Metawerx News
25-Aug-2010 New WebMail
Due to continual problems with Horde Webmail, we are pleased to announce that we are upgrading to two new webmail systems.
- POP3 - AfterLogic WebMail Pro, a simple but fast webmail client, this is now available at http://webmailpro.metawerx.net
- IMAP - RoundCube, a fast, feature-rich Ajax-based IMAP client, now running at http://roundcube.metawerx.net
Please try out the new software and let us know what you think. We will retain Horde on http://horde.metawerx.net for customers who prefer the old interface, although we will no longer be upgrading the older software.
25-Aug-2010 Upgrades
The following systems have been upgraded to the latest stable releases:
- Tomcat 5.5.30
- Tomcat 6.0.29
- JDK 1.6.0_21
Apache have pre-released the long-awaited Tomcat 7, now in beta version 2, so we are pleased to announce we will also now support Tomcat 7, starting from this beta release.
To quote the Apache site
, "This version of Apache Tomcat supports the Servlet 3.0, JSP 2.2 and EL 2.2 specifications. In addition, it includes numerous other improvements such as web application memory leak detection and prevention, extensive internal code clean-up and support for including external content directly in a web application (aliases)."
28-Jul-2010 Upgrades
phpPGAdmin has been upgraded to version 4.2.3
23-Jun-2010 Lucid Nightmare on Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04)
Today I thought I'd write a news article describing a bit about some of the maintenance work we perform here at Metawerx...
A few weeks ago, we started the transition to the new Ubuntu release, and almost every server has had at least one problem so far. It's a new kernel, there are some new features, but I've read a lot on the net about display problems experienced by desktop and notebook users due to new graphics drivers and we've experienced a series of issues here as well. None of them have been serious enough to revert back to earlier revisions, but it's been a much slower upgrade process than previous releases of Ubuntu which have always been excellent.
To start with, a new display driver has affected the use of our DRAC cards. These cards let us get full keyboard/video/mouse into the servers remotely, which is necessary sometimes unless we want to live at the data center (which we don't). For example, if a server doesn't reboot correctly, we can bring up the monitor and gain full keyboard access to fix the problem either in the POST utilities or in a Linux recovery shell. With Lucid however, after Grub boots a kernel, the display changes into a graphical mode that isn't supported by the DRAC cards. We've solved this problem by forcing the framebuffer (fbcon) to be disabled, which sets the display into permanent text mode. That was also problematic, as the module disabler systems didn't seem to actually disable fbcon properly. However, we've worked out how to do it with a boot option and now have full access again.
Next, one server was locking up during the rc scripts. These scripts start all the processes and eventually the SSH service which we use to administer the boxes. The problem was a script that sets console fonts, after disabling it the boot now continues correctly (we have logged an Ubuntu bug about this issue but it doesn't seem to affect anyone else yet). This happened on our primary mail server, so the failover mail server was used temporarily during the upgrade and subsequent fix.
After that there was a problem with MySQL. Lucid forces the use of MySQL 5.1 by default. We could have used the Ubuntu backports repository to use MySQL 5.0, but want to keep inline with the current Ubuntu baseline. MySQL 5.1 is great, but one option in the my.cnf file (skip-bbd) was preventing MySQL 5.1 from starting. The first server upgraded after our test machines was used for MySQL replication, so there were also some minor replication warnings as the source server was still 5.0. After that, we had an issue with a JBoss cluster which required mixed or row-based replication. MySQL5.1 uses a new statement-based replication method by default so we needed to identify that issue and force it use mixed-mode otherwise it refused to write binary logs, and therefore refused to do very much at all.
Finally, today we performed a minor kernel upgrade from 2.6.31-20 to 2.6.31-22. On reboot the root partition refused to mount. Due to our high-security procedures which prevented the use of root as log-in account, and the inability to mount the root partition, we couldn't even get in via a Linux maintenance shell. This seems to be a new check in the new kernel which identifies that the root partition was at some time in data=ordered mode and we had it specified in fstab to mount as data=writeback mode so the new kernel was disallowing the mount entirely stating that data=writeback was a bad option for the filesystem. A tune2fs fixed the problem and now that server is booting properly on the new kernel.
Hopefully there will be no more problems. Earlier Ubuntu releases have been so smooth to upgrade to and Ubuntu's strict testing procedures are excellent, which is why Ubuntu has become the Linux OS of choice in recent years. This time has been a headache though, so many servers, so many issues and each of them very different, but as I said, nothing we haven't been to handle yet (fingers crossed!)
And.. Lucid Lynx does reboot very very quickly compared to earlier releases.
