Code, Security and Server Stuff
Views are my own and not my employer's
Here is how I set NGINX to the development branch to get more frequent updates and features over the stable branch
Read the full article here: https://fearby.com/article/updating-nginx-to-the-development-branch-to-get-more-frequent-updates-and-features-over-the-stable-branch/
Updating NGINX to the development branch (on Ubuntu) to get more frequent updates and features over the stable branch
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Aside
I have a number of guides on moving away from CPanel, Setting up VM’s on UpCloud, AWS, Vultr or Digital Ocean along with installing and managing WordPress from the command line. View all recent posts here https://fearby.com/all/
Now on with the post
Warning
Backup your Nginx and Server before making any changes. The Nginx development branch is quite stable but anything can happen. If your site is mission critical then stay on the stable branch.
Nginx Branches
By default, you will most likely get the stable branch of Nginx when instaling and updating Nginx. I have been running the stable version for the last few years but was made aware of a DDoS vulnerability in Nginx.
Here is a good write-up on development merges into the stable branch.
Nginx Updates
Widely-used #Nginx server releases versions 1.15.6 and 1.14.1 to patch two HTTP/2 implementation vulnerabilities that might cause excessive memory consumption (CVE-2018-16843) & CPU usage (CVE-2018-16844), allowing a remote attacker to perform #DoS attackhttps://t.co/1Z3JoghoBr pic.twitter.com/qQ3pOFD1Lk
— The Hacker News (@TheHackersNews) November 9, 2018
I was aware recently of a DDoS bug affecting Nginx and the recommendation was to update ot Nginx 1.15.6 development branch (or 1.14.1 stable branch).
A few days ago no 1.14.1 update was available but a 1.15.6 was, should I switch to the development branch to get updates earlier?
Reminder to update your #nginx installations to the 1.14.1 stable or the 1.15.6 mainline versions for critical security patches released this week. #NGINXPlus customers, see instructions for updating based on the patch released 10/30 https://t.co/KitsOWIJkb
— NGINX, Inc. (@nginx) November 8, 2018
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Recent Nginx Changes
Here are the recent changes to Nginx: http://nginx.org/en/CHANGES
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 | Changes with nginx 1.15.6 06 Nov 2018 *) Security: when using HTTP/2 a client might cause excessive memory consumption (CVE-2018-16843) and CPU usage (CVE-2018-16844). *) Security: processing of a specially crafted mp4 file with the ngx_http_mp4_module might result in worker process memory disclosure (CVE-2018-16845). *) Feature: the "proxy_socket_keepalive", "fastcgi_socket_keepalive", "grpc_socket_keepalive", "memcached_socket_keepalive", "scgi_socket_keepalive", and "uwsgi_socket_keepalive" directives. *) Bugfix: if nginx was built with OpenSSL 1.1.0 and used with OpenSSL 1.1.1, the TLS 1.3 protocol was always enabled. *) Bugfix: working with gRPC backends might result in excessive memory consumption. Changes with nginx 1.15.5 02 Oct 2018 *) Bugfix: a segmentation fault might occur in a worker process when using OpenSSL 1.1.0h or newer; the bug had appeared in 1.15.4. *) Bugfix: of minor potential bugs. Changes with nginx 1.15.4 25 Sep 2018 *) Feature: now the "ssl_early_data" directive can be used with OpenSSL. *) Bugfix: in the ngx_http_uwsgi_module. Thanks to Chris Caputo. *) Bugfix: connections with some gRPC backends might not be cached when using the "keepalive" directive. *) Bugfix: a socket leak might occur when using the "error_page" directive to redirect early request processing errors, notably errors with code 400. *) Bugfix: the "return" directive did not change the response code when returning errors if the request was redirected by the "error_page" directive. *) Bugfix: standard error pages and responses