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Hetzner - great for hosting. Terrible for support

Hosting
  • Any fellow Hetzner users here ? I’ve been using Hetzner for the VPS that this platform runs on for some time now. Performance-wise, it’s perfect. I have a 4 x CPU, 160Gb SSD disk, and 16Gb RAM server running and it’s pretty stable - apart from the server suddenly going offline every x days due to a bug in the IPv6 DHCP package. The workaround for this was to set a static IP instead - see this

    https://docs.hetzner.com/de/cloud/servers/static-configuration/

    Essentially, it means I had to configure this server as below

    Existing netplan

    # This file is generated from information provided by the datasource.  Changes
    # to it will not persist across an instance reboot.  To disable cloud-init's
    # network configuration capabilities, write a file
    # /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99-disable-network-config.cfg with the following:
    # network: {config: disabled}
    network:
        version: 2
        ethernets:
            eth0:
                dhcp4: true
                addresses: ['ipv6 address']
                gateway6: fe80::1
                nameservers:
                    addresses: [127.0.0.53, 127.0.0.1]
                match:
                    macaddress: macaddress
                set-name: eth0
    

    Proposed change

    network:
      version: 2
      renderer: networkd
      ethernets:
        eth0:
          addresses:
          - ip address/32
          - ipv6 address/64
          routes:
          - to: 0.0.0.0/0
            via: gateway
            on-link: true
          gateway6: fe80::1
          match:
            macaddress:  macaddress
          set-name: eth0
    

    Then create file /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99-disable-network-config.cfg

    Add the below

    network:
      config: disabled
    

    Save, and then reboot (or at the very least, stop and restart netplan)

    The point here is that those unfamiliar with the inner workings of Linux will have absolutely NO CLUE what to modify here. This is one of the downsides of having an unmanaged VPS - there is ZERO support (I’m going to be writing an independant blog article about this soon). For me, this isn’t the end of the world, but it could well mean disaster for anyone else just starting out. Then, there’s the total lack of support when I asked them about unexpectedly high TTFB (Time To First Byte), which is around 200ms for a flat HTML file - it should ideally be less than 50. In addition, this platform hits anywhere between 400-600ms for TTFB. This isn’t great, but there isn’t much I can do to reduce it (there’s another article I’m going to write about that as well). Hetzner’s response ?

    First, they asked me to use mtr to conduct 1000 traces from my PC to the VPS and vice-versa. Not only does each run take around 18 minutes to complete, but you have to copy the results, and email them back to the support desk. Once these were “reviewed” (I’m using quotes here as there really isn’t any useful information as such), they reverted with

    Dear Client,
    the MTR does not show any issue, so we can’t see any network issue on our side. Also we’ve checked the hostsystem and can’t see any issue with it as well. Please check your server logs.

    No sh*t, Sherlock. I could have told you that myself. Check my server logs ? You don’t think I’ve already done that ?

    And so here’s the lesson. Hetzner absolutely EXCEL when it comes to a stable machine, cost to run, backups, and everything else - until you need support, and that’s where it all falls apart sadly.

    You’re on your own there… Be warned 🙂

  • Just coming back here to post an update for this thread. Since setting a static IP address, the VPS I’m running has been ROCK solid with absolutely no downtime whatsoever.

  • @phenomlab I’m using VPS on Hetzner over 2 years. Great provider and very cheap then competitors

  • @cagatay same here. Was previously an IONOS user, but moved to Hetzner to realise both savings and performance increase and have never looked back.


  • 2 Votes
    3 Posts
    155 Views

    Just had a look through the new Free NGINX website, which looks like an 80’s throwback and that it was created using a ZX Spectrum 🙂

    https://freenginx.org

    Love the sarcastic note…

    image.png

  • Is nginx necessary to use?

    Moved Solved Hosting
    2
    1 Votes
    2 Posts
    138 Views

    @Panda said in Cloudflare bot fight mode and Google search:

    Basic question again, is nginx necessary to use?

