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  5.  <title>Sotirov-BG.Net News</title>
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  9.  <updated>2022-02-13T18:46:25Z</updated>
  10.  <author>
  11.    <name>Georgi D. Sotirov</name>
  12.    <uri>https://sotirov-bg.net/~gsotirov/</uri>
  13.    <email>gdsotirov@gmail.com</email>
  14.  </author>
  15.  <rights>Copyright (c) 2004-2023 Georgi D. Sotirov</rights>
  16.  <generator uri="https://perl.com/" version="5.034000">Perl</generator>
  17.  <entry>
  18.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=38</id>
  19.    <title type="html">Upgrade to Slackware 15.0</title>
  20.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=38" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  21.    <author>
  22.      <name>Ivelina Beleva-Sotirova</name>
  23.      <email>ibeleva@nbu.bg</email>
  24.    </author>
  25.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Last Friday (11/02) the server was upgraded to <a
  26. href="http://www.slackware.com/announce/15.0.php">Slackware 15.0</a>. The
  27. upgrade of the system itself took about an hour, but it was necessary to
  28. re-configure and fix problems with many services. It was also necessary to
  29. upgrade to <a href="https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/mysql-nutshell.html">MySQL
  30. 8.0</a>, because MySQL 5.7 would simply not start (as <a
  31. href="https://slackpack.eu/search.cgi?q=%22mysql%22&lo=1">existing packages</a>
  32. are build for older Slackware versions with old libraries). Due to strange
  33. error (manifesting itself as <code>ListUtil.c: loadable library and perl
  34. binaries are mismatched (got handshake key 0xdb00080, needed 0xeb00080)</code>
  35. when <code>perl</code> or <code>cpan</code> commands are run), all Perl modules
  36. had to be reinstalled. In addition to this there was also a boot problem.</p>
  37. <p>Thus the server was completely or partially inaccessible from about
  38. 2022-02-11 17:50 <abbr title="Eastern European Time">EEST</abbr> to 2022-02-12
  39. 03:00 <abbr title="Eastern European Time">EEST</abbr>, but on the next day and
  40. the day after more problems with public and private services were tackled. Some
  41. more problems with hosted applications and sites were fixed as well.</p>
  42. <p>Both Slackware 15.0 and MySQL 8.0 were much needed upgrades and I'm happy
  43. to be running both now.</p>]]></content>
  44.    <published>2022-02-13T18:36:36Z</published>
  45.    <updated>2022-02-13T18:46:25Z</updated>
  46.  </entry>
  47.  <entry>
  48.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=37</id>
  49.    <title type="html">Disk replacement (affecting mirrors)</title>
  50.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=37" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  51.    <author>
  52.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  53.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  54.    </author>
  55.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Just about an hour ago finished the replacement of a potentially
  56. failing disk drive on the server. Unfortunately, this affected the
  57. <a href="/#content">mirrors</a>, because their partition was on the
  58. drive without a backup. So mirrors were unavailable between about
  59. 2021-09-27 20:06 <abbr title="Eastern European Summer Time">EEST</abbr>
  60. and about 2021-09-28 05:41 <abbr title="Eastern European Summer Time">EEST</abbr>.
  61. Sorry for that, but the replacement was necessary to prevent the
  62. consequences of imminent drive failure.</p>
  63. <p>The new drive is 4 times the size of the previous one, so eventually
  64. more mirrors and/or other content may come soon. The mirrors of <a
  65. href="https://www.gnu.org/"><abbr title="GNU's Not Unix">GNU</abbr></a>
  66. and <a href="http://www.slackware.com/">Slackware</a> are available again
  67. now and up to sync, so happy downloading!</p>]]></content>
  68.    <published>2021-09-28T03:35:19Z</published>
  69.    <updated>2021-09-28T03:37:32Z</updated>
  70.  </entry>
  71.  <entry>
  72.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=36</id>
  73.    <title type="html">Improved web sites security</title>
  74.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=36" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  75.    <author>
  76.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  77.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  78.    </author>
  79.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>I was considering dropping support for <a
  80. href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security">
  81. <abbr title="Transport Layer Security">TLS</abbr></a> v1.0
  82. and v1.1 protocols for <a
  83. href="https://sotirov-bg.net/index.en#content">the hosted web sites</a>
  84. since 2016, when it was suggested, but I was still seeing such
  85. clients in the logs (and unfortunately I still do even today).
