Some time after midnight tonight I will be rebooting various servers that require a reboot to make recent security updates take effect.  This will result in short down times of between 2-10 minutes.

     Mint.eskimo.com has been upgraded to Tessa 19.1.  This is the first in-place upgrade of Mint that has succeeded for me.  All previous in place upgrades failed requiring a fresh install.  This one went very clean.

     MxLinux.eskimo.com has been upgraded from MX17 to MX18.  The kernel has been upgraded to a non-xen version 4.19.10 SMP preemptive kernel with security fixes.

Official desktop client for the Telegram messenger

Pure instant messaging — simple, fast, secure, and synced across all your devices. Over 100 million active users in two and a half years.

FAST: Telegram is the fastest messaging app on the market, connecting people via a unique, distributed network of data centers around the globe.

SYNCED: You can access your messages from all your devices at once. Start typing on your phone and finish the message from your tablet or laptop. Never lose your data again.

UNLIMITED: You can send media and files, without any limits on their type and size. Your entire chat history will require no disk space on your device, and will be securely stored in the Telegram cloud for as long as you need it.

SECURE: We made it our mission to provide the best security combined with ease of use. Everything on Telegram, including chats, groups, media, etc. is encrypted using a combination of 256-bit symmetric AES encryption, 2048-bit RSA encryption, and Diffie–Hellman secure key exchange.

POWERFUL: You can create group chats for up to 100,000 members, share large videos, documents of any type (.DOC, .MP3, .ZIP, etc.), and even set up bots for specific tasks. It’s the perfect tool for hosting online communities and coordinating teamwork.

RELIABLE: Built to deliver your messages in the minimum bytes possible, Telegram is the most reliable messaging system ever made. It works even on the weakest mobile connections.

FUN: Telegram has powerful photo and video editing tools and an open sticker/GIF platform to cater to all your expressive needs.

SIMPLE: While providing an unprecedented array of features, we are taking great care to keep the interface clean. With its minimalist design, Telegram is lean and easy to use.

100% FREE & NO ADS: Telegram is free and will always be free. We are not going to sell ads or introduce subscription fees.

PRIVATE: We take your privacy seriously and will never give third parties access to your data.

We keep expanding the boundaries of what you can do with a messaging app. Don’t wait years for older messengers to catch up with Telegram — join the revolution today.

     We’ve installed Discord on Ubuntu.eskimo.com, Debian.eskimo.com, Julinux.yellow-snow.net, Mint.eskimo.com (no menu entry, launch from a terminal by typing discord), and Zorin.eskimo.com (no menu entry, launch from a terminal by typing discord).  On the systems with menu entries for discord, it is found in the “Internet” sub-menu.  Discord is a audio / video conferencing system very popular among gamers but usable for other functions.

     Steam has been installed on Ubuntu.eskimo.com (Games submenu) Debian.eskimo.com (Internet submenu), Mint.eskimo.com (Games submenu) Zorin.eskimo.com (Games submenu),

     Purple-discord, a plugin for libpurple that adds the option to use the Discord messaging service in all libpurple-based clients (including Pidgin and Finch), and harmony, for creating and managing Discord accounts although you can also use discord itself for the latter functionality, has been installed on those machines for which it was available, unfortunately, Debian wasn’t one of them.

     * I do not know of anyway to get the webcam capability working on Discord via x2go because I am told that USB forwarding is currently broken and that nobody has volunteered to work on it so probably will remain that way for the foreseeable future.  If anyone knows of a way around this please let me know.

     We upgraded our WordPress to 5.01 today.  Hopefully this will not cause problems.

‘     Our virtual domain system for ftp is changing and it will no longer automatically change to your directory when someone logs in anonymously.  They will need to cd to /home/user to get to your directory.  This is in preparation for changing the ftp server from wu-ftpd which has some compatibility issues with some version of filezilla which is the most widely used ftp client on Windows systems and often Mac and Linux as well, to a newer server.  Unfortunately, wu-ftpd was/is the only ftp daemon that had the capacity to automatically change directories based upon domain or IP address.

     I am also changing the IP address of some of our servers.  Because name service changes take some time to propagate, I will be having the servers listen to both addresses for a period of time until the changes have propagated.  These changes are requiring frequent restarting of the web server so there will be brief (1-5 second) interruptions.  They should not be longer unless I mistype something in the configuration files.

     Mint is completed.

     MxLinux has completed and is back in service.

     I will be rebooting servers between midnight – 2AM.  Downtime for any given service should not be more than 20 minutes per service, most will be shorter than that.  This is to upgrade kernel and apply some security patches.

     If you receive e-mail from: support <admin1@mailserver.com> 

     This mail is NOT from us.  It is a phishing scam attempting to get your authentication so they can take over your account.  Do NOT click on the link.  Delete it.  Any mail that comes from outside domains is not from us.