    No, but you’d need something at least to handle the inbound requests, so you could use Apache, NGINX, Caddy… (there are plenty of them, but I tend to prefer NGINX)

    @Panda said in Cloudflare bot fight mode and Google search:

    Do these two sites need to be attached to different ports, and the ports put in the DNS record?

    No. They will both use ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) by default.

    @Panda said in Cloudflare bot fight mode and Google search:

    Its not currently working, but how would the domain name know which of the two sites to resolve to without more info?
    Currently it only says the IP of the whole server.

    Yes, that’s correct. Domain routing is handled (for example) at the NGINX level, so whatever you have in DNS will be presented as the hostname, and NGINX will expect a match which once received, will then be forwarded onto the relevant destination.

    As an example, in your NGINX config, you could have (at a basic level used in reverse proxy mode - obviously, the IP addresses here are redacted and replaced with fakes). We assume you have created an A record in your DNS called “proxy” which resolves to 192.206.28.1, so fully qualified, will be proxy.sudonix.org in this case.

    The web browser requests this site, which is in turn received by NGINX and matches the below config

    server { server_name proxy.sudonix.org; listen 192.206.28.1; root /home/sudonix.org/domains/proxy.sudonix.org/ogproxy; index index.php index.htm index.html; access_log /var/log/virtualmin/proxy.sudonix.org_access_log; error_log /var/log/virtualmin/proxy.sudonix.org_error_log; location / { proxy_set_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_pass http://localhost:2000; proxy_redirect off; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header X-Api-Key $http_x_api_key; } location /images { index index.php index.htm index.html; root /home/sudonix.org/domains/proxy.sudonix.org/ogproxy; } fastcgi_split_path_info "^(.+\.php)(/.+)$"; listen 192.206.28.1:443 ssl http2; ssl_certificate /home/sudonix.org/domains/proxy.sudonix.org/ssl.combined; ssl_certificate_key /home/sudonix.org/ssl.key; }

    The important part here is server_name proxy.sudonix.org; as this is used to “map” the request to the actual domain name, which you can see in the root section as root /home/sudonix.org/domains/proxy.sudonix.org/ogproxy;

    As the DNS record you specified matches this hostname, NGINX then knows what to do with the request when it receives it.

  • iFramely self host help

    Solved Configure
    10
    9 Votes
    10 Posts
    1k Views

    @DownPW https://sudonix.com/topic/331/how-to-install-a-self-hosted-instance-of-iframely-for-use-with-nodebb

  • Viewing Permission.

    Solved General
    33
    12 Votes
    33 Posts
    1k Views

    @phenomlab

    Ah Mark you are a star. Thank you very much. I just logged on and seen someone had worked their magic 🙂

    Again it is very much appreciated.

  • 2 Votes
    3 Posts
    292 Views

    @phenomlab developing an own app is a big time-consuming job, above tool worked perfectly to run quick sample tests.

    i have used temp mail to log in.

    thanks

  • Domain name factors

    Hosting
    16
    1 Votes
    16 Posts
    671 Views

    @phenomlab said in Domain name factors:

    @jac Yes, but don’t forget that Matomo (and most browsers) alike will allow you to “opt out” or not be tracked, so you can’t really rely on these 100%.

    Absolutely, very true pal.

  • DNS record invalid (Google webmaster)

    Solved Hosting
    13
    4 Votes
    13 Posts
    618 Views

    I can confirm the site is now verified and the sitemap has been submitted.

    Thanks chaps @gotwf @phenomlab

  • Virtualmin Letsencrypt Renewal

    Solved Hosting
    13
    1 Votes
    13 Posts
    1k Views

    @gotwf said in Virtualmin Letsencrypt Renewal:

    I favor KISS engineering

    Then I think you’ll be able to appreciate this
    https://content.sudonix.com/keep-it-simple-stupid/