  86. I was thus reluctant, because such clients would NOT be able to
  87. access the sites anymore. However, we are 2021 now and there are
  88. no excuses for using too old and insecure clients (i.e. browsers).</p>
  89. <p>Therefore, since about 12:00 <abbr
  90. title="Universal Time Coordinated">UTC</abbr> today the hosted
  91. sites are no longer supporting TLS v1.0 and v1.1 clients. I also
  92. disabled weaker ciphers like <abbr title="Cipher Block Chaining">CBC</abbr>.
  93. This effectively cuts the following browsers as <a
  94. href="https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=sotirov-bg.net">SSL
  95. Labs' report</a> shows:</p>
  96. <ul>
  97. <li><a href="https://www.android.com/">Android</a> 4.3 and
  98. earlier;</li>
  99. <li><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/internet-explorer.aspx">Internet
  100. Explorer</a> 10 and earlier;</li>
  101. <li><a href="https://www.oracle.com/java/">Java</a> 7 and
  102. earlier;</li>
  103. <li><a href="https://www.apple.com/safari/">Safari</a> 8 and
  104. earlier.</li>
  105. </ul>
  106. <p>If you are still using any of these apart from testing purposes
  107. in isolated environments (like me), then too bad for you. It is
  108. really time to upgrade!</p>
  109. <p>This is considered a necessary step for improving web sites
  110. security and something that perhaps should have been done earlier.
  111. The changes were done following <a
  112. href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Server_Side_TLS">Mozilla's
  113. Server Side TLS recommendations</a>. It is not possible to enable
  114. TLS v1.3 for now, because this requires <a
  115. href="https://www.openssl.org/">OpenSSL</a> 1.1.1 or later, which
  116. would become available with <a
  117. href="http://slackware.com/">Slackware</a> 15.0 hopefully later
  118. this year.</p>
  119. <p>Happy surfing and stay safe!</p>
  120. <p><strong>Update 2021-01-26</strong>: Apparently, <abbr
  121. title="National Security Agency">NSA</abbr>&nbsp;<a
  122. href="https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/01/21/1646211/nsa-urges-system-administrators-to-replace-obsolete-tls-protocols">urged</a>
  123. for the same just three days ago :-)</p>]]></content>
  124.    <published>2021-01-23T13:19:59Z</published>
  125.    <updated>2021-01-26T06:40:17Z</updated>
  126.  </entry>
  127.  <entry>
  128.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=35</id>
  129.    <title type="html">Internet connection upgrade</title>
  130.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=35" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  131.    <author>
  132.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  133.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  134.    </author>
  135.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Today, I finally managed to upgrade the Internet connection.
  136. The server is now connected through a high speed <abbr
  137. title="Gigabit Passive Optical Network">GPON</abbr> network
  138. provided by <a href="https://www.vivacom.bg/bg">Vivacom</a> with
  139. maximum (unwarranted) upload speed of 300 <abbr
  140. title="Megabits per second">Mb/s</abbr> from the whole world.
  141. This is three times higher than the previous capacity and seems
  142. more relevant nowadays. The new connection should make the access
  143. to my content and the mirrors faster and more reliable.</p>
  144. <p>Unfortunately, due to change of the service, I had to change also
  145. the <abbr title="Internet Protocol">IP</abbr> address (it is now
  146. 46.10.161.161), which caused some unexpected unavailability, but
  147. for not more than 5-10 minutes as the <abbr
  148. title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr> servers updated quickly.</p>
  149. <p>Cheers!</p>]]></content>
  150.    <published>2020-11-03T21:31:18Z</published>
  151.    <updated>2020-11-05T19:55:11Z</updated>
  152.  </entry>
  153.  <entry>
  154.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=34</id>
  155.    <title type="html">Server replacement</title>
  156.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=34" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  157.    <author>
  158.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  159.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  160.    </author>
  161.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p class="img_left"><a href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/img/new_server">
  162. <img alt="New server picture" src="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/img/new_server" width="250" title="New server" />
  163. </a></p>
  164. <p>Today, between 18:40 and 20:00 <abbr title="Eastern European Summer Time">EEST</abbr>
  165. the server was not accessible, because I was finally able to move the system
