Hello, This is a notice to inform that we have discontinued our free to use IP Announce/BYOIP Services via AS205320.
This service was provided to our end-customers as a means to facilitate BYOIP (bring-your-own-IP) allowing for easier, cheaper and long term expansion of services on our platform. For example: Customers could rent a dedicated server from our platform and IP addresses externally and use them together for use as VPS host-nodes.
Over the past months, this free to use service has been targeted by various groups who have used it for everything but long term expansion of services and ultimately created a lot of abuse which is not something we expected given the amount of “work”, “documentation” and “technical effort” required to rent IPv4 addresses from the open market.
We implemented various allow/deny checks on customer enquiries for this product on our end and as of October 2023 were left with just a few customers who were allowed to access this feature, but ultimately the abuse didn’t stop due to the nature of webhosting services which can be resold across multiple levels.
At this point of time, we have no option but to retire this free to use service which was used by a few customers but ultimately generated more than multiple years worth of abuse in a few months.
The impact of this given the active pool of customers we had using this service in October 2023, should be NIL across our userbase, but we feel it’s fair to add this announcement so that anyone who is referred to us from word-of-mouth can find this blog post as a reference too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Does this impact my VPS Hosting with you? A: No, none of our VPS hosting customers had a BYOIP/IP Announcement, hence this does not impact you.
Q: Does this impact my shared hosting / reseller hosting with you? A: No, none of our shared hosting / reseller hosting had a BYOIP/IP Announcement, hence this does not impact you.
Q: Does this impact my dedicated server with you? A: Apart from a single digit number of customers across 2023, and a even smaller single digit number in October 2023, none of our dedicated server customers had a BYOIP/IP Announcement, hence this does not impact you.
Thus, the impact of this feature being discontinued is, simply: NIL/non-existent to our customer base, apart from the customers who used this service and no longer can. So, If you didn’t use it, you aren’t affected 🙂
Hello, In this week’s feature highlight, we look at How to Enable BBR on Ubuntu 23.10
BBR stands for Bottleneck Bandwidth and RTT is a congestion control system. You can enable TCP BBR on your Linux desktop to improve the overall web surfing experience. By default, Linux uses the Reno and CUBIC congestion control algorithm.
Enabling BBR in Linux can help improve network performance by optimizing bandwidth utilization, reducing latency, and mitigating packet loss. We’ll show you how this is enabled:
Run the following command to check available congestion control algorithms,
Hello, In this week’s feature highlight, we look at How to Install Node.js on Ubuntu 23.10
Node.js is an open-source, server-side runtime environment that allows you to run JavaScript on the server. It is designed to be efficient and lightweight and is commonly used to build scalable network applications and web services.
To install Node.js on an Ubuntu 23.10 server, you can follow these steps:
Login to the Ubuntu 23.10 server and update the package repository information.
apt update
Install NVM manager
NVM, which stands for Node Version Manager, is a popular tool for managing multiple versions of Node.js on a single machine. It allows you to switch between different Node.js versions and manage global and project-specific versions with ease.
To install nvm, you can use the following command in your terminal:
To install a specific Node.js version, use the following command. Here, we are installing v21.0.0. If you want to install another version, replacing v21.0.0 with the version number you want:
nvm install 21.0.0
Output:
root@vps:~# nvm install 21.0.0
Downloading and installing node v21.0.0...
Downloading https://nodejs.org/dist/v21.0.0/node-v21.0.0-linux-x64.tar.xz...
############################################################################################################## 100.0%
Computing checksum with sha256sum
Checksums matched!
Now using node v21.0.0 (npm v10.2.0)
Creating default alias: default -> 21.0.0 (-> v21.0.0)
root@vps:~#
And check the version of the Node.js once the installation is done.
In this week’s feature highlight, we look at How to Install GCC on Debian 12
GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection is a compiler system developed to support various programming languages. GCC is the standard compiler for most projects related to GNU and Linux, including the Linux kernel.
Installing GCC on Debian
Debian repositories contain build-essential package which contains the GCC compiler, g++ and make
Debian an existing system by running following command
apt upgrade
apt install build-essential
If you want to install the manual page for GCC, run the below command,
apt-get install manpages-dev
After installing, to verify that GCC is successfully installed by checking gcc version,
gcc --version
Output:
root@server:~# gcc --version
gcc (Debian 12.2.0-14) 12.2.0
Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
root@server:~#
Compiling a Hello World Example
Create a basic C code source, eg: let’s create a hello world C program and open hello.c text file,
In this week’s feature highlight, we look at How to Install and use PHP Composer on Debian 12
Composer is a dependency manager for the programming language, PHP. It functions as some sort of project manager that helps the programmer manage dependencies that will be used on a project-to-project basis.
Installing Composer on Debian 12
First, need to check for any pending system updates,
root@vps:~# php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
All settings correct for using Composer
Downloading...