of the ngx_http_autoindex_module module used the "bgcolor" attribute, and might be displayed incorrectly when using custom color settings in browsers. Thanks to Nova DasSarma. *) Change: the logging level of the "no suitable key share" and "no suitable signature algorithm" SSL errors has been lowered from "crit" to "info". Changes with nginx 1.15.3 28 Aug 2018 *) Feature: now TLSv1.3 can be used with BoringSSL. *) Feature: the "ssl_early_data" directive, currently available with BoringSSL. *) Feature: the "keepalive_timeout" and "keepalive_requests" directives in the "upstream" block. *) Bugfix: the ngx_http_dav_module did not truncate destination file when copying a file over an existing one with the COPY method. *) Bugfix: the ngx_http_dav_module used zero access rights on the destination file and did not preserve file modification time when moving a file between different file systems with the MOVE method. *) Bugfix: the ngx_http_dav_module used default access rights when copying a file with the COPY method. *) Workaround: some clients might not work when using HTTP/2; the bug had appeared in 1.13.5. *) Bugfix: nginx could not be built with LibreSSL 2.8.0. Changes with nginx 1.15.2 24 Jul 2018 *) Feature: the $ssl_preread_protocol variable in the ngx_stream_ssl_preread_module. *) Feature: now when using the "reset_timedout_connection" directive nginx will reset connections being closed with the 444 code. *) Change: a logging level of the "http request", "https proxy request", "unsupported protocol", and "version too low" SSL errors has been lowered from "crit" to "info". *) Bugfix: DNS requests were not resent if initial sending of a request failed. *) Bugfix: the "reuseport" parameter of the "listen" directive was ignored if the number of worker processes was specified after the "listen" directive. *) Bugfix: when using OpenSSL 1.1.0 or newer it was not possible to switch off "ssl_prefer_server_ciphers" in a virtual server if it was switched on in the default server. *) Bugfix: SSL session reuse with upstream servers did not work with the TLS 1.3 protocol. Changes with nginx 1.15.1 03 Jul 2018 *) Feature: the "random" directive inside the "upstream" block. *) Feature: improved performance when using the "hash" and "ip_hash" directives with the "zone" directive. *) Feature: the "reuseport" parameter of the "listen" directive now uses SO_REUSEPORT_LB on FreeBSD 12. *) Bugfix: HTTP/2 server push did not work if SSL was terminated by a proxy server in front of nginx. *) Bugfix: the "tcp_nopush" directive was always used on backend connections. *) Bugfix: sending a disk-buffered request body to a gRPC backend might fail. Changes with nginx 1.15.0 05 Jun 2018 *) Change: the "ssl" directive is deprecated; the "ssl" parameter of the "listen" directive should be used instead. *) Change: now nginx detects missing SSL certificates during configuration testing when using the "ssl" parameter of the "listen" directive. *) Feature: now the stream module can handle multiple incoming UDP datagrams from a client within a single session. *) Bugfix: it was possible to specify an incorrect response code in the "proxy_cache_valid" directive. *) Bugfix: nginx could not be built by gcc 8.1. *) Bugfix: logging to syslog stopped on local IP address changes. *) Bugfix: nginx could not be built by clang with CUDA SDK installed; the bug had appeared in 1.13.8. *) Bugfix: "getsockopt(TCP_FASTOPEN) ... failed" messages might appear in logs during binary upgrade when using unix domain listen sockets on FreeBSD. *) Bugfix: nginx could not be built on Fedora 28 Linux. *) Bugfix: request processing rate might exceed configured rate when using the "limit_req" directive. *) Bugfix: in handling of client addresses when using unix domain listen sockets to work with datagrams on Linux. *) Bugfix: in memory allocation error handling. |
Development branch changes are made every few weeks and stable branch changes are made less often.
