2010-08-08 - Upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
With the release of the first patch release to Ubuntu Server, v10.04.1, vmlinux.org has now taken the plunge and landed on an LTS no less. This is the last major upgrade in a while and unless we find motivating reason to move we will likely not upgrade again until the next LTS release. As usual, please get in touch with Jakob or Joachim should you experience any problems.2010-08-02 - New collocation provider: HostIT!
After more than a decade of hosting at Quicknet we today moved vmlinux.org, and its affiliate domains, to a new collocation center at HostIT. The move means changing to a new IP# for vmlinux.org and some of the affiliates.2010-07-21 - Planned downtime & some announcements
A scheduled disk replacement on the server today led to a downtime of apx. 2h today 10:30 CET. Nothing out of the ordinary to report, but if you experience any problems, please report them to your tier one contact. Also, we are planning to move the server to a new location, so you may experience some loss of connectivity in the near future. During this we will also move the primary DNS server, which in turn may cause temporary reachability problems. However, with some luck you may not notice anything at all. On a different note, GNU Nano has been upgraded to v2.2.4. See the GNU Nano v2.2.4 Announcement for details.2010-04-17 - Upgrade to new mail system
We just upgraded the IMAP server from uw-imapd to Dovecot. There were some serious problem with uw-imapd, it was very unstable. Dovecot is hopefully much better and hopefully the webmail will also be more stable for it. You should still have your old mail folders, but you might have to re-subscribe to your folders.2010-03-24 - Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10
We've just had an upgrade to Ubuntu server 9.10 and are experiencing some temporary difficulties. Please alert the system administrators if you find any lasting problems.2009-12-30 - Site Updates
- The webmail, http://www.roundcube.net/, has been upgraded the latest version, v0.3.1. If you experience any problems, please let us know.
- The GNU Nano, http://www.nano-editor.org/, has been upgraded to the latest version, v2.2.1. See
/usr/local/src/nano-2.2.1/doc/for sample~/.nanorcdot files. - The authentication problems in the wiki have been fixed. All registered vmlinux users can now use the wiki for collaboration again. Tip: See also http://piratepad.net for another useful online collaboration tool.
2009-07-23 - New Defaults for RoundCube Webmail
After successful tests we have now concluded that the main thing that causes problems in the RoundCube webmail is the "preview pane". Therefore it has been disabled in the system default settings. Another thing that has been disabled is the automatic image attachment preview, this eases the load on the server and is generally considered a good thing -- think spam.2009-06-29 - RoundCube Workaround!
Erika, one of our dear patient users, came up with a workaround to her problems with the new webmail, RoundCube. She recommends disabling the preview pane and activate the setting empty trash on exit. That way she can drag and drop emails to the trash can and reduce the loading time at login. Thanks for the tip, Erika!2009-06-27 - Planning the Switch to Dovecot
Due to the instability problems experienced with email we are in the process of switching from University of Washington's imapd to the Dovecot secure IMAP server. It is not yet decided when the switch will occur, we are still trying it out on a separate server. However, when the switch does occur you will not be able to access your email for a couple of hours. Unless you of course login to the server itself and run Alpine, the excellent Pine replacement, from the command line. Stay tuned for more updates.2009-06-14 - About the new webmail, Roundcube
Unfortunately, several of our users have experienced various problems with Roundcub, the new webmail application. There is a mix of problems really, some have INBOX corruptions (first email in ~/mbox file has corrupt header), others cannot delete email, at all. There have also been complaints about the time it now takes to access new mail. This latter complaint is probably due to server overload (100% CPU utilization), which in turn seems to be caused by some PHP code in Roundcube. We are investigating this. But we need to proceed with some caution, so we've setup a new virtual server to tryout a couple of things:- Ubuntu Postfix+Dovecot as a replacement to the Postfix & UW-Imapd combo that we've run so far. This hopefully corrects the INBOX corruptions. Note: none of our users have so far not lost a single mail, but it's annoying, to say the least.
- Possibly reinstate SquirrelMail as default webmail.
