do that. ------------------------------------ I've configured /tmp/ as a 1GB-max tmpfs file system. It seems a bit faster. A simple benchmark is impressive: using dd to copy 512MB from /dev/random to a file in /tmp/ took 2.6 sec (as compared to 2.3 sec to copy to /dev/null) a file in my home directory took 30.7 sec Of course, the second time will vary a bit depending on the server load. It'll be interesting to try this again after the disk upgrades. -Jeff

Thanks for the lightning-fast response as always. One more question: Is the vps storage backed by spinning disks or ssd? It has seemed to me that disk access is sometimes a bottleneck. I was going to up the ram a bit and try using tmpfs for /tmp (so that /tmp/ files never get written to permanent storage). Any idea if this would speed up, e.g., long compilations? -Jeff

Is it possible to buy a vps provisioned with Debian 11, which came out a few days ago? I think that what I'd like to do, instead of upgrading my existing vps, is to buy a new Debian-11 one with a bit more hardware, then selectively transfer stuff from my old vps (avoiding various crud I created), and then delete the old vps before it renews at the beginning of Sept. Thanks, -Jef

Here is a brief tutorial on using sshfs to manage a heliohost website. Specifically for managing a website on ricky right now, since cpanel is dead and plesk hasn't arrived yet. It will only be useful to you if you are running linux on your local desktop. If your aren't, then you should try it out! It's just plain text, so I'm attaching it here rather than pasting it in: sshfs_for_ricky.txt

Ok, here is a short tutorial on using sshfs to manage a heliohost website, specifically for managing your website on ricky since cpanel is dead and plesk hasn't arrive on ricky yet. It's just plain text, and I'm attaching it here rather than pasting it in: sshfs_for_ricky.txt

Any estimate on the timeline for ricky? If it'll be a while, I could cobble together a short "howto" outlining how I've been managing my ricky site via sshfs. It will only work for folks using linux desktops, but if it encourages anyone to leave the Evil empires of Cupertino and Redmond, all the better! -Jeff

The answer, to me anyway, is quite obvious. When you get in bed with a closed-source company like cpanel, they've got you by the nads. You've forfeited your freedom and are dependent on their good will, which can evaporate at any time. This is **EXACTLY WHY** RMS developed the GNU license and the concept of free (as in freedom, not beer) software. It amazes me that so many people are so critical of RMS and his beliefs despite the fact that they have been validated over and over and over again for the past 40+ years. -Jeff

Please move my 'jnorden' account from Johnny to Ricky. I just made a small paypal donation, Transaction ID: 1W727476616336129 Thanks, -Jeff Norden PS: I also put the request as a note on paypal along with the donation. PPS: The instructions that state "post on the customer service forum" are slightly confusing. When you go to that forum, there is a sub-forum labeled: Server Move Requests Request that your account be moved here. But clicking the sub-forum link just takes you back to the instruction page. It took me a few loops to figure out that I should post the request directly to the main customer-service forum.