Hosting/Webhosting MEGATHREAD

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nem: Jan 4, 2003; panel.dev
apnscp: cPanel evolved

onionradish posted:

I just switched a client from a crappily-managed Rackspace reseller account to Bluehost. During the time gap between DNS switchover, some emails went to the old server. I'd like to get access to those emails through webmail or something before we decomission the old servers.

The old reseller is claiming no ability to access those emails since they're "only accessible" by web/mail.hostname.com (which has since been transferred to a new host), but has proven himself to be a lazy gently caress whose answer over the last several months has always been "can't help ya" regardless of the context, so I don't trust him.

Are we really not able to access mail stored on the previous server, even through webmail, or is my mistrust of the previous host justified?

Mistrust is justified. Most mail is stored as Maildir, so it's a matter of copying the single-file messages over as-is to the new server.

If you have your old IP address handy, edit your hosts file and add a DNS entry for mail.hostname.com to the old IP address. You will be able to pull up webmail on your old host. But then again, it's just sloven mismanagement by your old reseller. They can provide you with the messages should they choose to do so.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 23:40

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# ? May 31, 2024 22:22

DarkLotus: Sep 30, 2001; Lithium Hosting
Personal, Reseller & VPS Hosting
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onionradish posted:

I just switched a client from a crappily-managed Rackspace reseller account to Bluehost. During the time gap between DNS switchover, some emails went to the old server. I'd like to get access to those emails through webmail or something before we decomission the old servers.

The old reseller is claiming no ability to access those emails since they're "only accessible" by web/mail.hostname.com (which has since been transferred to a new host), but has proven himself to be a lazy gently caress whose answer over the last several months has always been "can't help ya" regardless of the context, so I don't trust him.

Are we really not able to access mail stored on the previous server, even through webmail, or is my mistrust of the previous host justified?

Connect to the server with a mail client by IP Address or hostname. Checking mail via imap / pop3 will work just fine.

# ? Oct 10, 2014 23:53

Thalagyrt: Aug 10, 2006

onionradish posted:

I just switched a client from a crappily-managed Rackspace reseller account to Bluehost. During the time gap between DNS switchover, some emails went to the old server. I'd like to get access to those emails through webmail or something before we decomission the old servers.

The old reseller is claiming no ability to access those emails since they're "only accessible" by web/mail.hostname.com (which has since been transferred to a new host), but has proven himself to be a lazy gently caress whose answer over the last several months has always been "can't help ya" regardless of the context, so I don't trust him.

Are we really not able to access mail stored on the previous server, even through webmail, or is my mistrust of the previous host justified?

He's an incompetent dweeb. Just screw with your hosts file to point that particular hostname at the old IP and hit it up that way. You'll want to add a line sort of like:

172.31.48.242 webmail.hostname.com mail.hostname.com

After that's done you should be able to hit it in your browser, might have to exit/reload it though as some browsers do DNS caching.

# ? Oct 11, 2014 01:21

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

Sorry this is dumb but I can't work out what to google.

I want domain.com/foo to go to /var/www/bar/

I tried this nginx code:

code:

location /foo {
   root /var/www/bar/
}

But instead it tries to load /var/www/bar/foo/ and I get a 404. How do I use /foo in the url but stop nginx trying to look for a /foo directory in the filesystem?

edit: and of course I found the answer as soon as I hit post: gotta use alias instead of root

fuf fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Oct 11, 2014

# ? Oct 11, 2014 13:29

onionradish: Jul 6, 2006; That's spicy.

nem, DarkLotus, and Thalagyrt posted:

confirmation that the "can't get webmail" guy is a turd and a way to prove him wrong

Thanks a bunch guys -- it totally worked. Got the email and it was a real satisfying final kick in that liar's butt after months of dealing with him.

# ? Oct 11, 2014 14:25

DarkLotus: Sep 30, 2001; Lithium Hosting
Personal, Reseller & VPS Hosting
30-day no risk Free Trial &
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Yay, another round of vulnerabilities...

SSL v3 Security Vulnerability
OpenSSL has released information regarding the SSL v3 vulnerability:

https://www.openssl.org/~bodo/ssl-poodle.pdf

Please pay close attention to the recommendations and implement as necessary.

# ? Oct 15, 2014 02:40

AARP LARPer: Feb 19, 2005; THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE BREEDS A WEAPON OF WAR; Buglord

Hi, everyone, I could use some advice on where to go for hosting my website.

I just set up a mediawiki on part of my site that will eventually have about 200-300 topics (right now I only have a couple dozen). Each topic contains direct links to PDFs which are hosted/stored on the site as well. The PDFs are up to ~60 MB in size. I currently have about a thousand of these PDFs, but this will probably double over the next two years. I get about 500-800 unique visitors a month and use around 10GB in bandwidth monthly (this will probably go up as well).

I currently use basic hosting as provided by Webhostingbuzz and it's been okay, but I'm finding that my wiki site runs pretty slowly -- like taking 10-20 seconds to pull up a page when clicking on an html link -- and the speed isn't exactly stellar when I'm downloading something like a PDF.

Hey, I'm realistic and don't expect much at only $7 a month or so from a reseller like Webhostingbuzz, but where can I go to get something a little more responsive given what I'm trying to do?

Since I don't know squat about admin stuff, I need to use cpanel (or an equivalent) and stuff like softaculous to hold my hand through it--I can't be my own admin. Oh, I need it to be able to host my personal email too, but I think(?) most places offer that standard. Cost isn't too much of an issue--I would just like something that works well for me. On the other hand, I'm not a millionaire either.

Thanks a lot for reading and for any advice.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 02:50

Unity Gain: Sep 15, 2007; dancing blue

DarkLotus posted:

Yay, another round of vulnerabilities...

SSL v3 Security Vulnerability
OpenSSL has released information regarding the SSL v3 vulnerability:

https://www.openssl.org/~bodo/ssl-poodle.pdf

Please pay close attention to the recommendations and implement as necessary.

You can test your site and certificate here: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html

After some aggressive nginx tuning I got an A+. If I can do it, so can you!

# ? Oct 16, 2014 02:53

fletcher: Jun 27, 2003; ken park is my favorite movie; Cybernetic Crumb

Croc Monster posted:

You can test your site and certificate here: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/index.html

After some aggressive nginx tuning I got an A+. If I can do it, so can you!

Mind sharing the ssl_protocols & ssl_ciphers values you used to get an A+?

# ? Oct 16, 2014 02:56

Unity Gain: Sep 15, 2007; dancing blue

fletcher posted:

Mind sharing the ssl_protocols & ssl_ciphers values you used to get an A+?

Sure, it's just gonna take me a little time to go gather everything from the conf files. Give me an hour or so to post back.

edit 1: ok, here it is:

code:

     ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;

     ssl_ciphers 'EECDH+ECDSA+AESGCM EECDH+aRSA+AESGCM EECDH+ECDSA+SHA384 EECDH+ECDSA+SHA256 
EECDH+aRSA+SHA384 EECDH+aRSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+RC4 EECDH EDH+aRSA 
!aNULL !eNULL !LOW !3DES !MD5 !EXP !PSK !SRP !DSS+RC4 !RC4';

The cipher line made vb throw up, so I manually split it into three pieces. It's should be one long line with no linebreaks.

But you need to do a bunch more things as well. I started with this guide: http://tautt.com/best-nginx-configuration-for-security/

but it got a couple things wrong: only 2048 bit dhparam (needs to be 4096), and, directly related to your question, the cipher list wasn't up to snuff. The list above is.

edit 2:

Here are the required settings in nginx.conf (I've edited out non-related settings)

code:

http {
	# regular stuff goes here

	server_tokens off;
	add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
	add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;    
	add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";    

	# include your virtual hosts here
}

And here's the complete virtual host conf file:

code:

server {
	listen 443;
	listen [::]:443;

	ssl on;
	ssl_certificate /PATH/TO/cert.pem;
	ssl_certificate_key /PATH/TO/cert.key;

	#read more here [url]http://tautt.com/best-nginx-configuration-for-security/[/url]
	# to generate dh4096.pem:
	#	cd /etc/ssl/private
	#	sudo openssl dhparam -out dh4096.pem 4096
	ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/private/dh4096.pem;
 	ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
  	ssl_session_timeout 5m;
	ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
	ssl_ciphers 'EECDH+ECDSA+AESGCM EECDH+aRSA+AESGCM EECDH+ECDSA+SHA384 
                           EECDH+ECDSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+SHA384 EECDH+aRSA+SHA256 EECDH+aRSA+RC4 EECDH EDH+aRSA 
                           !aNULL !eNULL !LOW !3DES !MD5 !EXP !PSK !SRP !DSS+RC4 !RC4';
	resolver 8.8.8.8;
  	ssl_stapling on;
  	ssl_trusted_certificate /PATH/TO/cert.pem;
	add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains;";

	# rest of your conf stuff goes here
}

REMEMBER: I manually wrapped the cipher line in the above conf file! It MUST be one long line.

edit 3: I'm using a bog-standard $9.00 comodo SSL certificate bought via Namecheap.