  166. to the new machine (<a href="https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/povw/poweredge-r340">Dell
  167. PowerEdge R340</a>). The operation took so long, because I wanted to copy
  168. the bootable <abbr title="Solid State Drive">SSD</abbr> disk to the new drive
  169. that came with the server, but I was not able to install it - a special
  170. bracket is required to fit 2.5'' <abbr title="Solid State Drive">SSD</abbr>s
  171. into Dell's 14<sup>th</sup> generation 3.5'' carriers.</p>
  172. <p>After I moved all the drives I got myself into cabling, which took me some
  173. more time although my new rack is well organized. I first chose patch cables
  174. with the wrong length and then I had to reorganize some existing cables, so
  175. I could fit around the new ones.</p>
  176. <p>The first boot was smooth as expected with the default kernel, but I forgot
  177. to comment out the persistent interface rules of udev for the network adapters
  178. of the previous machine, so the server was without network. After fixing it I
  179. decided to reboot once again to test that everything would get up properly.</p>
  180. <p>I had to tune several other things after the server was up, but nothing
  181. that would disrupt its normal work. The server is now ready to serve its
  182. purpose.</p>
  183. <p>Cheers!</p>]]></content>
  184.    <published>2020-06-17T20:50:44Z</published>
  185.    <updated>2020-06-17T21:10:42Z</updated>
  186.  </entry>
  187.  <entry>
  188.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=33</id>
  189.    <title type="html">Downtime for equipment movement</title>
  190.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=33" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  191.    <author>
  192.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  193.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  194.    </author>
  195.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p class="img_left"><a href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/img/new_rack">
  196. <img alt="New rack picture" src="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/img/new_rack" width="250" title="New rack" />
  197. </a></p>
  198. <p>Today between 10:40 <abbr title="Eastern European Summer Time">EEST</abbr>
  199. and 11:40 <abbr title="Eastern European Summer Time">EEST</abbr> the server
  200. was unavailable as I was moving my equipment to a new server rack. I could
  201. have done this faster and in future I plan less downtime, but the important
  202. thing is that now all my equipment except the server itself is into the rack.
  203. I'm now waiting for the new server to arrive in about 10 days, so I could
  204. move the current tower server into the rack.</p>
  205. <p>Earlier this year I noticed that the server is shutting down even though
  206. the <abbr title="Uninterruptible Power Supply">UPS</abbr> still has power to
  207. support it. So, three weeks ago I changed the batteries, but as everything is
  208. connected to it, currently the expected runtime is about 40 minutes at best.
  209. However, I had some troubles with the power recently and in one of the cases
  210. there was no line power for about 2 hours (due to accident). I'm now
  211. considering increasing the runtime of my systems on batters or in other words
  212. buying a new and more powerful <abbr title="Uninterruptible Power Supply">UPS</abbr>.
  213. I'll need more than one to sustain my two servers and network devices for at
  214. least 2 hours that is the power interruption I could expect from time to
  215. time.</p>
  216. <p>Cheers until I have better news!</p>]]></content>
  217.    <published>2020-05-30T17:52:46Z</published>
  218.    <updated>2020-05-30T17:55:54Z</updated>
  219.  </entry>
  220.  <entry>
  221.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=32</id>
  222.    <title type="html">Memory upgrade</title>
  223.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=32" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  224.    <author>
  225.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  226.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  227.    </author>
  228.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>An hour ago I upgraded the memory of the server to 16 <abbr
  229. title="Giga Bytes">GB</abbr>. And the server was not accessible for
  230. half an hour between 19:30 and 20:00 <abbr title="Eastern European Summer Time">EEST</abbr>,
  231. because I accidentally loose the <abbr title="Serial AT Attachment">SATA</abbr>
  232. connector of one of the hard drives :-(</p>
  233. <p>After I added a new 8 <abbr title="Giga Bytes">GB</abbr> <abbr
  234. title="Double Data Rate">DDR</abbr>3 module the server started normally.