Composer (version 2.5.8) successfully installed to: /usr/local/bin/composer
Use it: php /usr/local/bin/composer
root@vps:~#
If a new Composer version is available, update the package by running the following command.
composer self-update
Use Composer in PHP Project
mkdir ~/my-first-composer-project
cd ~/my-first-composer-project
Initialize a new composer.json and install the carbon package by running the following command.
composer require nesbot/carbon
Output:
root@vps:~/my-first-composer-project# composer require nesbot/carbon
Do not run Composer as root/super user! See https://getcomposer.org/root for details
Continue as root/super user [yes]? yes
Info from https://repo.packagist.org: #StandWithUkraine
./composer.json has been created
Running composer update nesbot/carbon
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies
Lock file operations: 5 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
- Locking nesbot/carbon (2.67.0)
- Locking symfony/polyfill-mbstring (v1.27.0)
- Locking symfony/polyfill-php80 (v1.27.0)
- Locking symfony/translation (v6.3.0)
- Locking symfony/translation-contracts (v3.3.0)
....
After the installation is complete, you can see that Composer created two files composer.json and composer.lock along with a vendor directory.
ls -l
Output:
root@vps:~/my-first-composer-project# ls -l
total 28
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 60 Jun 13 20:55 composer.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16387 Jun 13 20:55 composer.lock
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Jun 13 20:55 vendor
root@vps:~/my-first-composer-project#
Create a new file named testing.php and paste the following content.
<?php
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';
use Carbon\Carbon;
printf("Now: %s", Carbon::now());
Next, if you want to update the package then you can use the following command.
composer update
Output:
root@vps:~/my-first-composer-project# composer update
Do not run Composer as root/super user! See https://getcomposer.org/root for details
Continue as root/super user [yes]? yes
Composer is operating significantly slower than normal because you do not have the PHP curl extension enabled.
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies
Nothing to modify in lock file
Installing dependencies from lock file (including require-dev)
Nothing to install, update or remove
Generating autoload files
5 packages you are using are looking for funding.
Use the `composer fund` command to find out more!
No security vulnerability advisories found
root@vps:~/my-first-composer-project#
In this week’s feature highlight, we look at How to Install Elasticsearch on Debian 12
Elasticsearch is a highly scalable open-source full-text search and analytics engine. It allows you to store, search, and analyze big volumes of data quickly and in near real-time. Elasticsearch is an open-source developed in Java and used by many big organizations around the world.
Install OpenJDK-11
First, update the packages index and install the OpenJDK-11 with the following commands.
apt update
OpenJDK packages are available under native apt repositories. You can simply use apt-cache search command to search the available java version for your Debian system.
apt-cache search openjdk
Output:
root@vps:~# apt-cache search openjdk
openjdk-17-dbg - Java runtime based on OpenJDK (debugging symbols)
openjdk-17-demo - Java runtime based on OpenJDK (demos and examples)
openjdk-17-doc - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) documentation
openjdk-17-jdk - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK)
openjdk-17-jdk-headless - OpenJDK Development Kit (JDK) (headless)
openjdk-17-jre - OpenJDK Java runtime, using Hotspot JIT
Now install openjdk latest version,
apt-get install openjdk-17-jre
Output:
root@vps:~# apt-get install openjdk-17-jre
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
adwaita-icon-theme alsa-topology-conf alsa-ucm-conf at-spi2-common at-spi2-core ca-certificates-java dconf-gsettings-backend
dconf-service fontconfig
After installation, check the version of JAVA.
java -version
Output:
root@vps:~# java -version
openjdk version "17.0.6" 2023-01-17
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 17.0.6+10-Debian-1)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 17.0.6+10-Debian-1, mixed mode, sharing)
root@vps:~#
Install Elasticsearch
Install GnuPG2 Package by running the following command.
root@vps:~# wget -qO - https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | apt-key add -
Warning: apt-key is deprecated. Manage keyring files in trusted.gpg.d instead (see apt-key(8)).
OK
root@vps:~#
Next, add the Elasticsearch repository to the system by the following command.
sh -c 'echo "deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list'
After adding the repository to your system. Update cache and then install Elasticsearch packages on your system.
apt update
apt install elasticsearch
Output:
root@vps:~# apt install elasticsearch
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
elasticsearch
After installing the Elasticsearch package, Start and enable the elasticsearch service with the following command.
root@vps:~# systemctl enable elasticsearch.service
Synchronizing state of elasticsearch.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install.
Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable elasticsearch
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/elasticsearch.service → /lib/systemd/system/elasticsearch.service.
root@vps:~#
Configure Elasticsearch
Once the elasticsearch has been installed on your system, open the elasticsearch.yml configuration file.
nano /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
Search for the line that contains network.host, uncomment it, and change the value to 0.0.0.0.
Set the network host to 0.0.0.0 to listen on all interfaces and make it available publicly,
network.host: 0.0.0.0
In case you want to configure this to be private/local to your machine. You will have to set the network.host to 127.0.0.1, so the content is not public.
Add discovery.type: single-node under the discovery section,
discovery.type: single-node
Save and exit the file once modified and restart the Elasticsearch service for the changes to take effect.
systemctl restart elasticsearch
Install and enable firewall using below command,
apt install ufw -y
ufw enable
Output:
Command may disrupt existing ssh connections. Proceed with operation (y|n)? y
Firewall is active and enabled on system startup
root@vps:~#
Now, allow the port and reload the firewall using the following command.
ufw allow 9200
ufw reload
Output:
root@vps:~# ufw allow 9200
Rules updated
Rules updated (v6)
root@vps:~# ufw enable
Command may disrupt existing ssh connections. Proceed with operation (y|n)? y
Firewall is active and enabled on system startup
root@vps:~#
Enter it into your browser’s to the server hostname or IP address followed by port #9200