For any of our customers who are upgrading their dev boxes in the office or at home, if you have a severe problem with the upgrade, let us know as we may have run into it already.
Neale
26-May-2010 - Upgrades
The following systems have been upgraded to the latest stable releases:
- Tomcat 5.5.29
- JDK 1.6.0_20
We will also soon be migrating to MySQL 5.1 as a requirement of the upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid Lynx.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact support.
15-Mar-2010 - Upgrades
The following systems have been upgraded to the latest shiny new stable releases:
- Tomcat 6.0.26
- APR 1.4.2
- Tomcat Native Connector 1.1.20
Tomcat 6.0.26 contains a new feature for checking web applications for memory leaks.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact support.
15-Feb-2010 - Upgrades
The following systems have been upgraded to the latest stable releases:
- Java 1.6 upgraded to JDK 1.6.0_18, with many new performance enhancements, faster startup time and numerous small bug fixes
- MySQL 5.0.83
- MySQL/J Connector 5.1.11
- Tomcat 6.0.24
- Tomcat 5.5.28
- Ubuntu Karmic Koala, with Linux Kernel 2.6.31 and EXT4 partitions for increased performance
The Tomcat upgrades include important new security patches and increased performance.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact support.
10-Jan-2010 - Additional Primary Mail Failover Server
We now have an emergency failover mail server in the US in case of power outages in Melbourne. This is kept up to date with copies of all mail from the primary mail server and can be brought online manually in case of an extended outage.
This is in addition to our fully redundant mail servers in Australia which use automatic failover via DRBD, Heartbeat, Tomcat and our proprietary mail routing systems to keep mail services running during hardware issues, upgrades or system restarts on the primary SMTP, POP3 and IMAP servers.
27-Aug-2009 - Additional Secondary Mail Server
We are pleased to announce that today we have added an additional Secondary Mail Server. This server is in our US data center and has been added to provide additional redundancy in the case of any outages at our primary data center in Melbourne.
For customers who manage their own DNS entries, you can take advantage of the additional server by configuring your MX records as follows:
MX 0 mailcluster1.metawerx.net. MX 50 mailcluster3.metawerx.net. MX 80 mailcluster4.metawerx.net.
23-Aug-2009 - Upgrades
On selected VM's, we have upgraded again to the latest copies of the following today:
- JDK 1.6.x to JDK 1.6.0_14
Self-Managed Dedicated VMs have not been upgraded as they are only upgraded on request.
If your VM has not been upgraded, and you want it to be, please contact us. You can check the versions in use within the Tomcat Manager.
15-Jul-2009 - Upgrades
On selected VM's, we have upgraded again to the latest copies of the following today:
- JDK 1.6.x to JDK 1.6.0_14
- Tomcat 6.0.x to Tomcat 6.0.20
- Apache Portable Runtime upgraded to 1.16
Other upgrades:
- BIND (DNS Server) upgraded to latest release
- MySQL 4 and 5 upgraded to latest GA (Generally Available) releases
Self-Managed Dedicated VMs have not been upgraded as they are only upgraded on request.
If your VM has not been upgraded, and you want it to be, please contact us. You can check the versions in use within the Tomcat Manager.
If you are still using Tomcat 5.5 or JDK1.5, now is a great time to try your application on Tomcat 6 and JDK1.6. We have found this to be the highest-performing, most stable release so far. These releases have been around since before March 2007, so they are no longer bleeding-edge.
4-Feb-2009 - New Improvements and Features
Over the last week, the following new features have been added at Metawerx:
- Performance improvements to MySQL server, identified by investigating network packet transmission between client sites and the server. Each initial connection to the server is now approx 30ms faster (this will mainly affect applications which don't already use a connection pool).
- Fully redundant POP3/IMAP mail server using DRBD which provides networked multi-server RAID. This server is in the same data center so does not protect against complete data center outages, but does provide full failover and failback in case of the following situations: SCSI-array failure, NIC-failure, router-port failure, motherboard failure, RAM failure, power regulator failure, server resets due to maintenance and upgrades. Our primary mail server is still protected via RAID-10 and dual power supplies so hopefully this secondary server will only be used when we need to restart the primary. It is also another important step toward our goal of extending our mail cluster to an interstate/international failover mail-system. The failover system also includes redundancy of the Metawerx Mail Administration system which runs on Tomcat.
- We can now provide failover-failback systems to a second server for customer Tomcat and JBoss Dedicated VMs. This service is not yet advertised on our site but will be in the future once we sort out the details. If you are interested in this service for even higher availability, please contact us. Naturally these services are also available to customers we consult for on all leased and external managed servers.
