Hello Thunixers!
Another month, and more users on board!
Not too much has been going on as of late, due to time constraints for
the admin team here, as well as just a low-volume of requests. Likely
due to a few things, mainly, it's summer for most of our users, and
well, Thunix has most services folks need. So, if it ain't broke, don't
fix it :)
The biggest change has been the addition of our wiki, which has some
good documentation there already. If there's a document you want to see
there, add it with a PR, or ask someone to write it up for you. It's
not particularly difficult, it's just Markdown.
In the roadmap for the next few months will be a hardware upgrade, but
we really need your help for this. In order to migrate to new hardware,
and in the long term, reduce monthly costs, we will need to pay for two
servers for one month. So, I'm letting you know now, all donations
coming in now will be funneled into the "Hardware upgrade bucket". It's
not a very high cost, we're looking at something around 30€ total for
this, maybe a euro or two more. This is ~$32US. So, if you can donate,
this is the time to do it. To date, we've received a total of $12US in
donations, which has gone towards current server leasing costs (Total of
$9US after fees, and I spent 1USD on coffee lol). I would like to have
the hardware upgrade done by December, if possible.
All that being said: I want to make sure nobody is feeling pressured to
donate. If you can donate, great! If not, that's cool too! We still
welcome you to be a part of this community!
Also, if there is anything you'd like to see offered as a service, let
us know! If it's doable, we'll do it. At worst, we'll say "No", but
also let you know why we can't. Most of the time, we say "Yes" though :)
So, here's to another month, and many more!
Ubergeek/ub3g33k
Morning of 3 August 2019, alarms notified me that there was an issue with system name resolution. After
troubleshooting what was going on, we discovered two of our name servers were not responding to queries.
We manually changed the resolvers on the server immediatley, and all started working fine. Subsequently, the
ansible playbooks were updated with the new name servers.
After we began the process of notifier users that the service disruption was over, it was noted our IRC server had
split from the network, due to resolution issues. We reconnected to hub.tilde.chat, and that was resolved.
Total time of the disruption was 53 minutes. We apologize for the disruption, and are working to ensure this
doesn't happen in the future.
Hey peoples!
New stuff this month? Ya loving Debian Buster yet? Hope so, we upgrade
the OS this month from Stretch to Buster. Had some hiccups, but
generally, it went well, without too much issue.
Also, we���ve gotten $5 in donations this month :) Thank you all for your
support, past and present. Operating costs are the same as they have
been.
While doing some tinkering around, I installed a few static site
generators. Feel free to play around with them, and use them! We also
have some new members, and some folks working on some projects. The wiki
is coming along well, so feel free to contribute your how-tos and such.
So, while the past few weeks have been a bit of work, it���s a small
number of items, individually. So, it seems like not too much has
happened, but its been a busy month.
Hop onto IRC or post in iris if you have any questions, concerns, or
comments :)
Ubergeek/ub3g33k
The upgrade to Debian Buster is complete! Enjoy all the cool, and new, hotness!
Open an issue in the thunix/ansible repo on tildegit, if you encounter any issues.
.
We will be doing the OS upgrade from Debian 9 to Debian 10 over the next few days. Please keep in mind that access to services may be sporadic, and we are doing everything possible to ensure zero data
loss, and minimal downtime.
Worst case, the upgrade will be rolled back, from a snapshot of the machine.
Question, concerns? Feel free to hit me up :)
Ubergeek/Ub3g33k
Another Month!
We are at month 7 for Thunix.net!
Newly, over the past month, we have a wiki now! It's an effort led by
contribute via tildegit, by opening a PR at:
https://tildegit.org/thunix/wiki
It's all in markdown, so it's pretty easy to contribute too. And, if you
mess something up? No worries! It's a wiki! We can revert :)
Also, new this month, we've made an official process and tool to provision
MySQL/MariaDB databases (It's MariaDB, btw). All you need to do is
request one, and we'll gladly add it :)
No donations this month, and costs to operate the server still sit at
feel the need to do so, via https://thunix.net/donate.php
Iris is getting some usage too, so make sure you poke in there, via the
cli.
All in all, new features, new stuff, and looking forward to seeing other
contributions and new features come in from our users.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Sysadmin;
ubergeek/ub3geek
Hello again!
It's that time already, for our monthly update :)
Well, to start, if you didn't notice already, we had a "hiccup" with our
ansible repo on tildegit. In the process, we lost all of our pulls and
all of our issues (Opened and closed). Sucks, but not all that bad, the
code powering the system is safe and sound, thanks to the distributed
nature of git :)
We did get some donations in, totalling $5. This brings our monthly net
to -$31.64 USD. No fears! We're still good, don't worry! If you care
to donate, see https://thunix.net/donate.php
We're looking to get some new features added soon, and we'll announce
those when they're ready, but I can promise you: They're cool :)
We added a new mirror this past month as well, and we're now hosting a
mirror of the Apache Foundation's projects. This month also found us
adding 6 more users :) Let's welcome them to Thunix!
Also, a new feature/service: Thunix is now available as an onion service.
You can hit Thunix's ssh and web interface via thunixme5v4rnoby.onion.
torsocks is also available via the shell, so you can explore onion
services that others host as well.
Starting this month, we will be aging out accounts that have not been
logged into for over 6 months. Logging into email, ZNC, or other services
do not count, you MUST log into the shell in order to reset the login
days. Pop into IRC, or send an email if you have any concerns about this.
All in all, a good month, and we hope to keep them coming :)
Due to various reasons, we've decided to age out accounts, that see no
login activity on Thunix. We are a community, based around the usage
and learning surrounding UNIX and Linux systems.
What it seems some have taken that to mean is that it's a place to pop
up bots, and never be seen again.
There are other services, far more appropriate for this sort of thing,
specifically, not a shared environment, such as Thunix.
I do understand that this will come as a change to many, since
originally, Thunix.org was a open-ended shell provider, without much of
a mission other than that. Thunix, under the new staff, wants to build
more of a community, rather than a service provider.
To this end, we will be basing the cutoff on shell login times. In
order to keep your account active, you'll need to login into the shell
periodically. While you're logged in, check out the many service
available only via your shell account, such as iris, and the built-in
chat (weechat + IRC relay), etc.
If you have any questions, or concerns, feel free to email the list for
discussion, or email any of the current staff with them, and we'll get
back to you as quickly as we can.
Your Neighborhood Sysadmin;
Ubergeek/ub3g33k
Another month, another update!
Not too much to announce, as far as front end changes. New user requests should happen much faster now that we've written/stolen a tool from tilde.team that we can use to expedite user creation, and automation of a bunch of the steps we take to onboard users.
We're considering adding in user aging for accounts. Lots of accounts get created, and then never logged into. This can actually post a security problem for the system, as often times, accounts get created now, to be used months from today for botnets and the like. Let us know what your thoughts are on a reasonable time to age off users. At this time, I am personally leaning towards 180 days. Plenty of time to log into your shell, and use it a bit. And, once every 6 months isn't much to ask, since we expect members to actually contribute to the community, anyways.
We've terminated one account already for running a botnet member from here, and we'll keep a vigilant eye for any others.
This leads to another point: Just running a znc process doesn't count for login. Neither does checking your email. You'll need to actually log into the shell, in order to reset the counter. You should, anyways, since we have a lot of services internally, that we don't offer external access too :)
We are also looking at terminating the minecraft and minetest instances here. If anyone is using them, speak up now, or forever hold you peace! Not really. We wouldn't be deleting anything, just shutting down the processes, and removing them from the backup scheme.
We do need to welcome our newest sysadmin here: fosslinux. Give them a warm welcome if you see them around.
And again, any questions, or concerns, feel free to drop myself, or any of the other admins a line.
Ubergeek/ub3g33k
