For the purposes of this page, we'll use the name New to refer to the servers hosted at Peer 1 (which are deleuze, mire, and eventually abulafia and krunk) and Old to refer to any servers that we've used previously.

1. Status of Migration

14 September 2007: Migration has begun! Use this page to learn how to create a new account and migrate your data. A user creation script will be ran periodically each day.

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2. Summary of what exactly is going on here

We are now offering limited-access accounts on the new infrastructure (see NewServersSetup) on a "beta test" basis to all users who have accounts on fyodor. These accounts come with no uptime or service guarantee; during the next few weeks we may need to temporarily disable them from time to time. Please keep all of your original data on Fyodor in the event something unexpected happens.

These accounts will allow you full access to your space in AFS (currently 400MB per user) and the ability to log in to mire.hcoop.net via ssh. Currently NO OTHER SERVICES are officially supported on the new infrastructure (for example, email or serving HTTP), although they do work.

Requesting an account on the new infrastructure will not affect your fyodor account. You will have access to both accounts until after all migration is complete.

3. Getting started

3.1. Step 1: Get a New account

We have created a file in each fyodor user's home directory called .mire-password. This file is readable only by you and the admin who will be processing the account creations. While we unfortunately chose to include "mire" in the name, your account will actually be in our new Kerberos database, allowing log-in to mire and any other of our servers that we choose to enable for non-admin shell access. You will also use this password for other authentication to other services, like e-mail and members-only HCoop web sites.

If you would like to get a New account, please put your desired password in the file ~/.mire-password. The minimum length for passwords is 7 characters. In addition to lowercase, the password must include numbers or uppercase characters. If your password is not strong enough, Kerberos will reject it and you will not be able to access your account. If you believe this has happened, file a support request on the old portal. Please be VERY careful not to delete the ~/.mire-password file or change its permissions.

• The recommended procedure is to type:

  cat > ~/.mire-password

and then type your desired password, press enter, and then press control-D. After you do this, please run the command:

ls -l ~/.mire-password

and make sure that the permission bits are -rw-rw---- (user and group can read and write) and the group for the file is set to megacz. Also make sure that your directory is readable (has 'r' for everyone and not just 'x' or nothing).

We will be running an account-creation script approximately once a day. After you put your password in ~/.mire-password, your account will be created the next time the script is run, typically no more than 24 hours after you specify your password. An e-mail will be sent to your HCoop account to let you know that your account has been created. Your .mire-password file WILL BE DELETED when your account is created, so please make sure you memorize it before writing it to the file.

3.2. Step 2: Try logging in

Now you may attempt to login using your favorite SSH client or the new AJAX SSH service at http://ssh.hcoop.net/. It requires a modern browser that cooperates with AJAX.

3.2.1. SSH Public Key is Obsoleted

You can no longer use SSH public key authentication. ["Kerberos"] authentication ("ssh -K") is supported, for passwordless log-in. Some day, someone might implement the Kerberos support needed to make SSH public key auth work again. See RealSecurity for more information on all of this.

That being said, if you've always been typing a password to log in via SSH and don't care to do otherwise, then you don't need to bother reading this section!

3.2.2. DenyHosts

If you fail to log in correctly a few times the DenyHosts scripts will lock you out. Currently any blocked IP's are purged after a week, so if you don't want to wait you'll need to submit a ticket, or if you can't access the portal to do this you'll need to send an email to admins@hcoop.net.

3.3. Step 3: Visit the new portal

[https://members2.hcoop.net/ The new portal] uses the same password you use to log in to mire. That is, if you haven't created a New account yet, then you can't access the new portal.

You should use the new portal for all administrative requests, except for the specialized request types (e.g., domains, firewall rules, etc.) when they relate to fyodor.

3.4. Step 4: Have your mail dual-delivered

We recommend that you tell fyodor to dual-deliver all of your mail so that one copy goes to deleuze (our new main server) and one copy goes to fyodor. That way you can start reading your email via deleuze, but if anything goes wrong you can just switch back to fyodor.

