Well, I just signed up, and I think the ICQ support concept is excellent.
I happened to read abt the downtime below. It seemed ok as they were upgrading servers.
In order to hit 99% uptime, the allowable 1% downtime is actually 87.6 hours (out of 365 x 24 h) or 3.65 full days per year. Not so bad. If we get 4 x 24 hrs downtime, the server would be less than 99% up, and that would be below industrial standards. I guess hostony.com server is still good and the support is up to the mark. Any comments for this is appreciated as I am new here.
Rgds
Full Version: Excellent ICQ Support
The fact is downtime is not avoidable. If we avoid causing downtime with upgrades in some time we get downtime because of the hackers or some evil customers compromising the system.
We tried to avoid custom upgrades and waited for redhat to release patched kernels. Upgrades with standard kernels usually pass flawlesly, though kernels are not fastes because of the numerous features be enabled.
The fact is Redhat stopped to support RH9 products almost a year before the end of the announced support deadline (late 2004) There is no upgrades from the December 2003. Potential sources of holes were released offically on 24 December. It was not a big problem because without working exploit hackers cannot use discovered hole. We waited almost 2 months for patches from RedHat but no luck. Now security sites released working exploits and it means that any child who nows some linux can compile and use them.
That is why we decided to compile latest avaliable stable kernels to avoid possible hacks that became real. Compiling a new kernel is not a trivial task especially considering the fact that kernel architecture of 2.6 kernel is much different from 2.4.x and 2.2.x versions. That's why we sometimes have problems with drivers supporting certain hardware. So far the most problems we have with intels gigabit ethernet adapters support. It is hard to compile drivers flawlessly for them.
But also there was boxes that started with new kernel from the first reboot.
The good news is that we develop a custom kernel.config file that will allow us to compile kernel upgrades more flawlessly. And also new optimised kernnels works much faster as I can see for last 3 days we are using them. New kernels can perocess 10 times more processes per second and it allows them to use all the power of our dual xeon server and at the same time they perform much better with hyperthreading.
We tried to avoid custom upgrades and waited for redhat to release patched kernels. Upgrades with standard kernels usually pass flawlesly, though kernels are not fastes because of the numerous features be enabled.
The fact is Redhat stopped to support RH9 products almost a year before the end of the announced support deadline (late 2004) There is no upgrades from the December 2003. Potential sources of holes were released offically on 24 December. It was not a big problem because without working exploit hackers cannot use discovered hole. We waited almost 2 months for patches from RedHat but no luck. Now security sites released working exploits and it means that any child who nows some linux can compile and use them.
That is why we decided to compile latest avaliable stable kernels to avoid possible hacks that became real. Compiling a new kernel is not a trivial task especially considering the fact that kernel architecture of 2.6 kernel is much different from 2.4.x and 2.2.x versions. That's why we sometimes have problems with drivers supporting certain hardware. So far the most problems we have with intels gigabit ethernet adapters support. It is hard to compile drivers flawlessly for them.
But also there was boxes that started with new kernel from the first reboot.
The good news is that we develop a custom kernel.config file that will allow us to compile kernel upgrades more flawlessly. And also new optimised kernnels works much faster as I can see for last 3 days we are using them. New kernels can perocess 10 times more processes per second and it allows them to use all the power of our dual xeon server and at the same time they perform much better with hyperthreading.
I think that provides assurance that the server is updated. I heard abt the ceasing of support for Linux 9, and I wondered how these would affect the Linux servers round the world. Its good that something is done here on our servers about this. 
I have been running through a few hosts recently before signing up here, and none of them were even talking abt it. Probably they didn't bother abt the security holes.
I have been running through a few hosts recently before signing up here, and none of them were even talking abt it. Probably they didn't bother abt the security holes.
Redhat stopped to support RH9 because they want to make big $$$ with their redhat enterpeise linux. So far RHEL 3 they released is a crap. The kernel they used was not thorolly tested and many big providers who stared to offer it on high -end boxes birned because of bad support of hardware and stability issues.
