Digital Ocean

It’s been quiet here for a while, but be things have been happening behind the scenes. In case your wondering the site (and surroundings) have been seeing a number of updates which eventually may make it into separate posts.

• I’m running on a Digital Ocean droplet. It was provisioned as an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which is dead by now (as in no more updates including security updates). The server has now been roll up to an Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in place.
• As I was messing around with the server, I’ve added IPv6 support.
• The DNS has been updated to have full support for DNSSEC.
• My Let’s Encrypt Certificates now has automated certificate renewals and I’ve upgraded to CAA support.
• The Webserver has been switched from Apache to NGINX.
• The PHP has been switched from PHP 5.6 series to a modern 7.0.
• I’m adopting full Git-backed backup of all server setup and configuration using BitBucket.org. It’s not complete but most config files have been added and managed using GitHub.

These was the majority of changes on the site and server the past few months. With these updates in place, I might get back to producing content for the site.

As stated earlier this site is now running on a DigitalOcean droplet. A droplet is basically the same as having a “real server”, and when running a bare bones machine, it isn’t born with the ability to handle email - receiving nor sending. As a number of web apps require the ability to handle mail, I had to setup facilities on the server (or droplet) to handle mail.

The “default” way to do this would probably be to install sendmail or postfix, as they are full-featured mail server, but configuring a mail-server, keeping it secure and updated is a nightmare I’d like to avoid. Therefore it was time to look for another option.

df -lP |awk '{sum += $3} END {printf "%d GiB\\n", sum/2\*\*20}'

- via @clmagic

So, I’ve been moving the site to a VPS - a Virtual Private Server. A VPS is basically the same as a physical server to which you can’t have physical access. When you get your virtual server, most likely it will be setup with a basic disk image with an Operating System and a root account. In my case at DigitalOcean I choose to setup an Ubuntu Linux image and here are the first moves you should take after creating the VPS to get the basic security in place.

A firewall is a basic filter that can provide an efficient protection to your server by only allowing the traffic in and out as the rules of the firewall allows it. Setting up a firewall on a Ubuntu Linux server does not need to be complicated - in fact the one used in this example is called “uncomplicated firewall”.

To get the firewall up and running make sure it’s installed through the package manager. Login and switch to a root shell, then install the firewall with this command:

This site (and my other site in Danish) have been hosted on a cheap shared hosting site a few years. As shared hosting platforms go, the service and features at GigaHost was quite reasonable, but their servers seemed continuously overloaded and the site had a few issues from time to time. I’ve been moving everything from the shared hosting platform to the smallest available VPS server at DigitalOcean.

Why the move?

• Performance on shared hosting platforms never seems to amaze.
• Limited set of features - no shell access, dummy selfcare interface, reasonable features - but limited.
• Was dirt cheap when I moved in, but not as much - the VPS is actually priced lower.

How did I move the site?

The various parts of the move will probably be described in details in further posts on the site in the foreseeable future, but basically the steps included: