The Tech Bench: A Script for Fixing File Permissions
suPHP and FastCGI require files and folders to have a specific set of permissions/ownership different from other handlers. Without these permissions set correctly you will see a lot of errors such as: “403 Forbidden”, “500 Internal Server Error”, or simply generic errors that commonly have the word ‘permission’ in them.
It can be very time consuming to track down and check file permissions across a whole server. Luckily, fixing permissions and ownership on a server running cPanel can be scripted. One of the members of our MST, Colin Roche-Dutch, created a simple script for ServInt called ‘fixperms’ that you can wget to any cPanel server. Simply run the fixperms script, specifying the user (or all users), and the errors disappear. It is a good generic fix if you cannot find your permission problem, or if you have just switched your handler and need a quick way to change every user account on the server. Read more
Evaluating Disk Storage, Part 2: RAID
A savvy web hosting customer knows the importance of a storage solution that allows users to access and interact with their data quickly. In Part 1 of Evaluating Disk Storage, we talked about the benefits and drawbacks of different types of drives. But to assess the reliability and performance of an enterprise storage solution, it is important to know both the type of drive as well as the RAID configuration.
RAID arrays and controllers allow for much higher capacity, performance, and reliability than individual drives. And some of the surprising benefits and limits of each type of drive in a RAID array dictate the optimal choice in any given application. Read more
The Tech Bench: The Single Best Security Tip
Your server is only as secure as what you choose to serve.
Harsh words, but it needs to be said. At ServInt, we work very hard to deliver servers to our customers that are as secure as they can be. But every customization of and installation on a server creates holes in that security. It is simply the nature of the Internet and networking. If you have data to share, you must find ways for users to access that data.
Security is a balance. The most secure server is one that is powered down and not connected to the Internet. But obviously, this server is little more than an expensive brick. To be useful, clients need to customize their servers, installing various programs that serve data out to and receive data from users on the Internet. Read more
Jelastic Beta Updates
As many of you know, ServInt is in the midst of a beta test of the Jelastic Java cloud platform. Jelastic is a platform as a service offering that allows web developers to build and implement scalable Java applications in a cloud environment. It’s been a few months since the beta began and we thought we’d give you an update.
The beta test is a time when customers can take this new technology out for a spin to see what it can do. And in so doing, these customers allow the Jelastic team and ServInt to test the platform in real-world conditions. From the start, we’ve been impressed with the performance of Jelastic. The product is continually improving and the Jelastic team have been posting fixes to discovered issues very quickly. The product and the team have exceeded our expectations at every turn.
Since the beta has begun, we’ve had an incredible surge in usage with over 50 new customers per day. And they are really putting Jelastic through its paces.
Through it all, the Jelastic team has been adding features all the time. Just before the holidays, they announced the exciting addition of Apache CouchDB to Jelastic. Apache CouchDB allows for reliable database replication and scaling across multiple server locations, something ServInt is positioned for, with its east coast and west coast data centers.
As we look towards the end of the beta a little later this year, we are excited to be making final preparations to officially add Jelastic to our suite of hosting solutions. Check back soon for more details.
Kevin Nicastro is ServInt’s Vice President of Innovation and Technology.The Tech Bench: TLS/SSL Encryption for Your Website.
We’ve all logged onto websites with an https://… url. That little “s” in https designates that the connection is using TLS/SSL encryption, an added level of security when interacting with a website. The most common places to see this are on sites that collect personal information or payments, basically anything private that users wouldn’t want to escape into the world.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and its cousin, Transport Layer Security (TLS), are open standards for providing secure www service (plus mail, FTP and telnet). Originally proposed by Netscape, SSL uses RSA public-key encryption for specific TCP/IP ports. SSL competes with Secure-HTTP (S-HTTP). Read more
The Tech Bench: Plesk and cPanel log location reference guides
Ever wonder where the MST looks to investigate events on your server when you submit a ticket? Knowing the locations of various log files for both cPanel and Plesk can be invaluable when trying to understand why, when or how an event occurred on your server.