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Updating Nginx
Normally you update Nginx bu running an update and upgrade
1 | apt-get update && apt-get upgrade |
Restart Nginx for good measure
1 | /etc/init.d/nginx restart |
Checking NGINX Version
1 2 | nginx -v nginx version: nginx/1.14.1 |
Changing your repository to the development branch
I changed ot the development branch by running
1 | sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/development |
Update and upgrade Nginx
1 | apt-get update && apt-get upgrade |
Restart Nginx for good measure
1 | /etc/init.d/nginx restart |
Checking NGINX Version
1 2 | nginx -v nginx version: nginx/1.16.6 |
Removing the stable Nginx repository
Run this command to remove the stable branch of Nginx
1 | sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:nginx/stable |
Check to see if the development branch is listed
1 2 | grep -r --include '*.list' '^deb ' /etc/apt/sources.list* |grep nginx /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx-ubuntu-development-bionic.list:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/nginx/development/ubuntu bionic main |
Good luck and I hope this guide helps someone
Ask a question or recommend an article
Revision History
v1.0 Initial post
I moved my domain to UpCloud (on the other side of the world) from Vultr (Sydney) and could not be happier with the performance. Here is what I did to set up a complete Ubuntu 18.04 system (NGINX, PHP, MySQL, WordPress etc). This is not a paid review (just me documenting my steps over 2 days).
Background (CPanel hosts)
In 1999 I hosted my first domain (www.fearby.com) on a host in Seattle (for $10 USD a month), the host used CPanel and all was good. After a decade I was using the domain more for online development and the website was now too slow (I think I was on dial-up or ADSL 1 at the time). I moved my domain to an Australian host (for $25 a month).
After 8 years the domain host was sold and performance remained mediocre. After another year the new host was sold again and performance was terrible.
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Page load times were near 30 seconds.
I started receiving Resource Limit Is Reached warnings (basically this was a plot by the new CPanel host to say “Pay us more and this message will go away”).
The straw that broke the camel’s back was their demand of $150/year for a dodgy SSL certificate.
I needed to move to a self-managed server where I was in control.
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Buying a Domain Name
Buy a domain name from Namecheap here.
Self Managed Server
I found a good web IDE ( http://www.c9.io/ ) that allowed me to connect to a cloud VM. C9 allowed me to open many files and terminal windows and reconnect to them later. Don’t get excited, though, as AWS have purchased C9 and it’s not the same.
C9 IDE
I spun up a Digital Ocean Server at the closest data centre in Singapore. Here was my setup guide creating a Digital Ocean VM, connecting to it with C9 and configuring it. I moved my email to G Suite and moved my WordPress to Digital Ocean (other guides here and here).
I was happy since I could now send emails via CLI/code, set up free SSL certs, add second domain email to G Suite and Secure G Suite. No more usage limit errors either.
Self-managing servers requires more work but it is more rewarding (flexible, faster and cheaper). Page load times were now near 20 seconds (10-second improvement).
Latency Issue
Over 6 months, performance on Digital Ocean (in Singapore) from Australia started to drop (mentioned here). I tried upgrading the memory but that did not help (latency was king).
Moved the website to Australia
I moved my domain to Vultr in Australia (guide here and here). All was good for a year until traffic growth started to increase.
I tried upgrading the memory on Vultr and I setup PHP child workers, setup Cloudflare.
GT Metrix scores were about a “B” and Google Page Speed Scores were in the lower 40’s. Page loads were about 14 seconds (5-second improvement).
Tweaking WordPress
I set up an image compression plugin in WordPress then set up a cloud image compression and CDN Plugin from the same vendor. Page Speed info here.
GT Metrix scores were now occasionally an “A” and Page Speed Scores were in the lower 20’s. Page loads were about 3-5 seconds (10-second improvement).
Mixed bag from Vultr (more optimisation and performance improvements were needed).
Google Chrome Developer Console Audit Results on Vultr hosted website were not very good (I stopped checking as nothing helped).
The problem was the Vultr server (400km away in Sydney) was offline (my issue) and everything above (adding more memory, adding 2x CDN’s (EWWW and Cloudflare), adding PHP Child workers etc) did not seem to help???
Enter UpCloud…
Recently, a friend sent a link to a blog article about a host called “UpCloud” who promised “Faster than SSD” performance. This can’t be right: “Faster than SSD”? I was intrigued. I wanted to check it out as I thought nothing was faster than SSD (well, maybe RAM).
I signed up for a trial and ran a disk IO test (read the review here) and I was shocked. It’s fast. Very fast.
Summary: UpCloud was twice as fast (Disk IO and CPU) as Vultr (+ an optional $4/m firewall and $3/m for 1x backup).
fyi: Labels above are K Bytes per second. iozone loops through all file sizes from 4 KB to 16,348 KB and measures through the reads per second. To be honest, the meaning of the numbers doesn’t interest me, I just want to compare apples to apples.
