badrihippo

No problem! If your provider asked for two DNS servers I suspect you'll have to go for my backup option: managing DNS externally using a service like ClouDNS to register A records, then adding the domains to Hestia to use them. (Even before Hestia is set up, you'll know the DNS is working because you'll be able to SSH in using ...@yourdomain.lu instead of ...@some-ip-address). You're right, though, Krydos might have some better ideas...

That isn't what I had in mind, but I went through the Hestia docs just now and realised what you're proposing is a better solution. Sorry about that. Some explanation is probably necessary here. Explanation of how the DNS system works I should probably start by saying I'm not completely sure of the nuances of the system either, but I have messed around with DNSes quite a bit. What follows is my understanding plus a few educated guesses and some StackOverflow searches. If everything goes smoothly, you may not need to know all this, but when I got stuck (which was not uncommon) it helped me to know all this and have some idea of what was going on! There are three components to this: Your registrar, which points the domain to a nameserver. For example, I have snipettemag.com pointing to the nsone.com nameserver, which is what I use. So if anyone wants to load snipettemag.com or its subdomains, they're told to look it up at the nsone nameserver. Your nameserver, which actually manages the domains, subdomains, etc. and redirects them to the respective machines. For example, snipettemag.com points to a Netlify server but stats.snipettemag.com points to my VPS and media.snipettemag.com was until recently pointing to Tommy, where I was storing images and other static files. The actual server (VPS, Tommy, etc) which receives the requests and responds appropriately. For example, my VPS is set up so that stats.snipettemag.com serves a local GoatCounter installation I have, whereas bag.snipettemag.com redirects to my Wallabag. Both requests come to my VPS, but the VPS responds differently based on whether the request is to the "stats" or "bag" subdomain. You wouldn't have seen these moving parts on Tommy, because HelioHost runs the nameserver as well as Tommy, so the two are well integrated. When you add a domain (or subdomain) to Tommy, it automatically creates the corresponding DNS record as well. On other setups (such as mine) it's more common to run the server by oneself but delegate the nameserver to some other provider. The reason is that if your VPS crashes, the nameserver will go down as well, which means any other domains it serves (eg. email or an external subdomain) will go down as well. The downside is of course that you have to register domains twice: once on the nameserver end, and once again on the server (think one to send and one to receive). This setup is what I was trying to suggest for you as well. My recommendation for you But now I realise that Hestia has a DNS management facility. If you're just going to be hosting one domain, and Hestia handles it without much advanced setup, then maybe that's a better option for you. In which case the answer to the first part of your question is yes: your VPS is the "real nameserver". The problem is, you'll have to point to it using an NS record, which StackOverflow tells me needs a domain name (not an IP address). I think you can solve this problem by registering two records at your provider's end: an NS record pointing [yourdomain.lu] to [ns.yourdomain.lu] an A record pointing [ns.yourdomain.lu] to [your VPS IP address] That way you theoretically have two servers—the nameserver ns.yourdomain.lu and the actual yourdomain.lu—which makes the DNS system happy even though they're physically on the same machine. This is assuming your provider allows you to add both NS and A records. (If not, you'd have to go for a separate nameserver like ClouDNS, and update the records there as well as in Hestia every time you want to change something—which is hopefully not often). I'd like to signoff by saying that I've never used this kind of setup, although it's what I think would work best for you. I'd suggest you give it a try. If it works, then great; if not, I can't help you, but I'd be happy to help out with setting up an external nameserver like I mentioned in the last line or perhaps someone who's more knowledgeable than me could step in 🙂

What domain are you using: is it a HelioHost-provided domain or your own one? If it's your own then you don't have to wait for HelioHost to delete the Tommy DNS records: you can just change the settings at your DNS provider's dashboard. For example, I got my domain "sssnet.tk" on Freenom so I can log in to Freenom's control panel and change the domain settings there. Just create an A record pointing sssnet.tk (for example) to your VPS's IP address (which you should have got in an email from Krydos once it was created). If the DNS record is pointing directly to your server, then any obsolete HelioHost records will be bypassed because requests will go directly from your new record to your VPS. The basic DNS record types, which are available at most providers, should work for you. But if at some point you want more advanced DNS records (say, for an XMPP server) then you could sign up for a dedicated DNS host such as the freemium ClouDNS. Security is a much more complicated business: I use YunoHost instead of a control panel, which automatically installs firewalls and monitors like fail2ban. I'm not sure if Hestia has its own security in place, but one thing you could do is change your SSH port to a non-standard one. I used to get a lot of random people trying to log on to my VPS on port 22, and now that I've changed the SSH port it doesn't happen any more. But I'd suggest you play around with the server a bit and become more familiar with it before you try this 🙂