/Joachim
2009-05-23 - Server Upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04
Yep, last night we upgraded the new vmlinux server to Ubuntu 9.04 in the last preparations for migrating from the old Debian Sarge installation. Everything seems to work just fine, but then again we haven't migrated any users yet.
Users of our webmail service will notice a major change. We deciced to go with Roundcube this time instead of Squirrelmail. The biggest downside to that is perhaps some missing plugins, like a calendar. But the interface is a huge improvement so we hope the missing plugins are not a show stopper for anyone. Note: at the first login, make sure to configure your personal settings, e.g. sender email address (!), and send a test email to yourself!
As usual, for personal support contact Jakob or Joachim. If you ssh in to vmlinux you can connect to the iRC server using
irssi -c vmlinux.org /join #base
2009-02-15 - Progress on new installation
The new installation in another domU is starting to fall into place. Today the wiki and static web pages were migrated. The new server domU runs Ubuntu Server 8.04.2 with a few extras on top: Roundcube for webmail and Foswiki as the TWiki replacement. All very fine free/libre open source software. Remaining before the switch is yet another rsync with the old (current) server. An extensive test of posfix+amavis+spamd+postgrey and some other minor tuning.2008-11-29 - New Server!
We finally did it, we rolled out the brand new server! It was over two years ago that we first started realizing that the old server was starting to get crowded. By reducing storage, and migrating some too popular services we managed to survive and yet to expand. A handful new users have been added and a hidden iRC server has been setup to increase the interaction between users. Spam however is ever present. The new server runs Xen and the old server was simply migrated to a domU (guest) while the new installation runs on another (still hidden) domU. Over the course of the coming weeks we will be quietly working on setting up the new installation and when it is ready all services will be moved. As always, watch this space for updates! Update: Things should be back to normal now. Should you find anything still not working or with lesser performance, please report it to us. -- JoachimNilsson - 29 Nov 20082007-08-12 - Hurd Wiki Has Moved!
Today we moved the http://hurd.gnufans.org wiki to its new location at http://www.bddebian.com/~wiki/ (on a Hurd Machine!). We say thanks for this time and good luck to Thomas Schwinge and the Hurd community.2007-03-07 - No mail?
Yesterday we had an automatic upgrade of ClamAV go bad. This caused the mail server to reject almost everything as containing VIRUS. Hopefully we have fixed this now. Contact your sysadmin, over phone or other media if any problems should persist. /Jocke2006-07-04 - No news is good news?
Wow, almost a year has passed since the last entry. I guess it is like they say after all; "No news is good news". Almost, there are some bad news worth mentioning:- we are slowly but surely running out of disk
- the spam problem continues to hit us hard
/Jocke
2005-08-14 - Are you having email problems?
You may be affected by spam. Without even knowing about it some of your friends emails may have been caught by our SpamAssassin. Next time someone says; "Didn't you get my email?" Think about mailing your sysadmin at vmlinux.org. Thanks for your attention.2005-05-22 - Change your password in the Webmail
The vmlinux webmail now supports changing password. Click on "Options", in the top bar, and then select "Change Password". At the bottom of that page a long list of random passwords are suggested \x{2014} pick one, some are actually easy to remember and probably a lot safer than you can figure out yourself.2005-04-02 - Project management
We finally setup a first shot at a proper SCM and project management tool, Trac. It is a quite flexible tool actually, integrating functionality such as per-project wiki and version control using Subversion with issue tracking. Our projects are available at http://vmlinux.org/projects/2005-03-02 - Webmail, Issue Tracker down
Due to a mishap in an automatic nightly software upgrade all PHP4 packages were removed, affecting the webmail and issue tracker services. This is now fixed.2005-02-15 - Server HW Upgrade
Yes! Today we finally upgraded ye ol' PII hog to a flashy new AMD Sempron w/ 1GiB RAM. Things are a little bit snappier than before. A huge thanks goes to Moggen for all the help.2005-01-18 - SpamAttack?