(image snip from http://www.iozone.org/ which explains the numbers)
I might have to copy my website on UpCloud and see how fast it is.
Where to Deploy and Pricing
UpCloud Pricing: https://www.upcloud.com/pricing/
UpCloud does not have a data centre in Australia yet so why choose UpCloud?
Most of my site’s visitors are based in the US and UpCloud have disk IO twice as fast as Vultr (win-win?). I could deploy to Chicago?
My site’s traffic is growing and I need to ensure the site is fast enough in the future.
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Creating an UpCloud VM
I used a friend’s referral code and signed up to create my first VM.
FYI: use my Referral code and get $25 free credit. Sign up only takes 2 minutes.
https://www.upcloud.com/register/?promo=D84793
When you click the link above you will receive 25$ to try out serves for 3 days. You can exit his trail and deposit $10 into UpCloud.
Trial Limitations
The trial mode restrictions are as following:
* Cloud servers can only be accessed using SSH, RDP, HTTP or HTTPS protocols
* Cloud servers are not allowed to send outgoing e-mails or to create outbound SSH/RDP connections
* The internet connection is restricted to 100 Mbps (compared to 500 Mbps for non-trial accounts)
* After your 72 hours free trial, your services will be deleted unless you make a one-time deposit of $10
UpCloud Links
The UpCloud support page is located here: https://www.upcloud.com/support/
More UpCloud links to read:
Signing up to UpCloud
Navigate to https://upcloud.com/signup and add your username, password and email address and click signup.
Add your address and payment details and click proceed (you don’t need to pay anything ($1 may be charged and instantly refunded to verify the card)
That’s it, check yout email.
Look for the UpCloud email and click https://my.upcloud.com/
Now login
Now I can see a dashboard 🙂
I was happy to see 24/7 support is available.
I opted in for the new dashboard
Deploy My First UpCloud Server
This is how I deployed a server.
Note: If you are going to deploy a server consider using my referral code and get $25 credit for free.
Under the “deploy a server” widget I named the server and chose a location (I think I was supposed to use an FQDN name -e.g., “fearby.com”). The deployment worked though. I clicked continue, then more options were made available:
FYI: How to generate a new SSH Key (on OSX or Ubuntu)
1 | ssh-keygen -t rsa |
Output
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | Generating public/private rsa key pair. Enter file in which to save the key (/root/.ssh/id_rsa): /temp/example_rsa Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): ********************************* Enter same passphrase again:********************************* Your identification has been saved in /temp/example_rsa. Your public key has been saved in /temp/example_rsa.pub. The key fingerprint is: SHA256:########################### user@sever Outputted public and private key |
Did the key export? (yes)
> /temp# ls /temp/ -al
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jun 9 15:33 .
> drwxr-xr-x 27 root root 4096 Jun 8 14:25 ..
> -rw——- 1 user user 1766 Jun 9 15:33 example_rsa
> -rw-r–r– 1 user user 396 Jun 9 15:33 example_rsa.pub
“example_rsa” is the private key and “example_rsa.pub “is the public key.
Initialisation script (after deployment)
I was pleased to see an initialization script section that calls actions after the server is deployed. I configured the initialisation script to pull down a few GB of backups from my Vultr website in Sydney (files now removed).
This was my Initialisation script:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | #!/bin/bash echo "Downloading the Vultr websites backups" mkdir /backup cd /backup wget -o www-mysql-backup.sql https://fearby.com/.../www-mysql-backup.sql wget -o www-blog-backup.zip https://fearby.com/.../www-blog-backup.zip |
Confirm and Deploy
I clicked “Confirm and deploy” but I had an alert that said trial mode can only deploy servers up to 1024MB of memory.
Exiting UpCloud Trial Mode
I opened the dashboard and clicked My Account then Billing, I could see the $25 referral credit but I guess I can’t use that in Trial.
I exited trial mode by depositing $10 (USD).
Make a manual 1-time deposit of $10 to exit trial mode.