Below are breakdowns of log file locations for both control panels. Be sure to check the ServInt KnowledgeBase for handy (but large) graphic representations of of both cPanel/WHM and Plesk log locations as well. Read more
The Tech Bench: A few of our favorite links
When troubleshooting client servers, there are a few sites that the ServInt MST seems to go back to again and again. Whether it’s a reference page or a testing tool, the links below are just a few of the valuable resources our MST uses on a daily basis. And if you you’ve got a favorite, we’d love to hear about it.
intoDNS.com This a great little tool that looks into the health and configuration of your DNS and suggests any needed fixes. This is a great place to start when troubleshooting DNS issues or just checking the status of your nameserver setup.
MX Toolbox This site contains a few free tools for dns, nameserver, mx and whois lookups along with a bunch of other specific lookups in their SuperTool beta.
Traceroute tutorials on exit109.com Running a traceroute is an important part of troubleshooting a slow network connection. If you’re interested in digging a little deeper into networking and your server, this page is for you. It contains a great tutorial with just about everything you always wanted to know about running a traceroute and interpreting the output.
DNSstuff.com This is another site where you can complete a WHOIS lookup, run a traceroute or find IP information.
Exim Cheatsheet If you’re interested in something a little more advanced, this is a reference some of our techs use when troubleshooting Exim mail servers.
And of course there are our own resources. We have our KnowledgeBase as well as this very blog Series, The Tech Bench. And for our customers, the ServInt Forums are a great place to look for answers that our customers have found to many tech questions.
We hope you find these links as useful as we do. But if it’s all just a little overwhelming, don’t worry, that’s what we’re here for.
Note: By including a link on the list above, ServInt is not endorsing the purchase of any paid-for service. Also, though we tend to find the above links helpful, ServInt has no control over the accuracy of any third-party content or tools.
The Tech Bench is an ongoing blog series featuring the answers to common questions the ServInt MST fields everyday. You can also find more great tech tips in the ServInt KnowledgeBase.
Running out of CPU: Troubleshooting Slow Servers and Knowing When to Upgrade
Choosing the right size server package—and choosing a package that can be scaled easily—are important decisions in any hosting purchase. Simply buying a server with enough CPU, RAM, I/O and disk space may not be enough for customers anticipating future growth or spikes in traffic. And upping the size and cost of a server package during (or even before) a traffic spike may not always be the smartest use of a company’s money and time.
A website on a fast server on a fast network is going to be fast until the server runs out of something: CPU, RAM or I/O, or something at the software resource level like inodes. The places within your hosting infrastructure where resources are depleted first are your “bottlenecks.”
But server specifications don’t cause the bottleneck. They are simply the place where a theoretical limit collides with a real-world application. The following is a list of the five areas of interaction that can lead to a slow-down in service:
Read more
The Tech Bench: Jailshell in cPanel
Jailshell is a level of shell (SSH) access that limits a user to his or her specific directory structure. Under regular SSH when users log into their servers they are taken to their home directory and can execute commands within their directory structure.
Under SSH that user can also travel to any directoy on the server and even use “ls” to get a directory listing, they just cannot open the files or interact with them. Jailshell, on the other hand, logs users into their directory structure and locks them in (much like a prison or jail cell), disallowing them from openly traversing the directory structure outside of their home.
Jailshell is easily implementable in cPanel. You can switch an account’s shell access in WHM by navigating to Manage Shell Access, under the Account Functions header. Read more
Evaluating Disk Storage, Part 1
Do you run SATA or SAS Drives in your servers?
We hear this question all the time from inquisitive consumers who want to know more than simply how many gigs of disk space they will have access to with a particular server package. But some customers who ask this question are under the false assumption that simply knowing the type of drive tells you whether a drive is good or bad. This ignores some important considerations when evaluating disk storage.
When considering disk space and configurations, it is important to focus on both what kind of drive is used and what kind of an array it is a part of. In this post we’ll focus on the kinds of drives available in today’s market. Read more
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