Kernel Upgrades

[GatorNate]

We will be preforming kernel upgrades on all of our shared and reseller servers tonight. We expect there to be a brief 5-7 minutes of downtime on each server. Once they are up we expect that this will increase our stability and security.

[arnieh]

Could we not have received an advance notice so we could tell our customers?

[vegasb2k]

Does this kernel thing affect any particular type of software or programs that we may have running on our sites? I am not familiar with that at all and am wondering if I should check anything after the upgrade?

(I know with php upgrades, a few scripts stopped working on a few of my sites until I fixed them.)

No worries and thanks in advance,

Greg

[ccn1]

Originally Posted by GatorNate

We will be preforming kernel upgrades on all of our shared and reseller servers tonight. We expect there to be a brief 5-7 minutes of downtime on each server. Once they are up we expect that this will increase our stability and security.

Spent hours working on WHMCS and site stuff last night, just noticed that our live sites are down too which connect to DBS's and then noticed all my databases have disappeared !

If you say it will be up shortly then fine, nearly chocked on my milk shake when nothing worked

[arnieh]

Ours came back up but not before one of my customers woke me up at 2:30AM saying that his site was down. Frustrating that we couldn't have had any notice about this.

[Jmatt]

I had to go to live chat for them to direct me here. Thankfully, I work overnights so I wasn't woken up, but I really don't like outage alerts going to my phone from upset users.

[Jackuul]

Were the server times reset? I am seeing thinks like "Last Visited at 9pm" and "The time is now 4pm" etc.

[GatorNate]

Guys and Gals,

I understand that this was sudden and without much notice. There is a new variant of a recent NULL pointer dereference exploit that has been released. The exploit doesn't seem to affect us due to our kernel being more stripped down then the average kernel. We have no need to have such option as PF_APPLETALK, PF_IPX, PF_IRDA, PF_X25, PF_AX25, PF_BLUETOOTH, PF_IUCV... enabled in our kernel, which this exploit affects.

There could still be other NULL pointer exploits, in other files, so we want to be on the safe side, and include a patch, and some PaX options to increase our protection from any variants of this in the wild.

Its a hard call to make, but we decided that we needed to err on the side of caution and security.

We are continuing with the upgrades now and will get them done as soon as we safely can.

@Jackuul There are some issues with the rdate server not updating all the times on reboot, we are looping through to correct those as we go.

Nate C
Level2 Admin and Graveyard Supervisor
Hostgator.com

[mykee]

How much time this upgrade? Because this time error on my site have a one hour...

[GatorNate]

Mykee,

This should take 10-15 minutes. Can you PM me the primary domain of the account you are on so I can review this?

[mykee]

PM send to you and thanks for help!

[dlgoodchild]

Mine is _still_ not up!! Very frustrating to have no ETA nor to have been told about this happening...

Please check 74.54.219.50

Regards,

Dave

[Metal-R-US]

My site on ccx still isn't working either, I see the load is at 15.xx right now and it has been up for almost 45 minutes now. Ticket has been submitted...

[LitomoSilver]

Looks like mine got whapped.

Probably due to the upgrades.

Edit: Edsel down?

[Domain]

My site is still not up, more update please.

Thanks

[Metal-R-US]

It's been an hour now since the update on ccx and still not working.

[pph]

I'm really hacked off as all my clients are down. I've had screaming phone call after screaming phone call. Maybe we should have been notified and maybe, just maybe they should have done this work over the weekend when the outage would have been limited.

[pnkllr]

brabus down!

[bluemirrow]

Originally Posted by GatorNate

We will be preforming kernel upgrades on all of our shared and reseller servers tonight. We expect there to be a brief 5-7 minutes of downtime on each server. Once they are up we expect that this will increase our stability and security.

According here there will be 5-7 minutes down time,if you talk to hostgator live chat operator downtime will be 15-20 minutes but all websites are on my reseller account down more than 1 hour now ? Hope I will be compensated for down time

[rembrandt]

Has anybody had their site back up in 20 minutes?

[Singod]

Do you people have a problem with being secure? Honestly the complaints aren't even necessary if you want they can leave the exploit to rest and you will all wish you had just gone with the flow down the road.

[Metal-R-US]

90 minutes and counting, an update would be appreciated.

[storm.earth.fire]

My domain and all sites hosted on my account aren't working for two days now, and live chat support service is just redirecting me here. 10 minutes is ok, hour or two is ok, but two days is not ok.

[bluemirrow]

No body have problem with being secure ok.We should have receive an advance notice so we could tell our customers.We have been told down time will be between 5-7-15-20 minutes but now almost 2 hours and all websites are still down.

[rembrandt]

Originally Posted by Singod

Do you people have a problem with being secure? Honestly the complaints aren't even necessary if you want they can leave the exploit to rest and you will all wish you had just gone with the flow down the road.

I don't see anyone complaining, they just want to know why their sites aren't up in 20 minutes. Do we want security? Of course we do and I think everyone here understands that server upgrades need to be done but many people here have clients hosted on their accounts, sites that make money for their businesses. All they need, is to know what's going on and the best way to do that is to notify the necessary people beforehand.

Is that really too much to ask?