Unity Gain fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Oct 16, 2014

# ? Oct 16, 2014 02:58

Fangs404: Dec 20, 2004; I time bomb.

Another great resource for tuning SSL settings is https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS. This is an incredibly thorough guide.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 03:22

DarkLotus: Sep 30, 2001; Lithium Hosting
Personal, Reseller & VPS Hosting
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90-days Money Back Guarantee!

FYI, if you use WHMCS and Paypal, do not disable SSLv3 in Apache or IPN will fail!

# ? Oct 16, 2014 05:24

Unity Gain: Sep 15, 2007; dancing blue

Interesting. Did a bit of googling RE paypal IPN and SSL3 and found this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26379773/paypal-ipn-acknowledgements-failing-with-ssl-routinesssl3-read-bytessslv3-aler

# ? Oct 16, 2014 05:31

DarkLotus: Sep 30, 2001; Lithium Hosting
Personal, Reseller & VPS Hosting
30-day no risk Free Trial &
90-days Money Back Guarantee!

Croc Monster posted:

Interesting. Did a bit of googling RE paypal IPN and SSL3 and found this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26379773/paypal-ipn-acknowledgements-failing-with-ssl-routinesssl3-read-bytessslv3-aler

I saw that too, the issue with WHMCS is all the php is encoded and cannot be modified. I don't believe it's hard coded to use SSLv3 though.
Enabling SSLv3 in Apache did the trick, the IPN messages are being processed again. That tells me the issue is regarding the incoming post from Paypal and not the outgoing callback to verify the IPN.
I can say that with certainty because Paypal didn't log an http status code and I don't even see the post hit the server in the logs.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 05:46

Unity Gain: Sep 15, 2007; dancing blue

Ugh. I know from all the chatter on WHT that WHMCS is a (how do I put this kindly) beast, but I didn't realize it was ion (or whatever) encoded. That sure changes the game.

Thankfully, since I don't run a host, I've never had to deal with this. But I sure do feel bad for you guys every time I see some sort of hosting-related CVE and how long you sometimes have to wait for a vendor patch.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 06:06

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

Do Not Resuscitate posted:

Hi, everyone, I could use some advice on where to go for hosting my website.

Try Lithium Hosting, it has big goon discounts.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 11:01

DarkLotus: Sep 30, 2001; Lithium Hosting
Personal, Reseller & VPS Hosting
30-day no risk Free Trial &
90-days Money Back Guarantee!

Croc Monster posted:

Ugh. I know from all the chatter on WHT that WHMCS is a (how do I put this kindly) beast, but I didn't realize it was ion (or whatever) encoded. That sure changes the game.

Thankfully, since I don't run a host, I've never had to deal with this. But I sure do feel bad for you guys every time I see some sort of hosting-related CVE and how long you sometimes have to wait for a vendor patch.

A custom portal is in the works to ultimately replace WHMCS, WHMCS is a horrible pile of poo poo.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 13:44

Unity Gain: Sep 15, 2007; dancing blue

Ahahah yeah, that's what I've read. Everyone hates it, no viable alternative, end up rolling your own.

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:35

Thalagyrt: Aug 10, 2006

Could be worse, he could have been using HostBill. :downs:

# ? Oct 16, 2014 22:59

fletcher: Jun 27, 2003; ken park is my favorite movie; Cybernetic Crumb

Croc Monster posted:

Sure, it's just gonna take me a little time to go gather everything from the conf files. Give me an hour or so to post back.

edit 1: ok, here it is:

Thanks for this dude, got the A+ rating on SSL labs now

# ? Oct 25, 2014 02:01

Unity Gain: Sep 15, 2007; dancing blue

Excellent. Glad I could help.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 03:31

Odette: Mar 19, 2011

How can I redirect http://domain.com to http://www.domain.com? I've tried doing a URL redirect DNS thing but it doesn't work.

Odette fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Oct 28, 2014

# ? Oct 28, 2014 22:20

Rawrbomb: Mar 11, 2011; rawrrrrr

Assuming its hosted, just use a 301 redirect in an htaccess / web.config. Your webhost should be able to help you sort that out, assuming you're on a normal webhost.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 22:32

Odette: Mar 19, 2011

If I have the following DNS records:

code:

HOST NAME 	IP ADDRESS/ URL 	RECORD TYPE
 	@ 	 	IP	 	A 	
 	www 	 	IP 		A

That should work, right?