Also RHEL by its nature is a conservative branch and will be (as claimed by REDHAT) upgraded more slovely. Instead of releasing new versions of packages they will release security fixes for current packages. Not bad idea for enterprises, but is not good for hosting where people are accustomed to see new versions of software (php & perl) not far from release date.
Redhat Also have Fedora - a free and fast updating and growing distro. But as I checked it it lacks in testing and is actually a test branch for their RHEL. product. Releases are not always looks to be completely ported and new versions can be released with localisation not fully completed etc. It is minor things but who knows what they decided to be minor. But so far I personally like fedora better then RHEL.
Also there are a lot of other good distros for linux and it is not to hard to develop and tweak own distro. As for current systems we'll be supporting that boxes ourselves. apache, php, ssh, mysql are already custom compiled on our servers for years. Once we finish with configs for kernel we should not be depended on RedHat anymore and any other packages that should be updated can be updated manually.
On the new servers we are already using FreeBSD. So far no major issues for almost 1.5 months but Cpanel is not fast to support all the functionality they support on linux. But it is really not critical things. FreeBSD usages is growing after RedHat decision not to support RH9 so I think Cpanel will release extras for Cpanel soon.
Many hosts are ex designers, web ad companies, etc. and don't realize the threat untill something happens. To the top many hackers hack boxes not to take them down but to use for their needs - scanning other boxes for vulnurability, storing files, spamming, etc. So even when they got in and they have some experience it is hard to see that box is hacked and sometimes spam goes from the box , or load scyscraps, etc. Reboot helps in 90% cases because it interrups hackers software untill they launch it again. And hoster thinks that linux is unstable and reboots fixes the box.
If you'll go to read some security oriented sites or hacker boards you'lll see that they are not stupid kids and in many cases more clever than people they are attacking. That's why ignoring security measures is irrponsible for the host.
I do realize that it is impossible to stop all kinds of attack, but we should do everything possible to stop the bigger and most common part of them.
Also RHEL by its nature is a conservative branch and will be (as claimed by REDHAT) upgraded more slovely. Instead of releasing new versions of packages they will release security fixes for current packages. Not bad idea for enterprises, but is not good for hosting where people are accustomed to see new versions of software (php & perl) not far from release date.
Redhat Also have Fedora - a free and fast updating and growing distro. But as I checked it it lacks in testing and is actually a test branch for their RHEL. product. Releases are not always looks to be completely ported and new versions can be released with localisation not fully completed etc. It is minor things but who knows what they decided to be minor. But so far I personally like fedora better then RHEL.
Also there are a lot of other good distros for linux and it is not to hard to develop and tweak own distro. As for current systems we'll be supporting that boxes ourselves. apache, php, ssh, mysql are already custom compiled on our servers for years. Once we finish with configs for kernel we should not be depended on RedHat anymore and any other packages that should be updated can be updated manually.
On the new servers we are already using FreeBSD. So far no major issues for almost 1.5 months but Cpanel is not fast to support all the functionality they support on linux. But it is really not critical things. FreeBSD usages is growing after RedHat decision not to support RH9 so I think Cpanel will release extras for Cpanel soon.
Many hosts are ex designers, web ad companies, etc. and don't realize the threat untill something happens. To the top many hackers hack boxes not to take them down but to use for their needs - scanning other boxes for vulnurability, storing files, spamming, etc. So even when they got in and they have some experience it is hard to see that box is hacked and sometimes spam goes from the box , or load scyscraps, etc. Reboot helps in 90% cases because it interrups hackers software untill they launch it again. And hoster thinks that linux is unstable and reboots fixes the box.
If you'll go to read some security oriented sites or hacker boards you'lll see that they are not stupid kids and in many cases more clever than people they are attacking. That's why ignoring security measures is irrponsible for the host.
I do realize that it is impossible to stop all kinds of attack, but we should do everything possible to stop the bigger and most common part of them.
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