14.04 is reaching EOL what next?

1

I want to know about the progress around forward-porting MIAB.

14.04 will reach EOL Next year!

I wanted to know some overview of what is planned as the next supported version and when will it be available?

2

See Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) at its Github.

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3

Seems like there is some work going around already.
Please close this topic.

4

This is going to be a nightmare for those who use VPS providers.

5

Curious!! Why is that?

6

A lot of vps providers use a custom kernel module to monitor servers. This could pose problems during an upgrade. Especially if your provider doesnā€™t have an 18.04 image yet

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7

Most providers will only roll out ā€œupdateā€ image after 18.04.1 is out sometime in July/August. I donā€™t really see a problem with that. MIAB sets notify=never in update managerā€™s config. If it is overridden by users, Theyā€™ll be prompted for 16.04 (which wonā€™t go through no matter what) so they have a choice to run do-release-upgrade -d which should theoretically jump them directly to 18.04 only when their VPS provider has rolled out 18.04 update packages. Otherwise, it wonā€™t find anything.

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8

@murgero

We already have this issue. We use time4vps which are OK. The problem is that their VPS service is based around OpenVZ.

As far as we know there is no upgrade path at all, so if you are on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for a server, you are stuck with it. The only ā€˜upgradeā€™ is get a new machine, install a later version of Ubuntu on and then migrate to the new machine. We checked and were rather shocked by the answer. Iā€™d be interested if other OpenVZ VPS providers say the same.

Sadly we have 10 servers on Ubuntu 14.04, some of which are very big and hairy servers.

9

apt-get dist-upgrade doesnā€™t work for you? (EDIT: Backup first!!!)

10

Mail-In-A-Box and OpenVZ normally do not play well together. For some reason, Time4Vps was an exception. I used them for 2 years ā€¦ granted, I had to make some tweaks to the initial OS as it was an extremely stripped down version of Ubuntu compared to say Digital Oceans install, but it worked.

Then I was forced to move from Time4Vps. I used other OpenVZ providers with horrible results until I discovered that OpenVZ was not suitable. I wish that there was some guide or documentation to that fact as it would have saved me hours of grief!

I guess the point that I am trying to make is that OpenVZ should generally be avoided for Mail-In-A-Box installs.

11

@murgero

apt-get dist-upgrade doesnā€™t work as they use OpenVZ.

I have to say that I have not any other issues with MAIB on Time4VPS. I just installed it and it works. We had issues with NFS as the kernel did not work properly.

Iā€™m just looking through the support tickets now:

  1. Useless at telling us the servers are going down.
  2. Canā€™t clone servers.
  3. Canā€™t upgrade distributions, hereā€™s their exact words

"Here are the answers to your questions:

  • We are using the latest stable kernel version (2.6.32) for OpenVZ virtualization, so it is not possible to upgrade kernel for OpenVZ servers. However, you are able to update kernel version up to 4.X.X in KVM based servers:

  • Unfortunately, upgrading is not possible in such a way. You are able to re-install your OS and transfer your data manually.

  • It is not possible to take a snapshot of your container, we recommend to use RSync to transfer your data and configuration, Here is the tutorial about it:

https://community.time4vps.eu/discussion/159/how-to-install-and-use-rsnapshot-making-servers-backups"

  1. Had to move to client side NFS rather than server side NFS.

One the whole they are OK, but they have just removed their XS server option which was great for trying things out.

I have a ā€˜spareā€™ server with them, so might try a MAIB on Ubuntu 18.04.

Rob

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12

14.04 EOL is still a year away. Iā€™m on Digital Ocean. I really hope thereā€™l be a supported MIAB upgrade path, but Iā€™m in no hurry.

13

It will obviously be best to have an upgrade path by the time 14.04 is EOL, but its not like MIAB will cease to work after the EOL date.

14

I definitely agree to that but I see it as a potential vulnerability. Specially with the variations of spectre and meltdown being published every once in a while and ubuntu security team will not be patching them after EOL.

15

Hi @rwillett,

I am with vpsfree.cz and currently have: 3.16.6-042stab127.46
root@box:~# uname -a
Linux box.vpsfree.cz 3.16.6-042stab127.46 #1 SMP Wed Mar 28 01:57:40 CEST 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

16

@box

Each of the VPS providers have their own version of kernels, some are later, some earlier.

Itā€™s painful having to do a reinstall to do an upgrade. Iā€™m working through automating an upgrade of one of our servers from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04. There are so many little changes (and big ones). Itā€™s a big piece of work as its clear that there have been little code changes that havenā€™t been documented so Iā€™m takin the opportunity to get one code base for all servers, fix all version issues (/etc/rc2.d vs systemd), Pel library differences (e.g. pushing references to pointers is no longer allowed). The list goes on and on.

Once weā€™ve done that we may move to another vendor as have a build system that works. Long slog though ā€¦

Rob

17

i used openVS on Hosterdaddy and worked great but i updated packages and server before starting my MIAB installation and it went smoothly but i tried the same setup on another provider it was horribleā€¦ the only issue i had with Hosterdady is bad support and they donā€™t allow revers dns

18

BTW, security updates for 14.04 are actually available from Canonical past this point if you pay, but given miab will only keep supporting the 18.04 version it makes sense to upgrade.