# ? Oct 28, 2014 22:43

men with puns: Feb 8, 2010; Young Orc

Having the DNS names point to the same place won't force browsers to use the WWW name, it just means they both point to the same place.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 22:52

mewse: May 2, 2006

Arboc posted:

Having the DNS names point to the same place won't force browsers to use the WWW name, it just means they both point to the same place.

Even if www was a cname to the @ record, it would do the same thing: both entries resolve to the same IP.

You have to create a "website" for example.com that is just some kinda redirect to https://www.example.com. I use a tiny php file.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 23:32

Rawrbomb: Mar 11, 2011; rawrrrrr

mewse posted:

Even if www was a cname to the @ record, it would do the same thing: both entries resolve to the same IP.

You have to create a "website" for example.com that is just some kinda redirect to https://www.example.com. I use a tiny php file.

Better off forwarding with a redirect via the htaccess to capture all of the request and forward them to the correct place. An index.php only forwards requests when it comes to it.

# ? Oct 28, 2014 23:37

Odette: Mar 19, 2011

What I'm trying to do is force the site to always use www and https via virtual host. (default.conf in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/)

This is not my area of expertise, so I'm fully aware that I could be doing things better but I would like to learn via trial & error.

My current file is as below:

code:

<VirtualHost *.80>
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html
	
	ServerName www.domain.com
	Redirect / https://www.domain.com

	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
	LogLevel warn
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *.443>
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html

	ServerName www.domain.com

	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
	LogLevel warn

	SSLEngine on
	SSLProtocol All -SSLv2 -SSLv3
	SSLCertificateFile /path/to/file
	SSLCertificateKeyFile /path/to/file
	SSLCertificateChainFile /path/to/file
</VirtualHost>

# ? Oct 28, 2014 23:57

mewse: May 2, 2006

Make another VirtualHost entry with no DocumentRoot and a redirect from whatever.com to https://www.whatever.com

# ? Oct 28, 2014 23:59

Odette: Mar 19, 2011

I tried that, but it doesn't seem to force www. All it does is force https.

# ? Oct 29, 2014 00:09

Thalagyrt: Aug 10, 2006

Odette posted:

I tried that, but it doesn't seem to force https://www. All it does is force https.

You're listening on port 443 only for that one vhost, so both requests for domain.com and www.domain.com are going to match that SSL vhost. Add another SSL vhost with a ServerName of domain.com containing only a redirect to https://www.domain.com. I'd also just have your generic port 80 matcher contain ServerName www.domain.com and ServerAlias domain.com - you can kill two birds with that one virtualhost, since you're redirecting them both to SSL anyway.

Note, your certificate will need to have a SAN for domain.com. Most certs issued for www.domain.com will contain a SAN entry for domain.com, so you should be good to use that same cert for both vhosts without trouble.

Thalagyrt fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Oct 29, 2014

# ? Oct 29, 2014 01:54

ManiacClown: May 30, 2002; Gone, gone, O honky man,
And rise the M.C. Etrigan!

Hey, DarkLotus, I'm going to sign up for Lithium Hosting but I have a problem. I know you can just import my cPanel, but there's an issue in that the reason I've decided to pull the trigger on jumping from Hytek before my time with them is up is that my mailboxes have disappeared. Yes, they're just gone. The mail itself is still there on disk, but the mailboxes are gone. I've downloaded the entire contents of my site via FTP for redunancy, but is there a way those mailboxes can be somehow reconstructed on your end if (ha.) Hytek doesn't get off their asses and do something about it, or at least I recreate them from scratch and the email then somehow gets sorted into it once I reupload it? If not, are those emails at least readable somehow? I've got some legal correspondence in there.

ManiacClown fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Nov 8, 2014

# ? Nov 8, 2014 17:38

DarkLotus: Sep 30, 2001; Lithium Hosting
Personal, Reseller & VPS Hosting
30-day no risk Free Trial &
90-days Money Back Guarantee!

ManiacClown posted:

Hey, DarkLotus, I'm going to sign up for Lithium Hosting but I have a problem. I know you can just import my cPanel, but there's an issue in that the reason I've decided to pull the trigger on jumping from Hytek before my time with them is up is that my mailboxes have disappeared. Yes, they're just gone. The mail itself is still there on disk, but the mailboxes are gone. I've downloaded the entire contents of my site via FTP for redunancy, but is there a way those mailboxes can be somehow reconstructed on your end if (ha.) Hytek doesn't get off their asses and do something about it, or at least I recreate them from scratch and the email then somehow gets sorted into it once I reupload it? If not, are those emails at least readable somehow? I've got some legal correspondence in there.