One more from Tamil Nadu, India, Asia 🌏

If you want to gamble on Tommy being back in a month, perhaps you could sign up for a one-month trial at Linode or some similar service? They provide pretty decent VPSes. If it's a long-term open source project, you could also apply for free hosting at Fosshost. I'm not sure how strict they are, but it might be worth a shot. I don't think they're interested in short-term operations though, and there's a submission process you have to go through. I've also used Byethost in the past; they have a cPanel-based setup although it seemed slightly shady and they try to push you to upgrade to Hostinger, whom I think are their partners. Speaking of which, if you're willing to spend a couple of dollars just for the month, Hostinger has mildly restricted plans starting at $1.39/mo. Nothing perfect, but they might be able to keep you running till Tommy's back. Good luck!

Yup, got it. The scalability factor makes sense; I didn't think of that! No worries about that: I have a (HelioHost) VPS already; just hadn't bothered to move the last few stuff from Tommy. I guess the time for that has come 😅

Wow, thanks @balloons for the detailed response and for taking the time to piece everything together! Good to know about the timeline; I'm on Tommy so I'll start moving right away then 😛

If you're a bit more adventurous, you could also try YunoHost: you need to copy-paste a few shell commands to set it up (and it needs a Debian VPS) but once that's done you get a dashboard to set up domains, email, SSL, etc., as well as the facility to install various "apps". Might not be for you if you're planning to switch back to Tommy eventually though.

Hey there, Just got you email about cPanel unilaterally revoking licenses 🙁 Very evil of them, and thanks a lot for the heads-up as well as working so hard to keep this service going! A few questions about the switchover process. Others are welcome to add in theirs too—I see queries all over the place right now and it'd save time for everyone if we had everything in one thread (the more generic ones, at least) 🙂 You say our websites will be down, but as of now mine (a set of static files as well as a MySQL remote connection) are still working. Does that mean it'll stay, or is it going to go down in a bit? If the latter, would there be a grace period before you start work? I'd definitely find it helpful if I had, say, a couple days to switch over to my VPS and get things running there. (Of course that also means people who don't have a backup plan wait that much longer for their setup to be fixed, so if you need to blackout now, that's cool, I understand). A more long term question (which you've probably already thought about): are there any open-source cPanel/Plesk alternatives which would prevent HelioHost from being caught in the cold again? Also, to answer some of the panicked enquiries elsewhere on the forum, I'm pretty sure HelioHost will remain free as soon as the Plesk switchover has been sorted out. That's kind of the point of their existence 😉

This is not a specific issue but a general question. Is there a way to manually reboot my HelioHost VPS without contacting customer support? I know I can just type reboot in the console to have it restart, but I'm talking about cases where the command line is inaccessible, for example because of high load or an out-of-control process (which happened to me recently). It would be nice if there was some way to expose the vmware commands for a hard power-on/power-off—not that I would use it much, but it'd be a safety net I'd know was there if something went wrong.

Thanks! The runaway process must have taken over again when I checked, because I wasn't able to log in or even ping, but it's stabilised now and I have some inkling as to what the problem was. (My YunoHost had many dyndns processes running; I'm not sure why but I removed the DynDNS domain name since I don't use it anyway). Do you think there's a way you could provide "hard reset VPS" buttons to users? Just for poweroff and (re)boot. I think it would make things easier, because (a) I won't have to worry about powering off the system in such a way that I can't turn it on again and (b\) if some memory situations happens I can reboot myself instead of having to ask each time. I'm not sure how that would work in your setup though, but maybe you could have an email-based API or something that pushes the vmware buttons internally?