- New SubAccounts summary in your Account Statement. This provides a list of all subaccounts and their server name, VM number, RAM and VM Type for customers with one or more subaccounts.
- Mail Administration now includes options for disabling SPAM and Virus filters
19-Jan-2009 - New Plan Offerings
We are pleased to announce that we are expanding rapidly this year again. More shared servers are being installed to cope with demand and we have modified our plans based on feedback and ever-changing customer requirements.
Lower-level hosting plans now include more RAM, and the option of Private JVM's even on our lowest priced plan. All dedicated plans now come with a new Semi-Managed option.
Details:
- We now offer Private JVM's on any plan, included our Budget Plan. Some other hosts are providing small Private JVM's with 64mb or even 32mb, which is sometimes practical for the -client option, but not the -server option. We are providing 96mb which is a suitable minimum for a VM. We still recommend larger Shared VM's over small Private VM's, but now provide both options at any plan level to cater for customer requirements.
- The Database Plan, previously allowing a 96mb Private JVM now provides 128mb physical RAM.
- Our new 'Semi-Managed' Dedicated VM option allows for automatic updating of your Tomcat binaries, like with a Metawerx-Managed VM, but with full control over server.xml like with a Self-Managed VM. To upgrade from Metawerx-Managed or Self-Managed to the new Semi-Managed option, please contact us. There is no charge for the upgrade.
For more info, please see Metawerx VM Types.
17-Jan-2009 - JDK 7 / Java SE 7 / OpenJDK available first at Metawerx
We now offer the upcoming Java SE 7 platform with Tomcat 6.0.
This is the first OpenJDK release of the Java platform is still in early-release stage so is not suitable for production use. However, if your application is still under development and you want access to the latest JDK features, consider getting started on this release and be one of the first in the world to deploy a Java 7 based application.
The performance is very good and Java 7 provides many new additions to the Java language and core classes.
We will continue to upgrade to each new early-access release until the official launch.
16-Jan-2009 - Upgrades
On selected VM's, we have upgraded again to the latest copies of the following today:
- JDK 1.6.x to JDK 1.6.0_11
- Tomcat 5.5.x to Tomcat 5.5.27
- Tomcat 6.0.x to Tomcat 6.0.18
- Apache Portable Runtime upgraded to 1.12
Other upgrades:
- BIND (DNS Server) upgraded to latest release
- MySQL 4 and 5 upgraded to latest GA (Generally Available) releases
Self-Managed Dedicated VMs have not been upgraded as they are only upgraded on request.
If your VM has not been upgraded, and you want it to be, please contact us. You can check the versions in use within the Tomcat Manager.
If you are still using Tomcat 5.5 or JDK1.5, now is a great time to try your application on Tomcat 6 and JDK1.6. We have found this to be the highest-performing, most stable release so far. These releases have been around since before March 2007, so they are no longer bleeding-edge.
2-Jan-2009 - New Referrals Summary in Account Statement
For our customers who develop CMS systems and regularly refer new customers, we have a new report available on your Account Statement in SiteWinder. This shows all the customers you have referred, and details of all paid and pending Commission Payments.
Thankyou for your continued support, and best wishes for another prosperous year in 2009!
30-Nov-2008 - New Java VM Analysis Report
For those worried about infinite loops, RAM usage, and the serious Java techo who wants to know everything that is happening with GC and allocations, we have recently added a new report in SiteWinder which performs various types of analysis on Dedicated Java VMs.
The following information is accessable via this report:
- CPU Usage (current and total)
- Classloader - Number of classes loaded/unloaded by the Classloader, classloader time
- HotSpot Compiler - Number of methods compiled by hotspot, failed/invalid compilation attempts, compiler CPU time
- HotSpot Last Compilation - Shows number of compilations and last compiled method name
- Live GC Monitor - Shows usage in each allocation area and total times spent on each type of GC
- Garbage Collection and Heap Capacity
- Memory Allocation - Show heap allocation areas, sizes, usage and settings
- Memory Histogram Top 200 - Memory usage per object type (live objects only, top 200)
- Synchronization Deadlocks - Show any deadlocks in the JVM (JDK1.6 and above only)
- Stack Trace - Show full stack dump and lock owners
This report displays the same information we use internally to debug JVMs which are misbehaving, need attention, or are throwing OutOfMemoryExceptions. Over the last 40 days, we have gradually turned this process into a report which works with Tomcat 4, and Java 1.5 onwards. The current report revision is 1.0.31.
We hope this will be valuable in debugging CPU, RAM, GC and Synchronization problems in your live system as well as increasing your knowledge of the internals of your JVM.