Hello,
Let's take this to My Thread

# ? Nov 8, 2014 19:56

Soul Reaver: Mar 8, 2009; in retrospect the old redtext was a little over the top, I think I was in a bad mood that day. it appears you've learned your lesson about slagging our gods and masters at beamdog but I'm still going to leave this av up because i think its funny

god bless

I've bought myself a domain name - through namecheap - but I now need a web host. Unfortunately this seems to be a lot more difficult to decide on than I thought it would be - there's a huge amount of hosts out there, and it looks like almost every single one I read about has a whole bunch of reviews that say "they used to be good, now it sucks". People at work all said "anyone but GoDaddy", which also doesn't really help. I'm really not sure what to go for.

For now, the main purpose of the site is to host a forum with (probably) a smallish audience, though I might expand the purposes of the site a bit later.

I'm hoping for all the usual things: reliability, good backup processes, decent price, good support, ease of use... basically, a good all-round web host for a newbie but also with room to expand. If the initial setup of a forum is made easy for me that would be a big plus.

Any advice? I get this funny feeling that Lithium is about to be recommended to me, but in that case I'll need to know what would be a 'reasonable' amount of traffic and size I could to expect to need from a forum (since those plans aren't "unlimited"). I'm a newbie at all of this.

# ? Nov 8, 2014 23:25

Thalagyrt: Aug 10, 2006

Soul Reaver posted:

I get this funny feeling that Lithium is about to be recommended to me

So yeah, Lithium actually sounds like it'd be a good choice for you. DarkLotus is an awesome dude, and his service will meet your needs nicely. For a small forum you'd very likely be fine on their Value plan to start.

# ? Nov 9, 2014 00:01

Impotence: Nov 8, 2010; Lipstick Apathy

Soul Reaver posted:

Any advice? I get this funny feeling that Lithium is about to be recommended to me, but in that case I'll need to know what would be a 'reasonable' amount of traffic and size I could to expect to need from a forum (since those plans aren't "unlimited"). I'm a newbie at all of this.

At your size really no one cares, probably; you could use the lovely unlimited hostgator-esque things, you won't ever get kicked off them, just performance will blow.

# ? Nov 9, 2014 01:41

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

Anyone got anything bad to say about WeLoveServers.com before I go for this $6/month deal? The name is putting me off somehow.

http://lowendbox.com/blog/weloveservers-19year-1gb-and-6month-2gb-in-five-locations-world-wide/

(I need a cheapish VPS preferably in the UK)

edit: actually the comments on lowendbox are putting me off even more. Back to DigitalOcean I guess?

fuf fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Nov 19, 2014

# ? Nov 19, 2014 16:53

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

I'm looking for a Django-supporting PaaS that will allow me to map a bunch of static files to an url.

Context: I'm getting a bunch of CSS/HTML/JS from a third party that I don't have any control over. This serves as an AngularJS frontend single page app to a Django backend. These CSS/HTML/JS files have hardcoded relative paths amongst themselves, and you can't really configure Django's url routing to serve those correctly.

Short of configuring my own server (yuck), I'm guessing a decent middle ground would be a PaaS that lets me serve these static files correctly.

I use Heroku all the time, but AFAICT, they don't support doing this.

# ? Nov 22, 2014 17:36

Molten Llama: Sep 20, 2006

Not knowing the specifics of your application I can't say whether it'll work for you, but in many instances that's a great use case for Amazon S3/Rackspace Cloud Files/Azure Storage.

Toss the static files in a container, configure the container for static site hosting, and you're set. In some cases you can even use a CDN to potentially deliver them more quickly.

# ? Nov 22, 2014 19:13

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# ? May 31, 2024 22:22

Thermopyle: Jul 1, 2003; ...the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. �Bertrand Russell

Molten Llama posted:

Not knowing the specifics of your application I can't say whether it'll work for you, but in many instances that's a great use case for Amazon S3/Rackspace Cloud Files/Azure Storage.

Toss the static files in a container, configure the container for static site hosting, and you're set. In some cases you can even use a CDN to potentially deliver them more quickly.

Unless I'm confusing myself (likely), I think this will lead to Same Origin issues, as Django needs to be served from the same domain and I can't serve Django from S3.

# ? Nov 22, 2014 19:36

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