By the way, if you need to restart the VPS or anything feel free to do so; everything's down anyway so it's not going to make a difference (just giving you the permission in advance!)

Hi, My VPS has slowed to a crawl for the past 8 hours: it started taking time to respond, and now all SSH and HTTP connection attempts are timing out: the only way I know my server is still alive is through a ping. I've seen this happen for short stretches before, but this is the first time it's been down for so long. Could someone check if this is a problem specific to my server or an issue across all VPSes? The only unusual thing I did today was to try upgrading wallabag (which is a PHP app) on YunoHost; the upgrade failed early because of some connection issues so I think the problem was already there before. VPS domains: hippo2.heliohost.org and members.snipettemag.com Thanks in advance!

Yayy! Thank you

Hi there, I'm using YunoHost on a VPS to receive email, but it seems I need an rDNS set up to avoid spam filters. Could you set one up pointing to the following domain? IP: 64.71.156.101 Hostname: members.snipettemag.com I think that's it but let me know if you need more details. Thanks in advance!

So I took advantage of the downtime to set up email on the VPS right away. All set up now. Thanks again!

Oh well...another few hours doesn't matter I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay, that makes sense! I had actually forgotten about the email limit. My account still seems to be blocked, so could you unblock it, please? I'll move my email setup over as soon as that's done. (I've been procrastinating on that for a while, so I guess this is a wake-up call )

We sent out a bunch of emails today relating to a webinar we're currently running (to people who'd already registered). I'm not sure if that's the reason?

Hi, My account got suspended about 45 minutes ago. I'm not sure why, because I had reasonable free space and there wasn't inordinate load. Could you give me some more info on what happened? By the way, I also have a VPS, so I'm not sure if there's a connection there. If it's a load problem I could move stuff over to the VPS I guess (I haven't had time to move things over yet, so doing it slowly). Thanks, Hippo

Hi there, This is in response to the "Would you be interested in a new server?" you sent out a few weeks ago. I chose "no" because I've just migrated over to a VPS, but I want to say, this idea made me very excited! My two-years-ago self would have been delighted at the opportunity to run things like Ghost and Grav without worrying about load, and with much less maintenance and cost than a VPS! To be honest, most of my reluctance to run heavy scripts was not for fear of being suspended, but just that fact that I'd be adding so much load to the server without giving anything back for it—so this micro-payment style model would help me carry on without feeling so guilty. Not useful for me now because of the VPS, but it's certainly an awesome feature which I think some of my friends would be interested in if they get to that stage. While I'm here, let me sign off with: thanks for all the thought and effort you put into your services—we're all lucky to have a webhost like yours!

I've never tried HTTP-based git on HelioHost, but even before they had the option, I was using git-ftp to manage files. This won't create a full-fledged git repo, but it uses its own system to simulate a git push: if files are changed on your repo, it will change exactly those files on the destination FTP server as well. If you're only using git to deploy changes, this might be the right thing for you, but note that you will have to always use the same computer to push, and ideally have the source code itself hosted elsewhere if you want to do regular git stuff as well.

Great, thanks a lot! Now that you mention it, I did notice /usr/sbin/ being off the path at some earlier point but forgot about it when this new problem came up. That was a bit silly of me. I'll keep it in mind next time.

Oh okay, that makes sense. No worries, but could you perhaps install vmware tools now, once you're done, to prevent it from happening again? I don't mind a a few days' wait. I've sent you the new user and root passwords by email.

Hi all...my VPS filesystem has suddenly become readonly I suspect it happened after this week's reboot, because I'd checked the read-only parts but never explicitly done anything requiring writing till now. I see this related error message in dmesg (let me know if you want the full output): [154995.476735] EXT4-fs error (device sda1): ext4_journal_check_start:61: Detected aborted journal [154995.478036] EXT4-fs (sda1): Remounting filesystem read-onlyAny idea how to fix this (redoing mount doesn't work and fsck doesn't seem to be installed)? Would it be possible to do a manual reboot from your end? My server is hippo2.heliohost.org, running Debian 10. (I don't have any irreplaceable data left, so a full reinstall is also an option, although not ideal).