To do this, put the following lines in your ~/.forward file on fyodor. Note that the comment on the first line is mandatory -- it tells exim that this forward file uses special exim features. If your username was fred, you would put this in your ~/.forward:

  # Exim filter
  deliver fred
  deliver fred@deleuze.hcoop.net

and you mail will be dual-delivered.

3.5. Step 5: Copy your existing email

You can also copy the contents of your mailboxes from fyodor to mire (actually to our shared AFS filesystem by way of mire). To do this, log in to fyodor and type the following.

  rsync -are ssh --no-g --progress --verbose ~/Maildir/ mire.hcoop.net:Maildir/

4. Bugzilla

We have a [https://bugzilla.hcoop.net/ Bugzilla] that we are using for managing support requests that don't fit into the special categories handled by the portal. If you've completed the migration steps above that create your New account, then you can use the same username and password to access Bugzilla. You can also start from the portal, which links to Bugzilla from the support page.

5. Databases

Here lie interim dbtool docs until migration is done, at which time they will probably move to UsingDatabases.

To manage your database user and databases, the basic syntax is dbtool <DBTYPE> <COMMAND>, where <DBTYPE> is postgres or mysql.

The adduser command creates a database user for you, with the same name as your UNIX log-in name. In the case of mysql, you will be prompted for a password and confirmation re-entry in the usual manner.

The passwd command allows you to reset the password. (Useless for postgres, where we use only ident authentication)

The createdb <DBNAME> command creates a database named <USERNAME>_<DBNAME>, and dropdb <DBNAME> drops a database. For security/accounting reasons, you won't be granted permissions to drop a database in the usual way, through an SQL session.

Sometimes we update our policies for which permissions users are granted on their databases. To re-set the permissions for a database after such a change, run grant <DBNAME>. At the moment, this can only ever be necessary for MySQL databases.

To access your database use the following on mire: mysql -p -h mysql <USERNAME>_<DBNAME> or psql -h postgres <USERNAME>_<DBNAME>

6. DNS

We are purposely not sending any DNS data from New to Old, which means that you need to change domains at your registrar if you want New to be authoritative for them. The proper nameservers are ns1.hcoop.net and ns3.hcoop.net, in that order. Keeping ns.hcoop.net and ns2.hcoop.net will not work.

7. Domains

See the DomTool page for instructions on managing your domains with the new setup. The configuration files are in a vastly different format, but they have a better-defined syntax that should be relatively easy to understand.

8. Home

Your home directory is now managed by AFS. You will enter it by default when logging in to mire.hcoop.net via ssh. Type pwd to see what the path is. It will look like /afs/hcoop.net/user/u/us/username. Some directories have been created for you already, so that they have the correct permissions for things like serving web pages and delivering mail.

9. Email

9.1. .forward

~/.forward files should have the same effect that they do with our old setup, but on the new setup they are located at ~/.public/.forward instead of ~/.forward. See [https://bugzilla.hcoop.net/show_bug.cgi?id=81#c2 this bug] for more.

9.2. IMAP

SSL IMAP is available via SSL at port 993, using hostname deleuze.hcoop.net.

STARTTLS IMAP is available on port 143, using hostname deleuze.hcoop.net.

9.3. POP3

POP3 access is available via SSL at port 995, using hostname deleuze.hcoop.net. If you're using Thunderbird, make sure to uncheck "Use secure authentication". Do not use port 110; it is not available, because no good way of securing normal POP3 has been found by the admins.

9.4. procmail

The page ProcmailExample has been updated for the new setup. Basically:

• Use the file ~/.procmail.d/procmailrc instead of ~/.procmailrc.

• Write any procmail logs in ~/Maildir rather than elsewhere.

• Use appropriate values for the HOME, MAILDIR, and DEFAULT options, based on those in ProcmailExample.