You might have noticed a slight increase of spam in your INBOX lately. This was caused by an update to the vmlinux SpamAssassin program. It seems the new Debian version did not like the format of both the configuration file and the spam database. Work is in progress to fix this. Update: Jan 23rd, 2005 - This should be fixed by now, anyone still experiencing problems should contact the sysadmins.2005-01-17 - Sending email was broken
Sending mails from vmlinux.org was broken today between 08:00 and 10:59. Mail to vmlinux.org was delayed but should arrive sometime today.2005-01-07 - Shoreline Firewall Installed
Today the vmlinux ShoreWall firewall went online. Please report any problems with access to your sysadmins. Update: Jan 12th, 2005 - Remember that regular IMAP access is not allowed, you must use secure IMAP (IMAPS). The logs reveal someone (IP# 213.100.4.21) trying to connect to regular IMAP. If you are that someone and cannot read your email, this is why. See below for configuring Mozilla Thunderbird on howto setup your email client.2004-12-12 - CSS Fixes
The vmlinux.org style sheet, CSS, has been fixed to let IE display the pages better. Enjoy!2004-11-23: Cannot send mail anymore?
It seems we lost SMTP over TLS mail sending on the 23rd. This just happened to coincide with a server reboot and went unnoticed until late on the 24th. Sorry! Update: Nov 25th 00:34 CET - This is fixed now. It turned out that the SASL authentication daemon could not be reached by our chrooted Postfix. This is fixed now. For future reference, the SMTP/SSL method always works due to it running on a completely different port (465) than SMTP/TLS (25). In Mozilla Thunderbird this means changing the SMTP server settings from TLS to the SSL radio button under Account Settings...2004-11-21 - Hurd Wiki h4x0r3d
The GNU/Hurd wiki was hacked today. The perpetrator used a known exploit in the TWiki engine the local sysadmins had not yet fixed. The Hurd wiki will be unavailable until a fix has been deployed and tested. Update: Nov 21st 18:30 CET - Reenabled the Hurd wiki after patching the hole, testing the system and audited logs.2004-10-16 - Exim to Postfix migration day
Today is MTA migration day. We're moving to Postfix from our old stale Exim3 installation. This will cause a temporary mail stop on vmlinux.org, gnufans.org, alesand.com and moggen.org tonight between 21:00 and 03:00 CET. Update: Oct 17th 22:45 CET - Remote SMTP access has been restored. Clients, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, can once again connect using TLS over port 25 or SSL on port 465. Buggy clients, such as older versions of Outlook Express, are now also supported due to the upgrade from Exim to Postfix as mailer. Do report problems to your sysadmins, especially if you are co-located on vmlinux.org and rely on our free "virtual domain" hosting.2004-10-07 - Apache2 transition complete
Today was the big transition from apache and apache-ssl to apache2. So if you experienced any problems that was probably it. Why did we do this, why did we leave the safe harbor that is apache 1.3? Well, it's not only to run the latest and greatest in webserver software, but also to be able to kick out apache-ssl. Previously we had two sets of webservers running on vmlinux. One for regular http requests and another for secure transactions, https, usually only the webmail used this. This took up a lot of server resources and with apache2 we can now run everything under one "roof", so to speak. Please alert the system administrators if you discover any problems.2004-09-28 - New design
The new web design has been put into place, finally. The old pages never really felt finished, and as a result nothing new ever got published. Now the web is based around the TWiki engine with a lot of fancy style sheets and SSI work on top. I hope you like it. /Jocke2004-09-20 - How to read your email
There are mainly three ways to read your email on vmlinux.org:- The webmail
- Login with an SSH client, like putty, and then use mutt.
- Download a mail client, for example: Mozilla Thunderbird
Using Mozilla Thunderbird
Once known as Mozilla/Netscape Mail, Thunderbird is a very user friendly mail client with support for multiple accounts and spam filtering. It is the recommended mail client to connect to vmlinux.org.- Download and run the Thunderbird installer.
- Use "vmlinux.org" for both incoming (IMAP) and outgoing email (SMTP).
- For incoming email use IMAP and check SSL (secure connection) but not secure authentication.
- Check the TLS option for outgoing email (SMTP/TLS).
- For both IMAP and SMTP you need to supply your login name.
- When done with the configuration wizard you will be prompted for your password.