  235. I thought everything is OK and left it, but then I tried to connect
  236. and wasn't able. So, I went back to check the server and on the
  237. console there were many <abbr title="Fourth extended filesystem">EXT4</abbr>
  238. error messages. I had to stop the machine again, check the devices in
  239. <abbr title="Basic Input/Output System">BIOS</abbr>. Since one of the
  240. hard drives was missing I immediately checked the connectors and solved
  241. the problem.</p>
  242. <p>I should have done this upgrade long ago, but until recently I
  243. though the memory is enough for all the services running. Anyway,
  244. the server has enough memory now.</p>]]></content>
  245.    <published>2020-04-16T17:29:55Z</published>
  246.    <updated>2020-04-16T17:49:59Z</updated>
  247.  </entry>
  248.  <entry>
  249.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=31</id>
  250.    <title type="html">Inaccessibility due to router replacement</title>
  251.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=31" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  252.    <author>
  253.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  254.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  255.    </author>
  256.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Today between 12:30 <a href="https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/eet">
  257. <abbr title="Eastern European Time">EET</abbr></a> and 14:30 <a
  258. href="https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/eet"><abbr
  259. title="Eastern European Time">EET</abbr></a> the server was not accessible
  260. due to router replacement and change of <abbr title="Internet Protocol">IP</abbr>
  261. addresses. Although, the replacement was planned and prepared previously, some
  262. unforeseen circumstances occurred with the configuration of the device itself
  263. as well as with the server.</p>
  264. <p>The expected change with the replacement is better network performance for
  265. the increasing outer and inner traffic.</p>]]></content>
  266.    <published>2017-12-17T20:10:15Z</published>
  267.    <updated>2017-12-17T20:10:15Z</updated>
  268.  </entry>
  269.  <entry>
  270.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=30</id>
  271.    <title type="html">Downtime for disk replace</title>
  272.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=30" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  273.    <author>
  274.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  275.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  276.    </author>
  277.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Last night while <a hreflang="bg" href="https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA_(%D0%91%D1%8A%D0%BB%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F)">all
  278. students were celebrating</a>, I spent replacing a failing <a
  279. href="https://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/64gb-ssd-830-series">Samsung
  280. 830</a>&nbsp;<abbr title="Solid State Drive">SSD</abbr> on the server.
  281. The disk was so rotten that it's copy with <code>dd</code> took about 5 hours,
  282. which is why the server was offline somewhere between 2017-12-08 22:00 <a
  283. href="https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/eet"><abbr
  284. title="Eastern European Time">EET</abbr></a> and 2017-12-09 05:00 <a
  285. href="https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/eet"><abbr
  286. title="Eastern European Time">EET</abbr></a>. The disk started failing in
  287. beginning of September, but recently the number of reallocated sectors become
  288. extremely high and I started detecting bad sectors on some system files. The
  289. read performance had also dropped and during the copy it fell to 5 <abbr
  290. title="Mega Bytes per second">MB/s</abbr> (!), which explains the fore
  291. mentioned slow copy of just 64 <abbr title="Giga Bytes">GB</abbr> between
  292. the old and new <abbr title="Solid State Drive">SSD</abbr>. The disk
  293. failed only after about 24 000 power on hours (i.e. about 2 years and 9 months),
  294. which is rather strange, but maybe this is the normal life span of consumer
  295. <abbr title="Solid State Drive">SSD</abbr>s?</p>
  296. <p>Anyway, the drive is now replaced with a brand new <a href="http://www.adata.com/us/feature/410">ADATA SU800</a>
  297. 128 <abbr title="Giga Bytes">GB</abbr>, which unfortunately is not yet in
  298. <code>smartctl</code> database (see <a href="https://www.smartmontools.org/ticket/954">ticket 954</a>).
  299. The server is back online and fully operational.</p>]]></content>
  300.    <published>2017-12-09T04:01:15Z</published>
  301.    <updated>2017-12-09T04:01:15Z</updated>
  302.  </entry>
  303.  <entry>
  304.    <id>https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=29</id>
  305.    <title type="html">Upgrade to Slackware 14.2</title>
  306.    <link href="https://sotirov-bg.net/news/?id=29" rel="alternate" type="text/html"/>
  307.    <author>
  308.      <name>Georgi Sotirov</name>
  309.      <email>gdsotirov@dir.bg</email>
  310.    </author>
  311.    <content type="html"><![CDATA[<p>Last Sunday (28/08) the server was upgraded to <a href="http://www.slackware.com/">Slackware</a>
  312. 14.2, which itself passed flawlessly, but then there was a need for re-install
  313. of all the additionally used Perl modules and upgrade of some packages (e.g. <a
  314. href="http://sotirov-bg.net/slackpack/search.cgi?name=openldap&amp;slack=142&amp;latestonly=1">OpenLDAP</a>,
  315. <a href="http://sotirov-bg.net/slackpack/search.cgi?name=rrdtool&amp;slack=142&amp;latestonly=1">RRDTool</a> and
  316. <a href="http://sotirov-bg.net/slackpack/search.cgi?name=freeradius&amp;slack=142&amp;latestonly=1">FreeRadius</a>),
  317. which I haven't upgraded/rebuilt yet.</p>
  318. <p>Yesterday, evening the datbase server was also upgraded to MySQL 5.7.13, so
  319. it now remains only to upgrade the kernel to a <abbr title="Long Term Support">LTS</abbr>
  320. version from 4.4 series.</p>]]></content>
  321.    <published>2016-08-30T09:34:17Z</published>
  322.    <updated>2017-01-06T11:56:35Z</updated>
  323.  </entry>
  324. </feed>
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