9.5. Virtual mailboxes

The vmail program from fyodor has been updated for the new servers. Here's a quick run-through of how to invoke the new version. Like before, you always invoke it with vmail $DOMAIN $COMMAND, which indicates that you are configuring the virtual mailboxes for domain $DOMAIN for which you have DomTool permissions. The valid commands are:

• list: Print the mapping from usernames to mailbox directories for $DOMAIN.

• add $USER $MAILBOX: Add a mapping from $USER@$DOMAIN to a Maildir directory $MAILBOX. You'll be prompted to enter a password for the user, which he can then use to access IMAP, POP, or restricted SMTP services.

• passwd $USER: Reset a virtual user's password.

• rm $USER: Remove a mapping. The mailbox directory remains for you to deal with as you like.

9.6. webmail

A Squirrelmail instance for reading your email on the new servers is available at [https://mail2.hcoop.net/].

10. rsync

If you're using rsync to transfer data to the new servers, the "-a" option by itself won't work properly because rsync attempts to chgrp the transferred files. Use "-a --no-g" instead of "-a".

11. Security

See RealSecurity for some technical notes on security.

11.1. Securing Directories

First of all, UNIX permissions carry no weight with AFS -- therefore they are useless to you. Instead, use Access Control Lists (ACL), which are a far more powerful way of restricting access to parts of a file tree.

That said, when a new directory is created inside $HOME, its ACL defaults to allow listing by any authenticated party on HCoop. Note that ACLs cannot be set on individual files. They inherit the ACL from its parent directory.

If you wish to make a directory within your $HOME completely private so that only you can list, read, and write, do this:

mkdir ~/private
fs setacl -clear ~/private <USERNAME> all

Note that -clear removes any previously set ACLs and <USERNAME> all sets full access to the directory's contents to the specified user. Therefore, if you have a directory in $HOME that you wish to make only accessible to you (such as ~/.ssh or ~/documents), use: fs setacl -clear ~/<DIRECTORY> <USERNAME> all.

In addition, there is a way to only allow system:anyuser to list the contents of public_html without breaking your website(s). By default ACLs R and L are given. Change that in this way: fs setacl ~/public_html system:anyuser l. This is a good way to prevent access to any passwords within web configuration scripts.

If you wish to view the ACLs on a specific directory, such as any you have just applied an ACL, use: fs la <DIRECTORY>

11.2. Log-In Security

We use the [http://denyhosts.sourceforge.net/ DenyHosts] package to help protect user accounts from brute-force ssh attacks. If a user fails to login within several attempts, then the offending originating IP will be blacklisted in order to prevent additional attempts. If the individual attempts to log in again, then they will see something similar to the following: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host.

The blacklist expires IPs after a predetermined period of time. Typically, most users will not be affected by the blacklisting, but if you are, you will want to contact the hcoop-sysadmin list to get your IP address removed from the list.

12. WebDAV

WebDAV is accessible at https://dav.hcoop.net/. WebDAV is useful when working on a website using systems that cannot mount an AFS share. For details on how to setup WebDAV, take a look at http://research.cs.berkeley.edu/doc/dav/

Note that you can only use WebDAV on directories that have system:anyuser rl as part of its ACL. You'll be able to write even if system:anyuser does not. See Securing Directories on this page for additional details on directory ACLs.

13. Web Pages without a Domain

Your ~/public_html directory is available via HTTP through http://deleuze.hcoop.net/~USER/. Eventually this will change to http://hcoop.net/~USER/.

Due to consequences of AFS authentication, we don't plan to allow dynamic content (CGI, PHP, etc.) via hcoop.net/~you/... on New. If you don't have a domain hosted at HCoop, but want to serve dynamic content, then you can request an hcoop.net subdomain (example: USER.hcoop.net, where USER is your username) via [http://bugzilla.hcoop.net/].