after a while without running my own server I would like to run a server for mail and web again on my own.
But a lot has changed…
I ran Debian in the past, with Virtualmin and CSF as firewall.
Now I installed Debian 12 on a Hetzner vServer and… Problems!
In short… systemd! No more /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages.
OK I installed rsyslog and some Problems are solved.
But… as usual on Linux there is a whole rat tail of Problems… Or maybe Im just thinking to much.
If I use rsyslog I would have to enable log to the old logfiles by hand.
And then ofcos logrote…
So I really like the CSF (Config Server Firewall) it has like Virtualmin support for RHEL like distributions.
Well last time I used rpm it was like SuSE Linux 8.2… yeah long time ago… in a life far far away
After that Ubuntu until Ununtu 16.04 and since then Debian.
I gave it a short try and… yeah it’s different… no “useradd” as on Debian for example.
But managable I guess.
But something tells me on a RHEL like distribution I would have the same systemd/rsyslog rat tail problems.
Anyone here using a RHEL like distribution with Virtualmin and CSF? How does it run?
We support Rocky, Alma, and RHEL. So pick whichever one of those you like the looks of. Virtualmin works the same on any of them, or at least, we develop and test on all of them, and expect it to work the same on all of them. There can be minor divergence from time to time, but we expect the average experience to be similar across any of them. We run Rocky on our servers.
I don’t use CSF, so I have no opinions on it, but I would expect it to be roughly identical across any of the RHEL-derived distributions, for the same reasons Virtualmin is roughly the same across any of them.
hmmm
On first look Rocky was ok.
Installed Rocky, Virtualmin and CSF.
Then I tired to do a full system backup.
I booted System Rescue CD via the Hetzner console.
Mounted the HDD, made a full backup with tar. tar --exclude=./backup --use-compress-program=pbzip2 -cvpf ./backup/rocky_001.tar.pbzip2 .
Then I deleted all file but keept backup/.
Restored the backup tar -xvpf ./backup/rocky_001.tar.pbzip2 . --numeric-owner
I didnt chanced the FS UUID.
Rebooted and wow the system was up again, I watched it using the vServer console.
But now I can not login anymore.
Not via the console nor ssh.
Console Login: After a second Im just back at the login.
SSH: Putty says “Network error: Software caused connection abort”
This full backup with tar, keeping the UUID and restore with tar always worked great - on my vServer and here at home with distos like Debian, Ubuntu, Kali and Arch.
No clue what is differnt on Rocky, particularly it was only a minimal server installation, just SSH as a service.
