I am receiving complaints from people unable to connect to servers that they used to be able to using putty on versions of Windows prior to Windows 10.

     The reason you are unable to connect is that as exploits are found in various encryption schemes, those schemes are retired in favor of newer more secure encryption algorithms.

     All versions of Windows prior to Windows 10, with the exception of Windows 8.1, are past end of life.  If you are using one of these, you will not be receiving updates that update security issues like encryption vulnerabilities and thus you will not be able to connect with your old encryption methods.

     Putty is an aftermarket ssh client for older version of Windows.  If you have Windows 10, you do not need putty as it comes with openssh, you just need to install it as one of Windows features (it is not installed by default).

     If you are using 8.1, you should upgrade your putty installation to the July 21, 2021 release.  If you are using an older version of Windows you can try this as well but older versions may not have the necessary libraries for it to work properly.

     System kernel upgrades are completed.  All services are back online.

     Debian came up first time properly so I ended up not doing any systemd debugging today.  Whether this was a fluke or they fixed something with upgrades since last kernel upgrade I do not know.  If it messed up again I will debug at that time.

      We will be upgrading all servers to 5.11.12 on Friday at 11pm.  This will take about an hour.

     I will also be adding some debugging code in Debian to try to gather more information with respect to problems with the systemd configuration so it may be down for a longer period while I go through a few tweak / reboot / examine debug log cycles.

     I have received notice that there is a failure of some HVAC equipment at the Isomedia facility where our equipment is located.

     Unlike Integra, they have people monitoring these things and have already dispatched personal to repair.

     I have temperature monitors in the servers and so far they haven’t shown any increase in temperature.  Not too worried about the servers since I have a very large amount of fan in each cabinet except for the old UltraSparc machines used for dial-up radius authentication still.  They will tolerate 104F max, right now it is 82F so still a good margin of safety.

     Debian Bullseye is UP.  The systemd configuration still is not correct so it is very slow to boot but it does eventually start everything just not in the correct order and only after various timeouts.  I will figure out systemd eventually.  I keep hoping Poettering will give up and go away but he seems determined to ruin Linux.

     After upgrade to bulleys, debian will not boot with NIS enabled.  NIS (Network Information Services) is required in order for you to be able to login.  This seems to be yet another Poettering systemd induced snafu.  I am looking for a solution.

     I am in the process of upgrading debian.eskimo.com from Buster to Bullseye.

     During this process ssh sessions may be terminated and new connections will not be accepted until completion.  At least one reboot will be required.

     System maintenance completed.  There were minor issues but no major problems, everything is up and running.

     We will be performing kernel upgrades tonight between 11pm and midnight.  All machines will be rebooted at some point during that interval.

     The kernels we use are the most recent upstream kernels compiled for tickless operation.  They are available to you at:

     https://www.eskimo.com/kernel or ftp://pub/kernel

     They are available in both .deb packages and .rpm packages.  The config files are there should you care to see how I’ve configured them or in case you don’t trust me, want these features but prefer to build yourself.

     All eskimo services will be interrupted during this interval.  This includes https://friendica.eskimo.com/, https://hubzilla.eskimo.com/ and https://nextcloud.eskimo.com/.

     All the machines had finished booting by around 11:20PM however there were several that did not boot correctly and required manual intervention to bring them back up fully and there were some NFS mounts that did not mount automatically.  Everything was resolved by midnight.