FYI: Server prices are listed below (or view prices here).
Now I can go back and deploy the server with the same settings above (1x CPU, 2GB Memory, Ubuntu 18.04, MaxIOPS Storage etc)
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Deployment takes a few minutes and depending on how you specified a password may be emailed to you.
UpCloud Server Deployed
The server is now deployed; now I can connect to it with my SSH program (vSSH). Simply add the server’s IP, username, password and the SSH private key (generated above) to your ssh program of choice.
fyi: The public key contents start with “ssh-rsa”.
I noticed that the initialisation script downloaded my 2+GB of files already. Nice.
UpCloud Billing Breakdown
I can now see on the UpCloud billing page in my dashboard that credit is deducted daily (68c); at this rate, I have 49 days credit left?
I can manually deposit funds or set up automatic payments at any time 🙂
UpCloud Backup Options
You do not need to setup backups but in case you want to roll back (if things stuff up), it is a good idea. Backups are an additional charge.
I have set up automatic daily backups with an auto deletion after 2 days
To view backup scheduled click on your deployed server then click backup
Note: Backups are charged at $0.056 for every GB stored – so $5.60 for every 100GB per month (half that for 50GB etc)
You can take manual backups at any time (and only be charged for the hour)
UpCloud Firewall Options
I set up a firewall at UpCloud to only allow the minimum number of ports (UpCloud DNS, HTTP, HTTPS and My IP to port 22). The firewall feature is charged at $0.0056 an hour ($4.03 a month)
I love the ability to set firewall rules on incoming, destination and outgoing ports.
To view your firewall click on your deployed server then click firewall
Update: I modified my firewall to allow inbound ICMP (IPv4/IPv6) and UDP (IPv4/IPv6) packets.
(Note: Old firewall screenshot)
Because my internet provider has a dynamic IP, I set up a VPN with a static IP and whitelisted it for backdoor access.
Local Ubuntu ufw Firewall
I duplicated the rules in my local ufw (2nd level) firewall (and blocked mail)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 | sudo ufw status numbered Status: active To Action From -- ------ ---- [ 1] 80 ALLOW IN Anywhere [ 2] 443 ALLOW IN Anywhere [ 3] 25 DENY OUT Anywhere (out) [ 4] 53 ALLOW IN 93.237.127.9 [ 5] 53 ALLOW IN 93.237.40.9 [ 6] 22 ALLOW IN REMOVED (MY WHITELISTED IP)) [ 7] 80 (v6) ALLOW IN Anywhere (v6) [ 8] 443 (v6) ALLOW IN Anywhere (v6) [ 9] 25 (v6) DENY OUT Anywhere (v6) (out) [10] 53 ALLOW IN 2a04:3540:53::1 [11] 53 ALLOW IN 2a04:3544:53::1 |
UpCloud Download Speeds
I pulled down a 1.8GB Ubuntu 18.08 Desktop ISO 3 times from gigenet.com and the file downloaded in 32 seconds (57MB/sec). Nice.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 | $/temp# wget http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/18.04/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso --2018-06-08 18:02:04-- http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/18.04/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso Resolving mirrors.gigenet.com (mirrors.gigenet.com)... 69.65.15.34 Connecting to mirrors.gigenet.com (mirrors.gigenet.com)|69.65.15.34|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1921843200 (1.8G) [application/x-iso9660-image] Saving to: 'ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso' ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso 100%[==================================================================>] 1.79G 57.0MB/s in 32s 2018-06-08 18:02:37 (56.6 MB/s) - 'ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso' saved [1921843200/1921843200] $/temp# wget http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/18.04/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso --2018-06-08 18:02:46-- http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/18.04/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso Resolving mirrors.gigenet.com (mirrors.gigenet.com)... 69.65.15.34 Connecting to mirrors.gigenet.com (mirrors.gigenet.com)|69.65.15.34|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1921843200 (1.8G) [application/x-iso9660-image] Saving to: 'ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso.1' ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso.1 100%[==================================================================>] 1.79G 57.0MB/s in 32s 2018-06-08 18:03:19 (56.6 MB/s) - 'ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso.1' saved [1921843200/1921843200] $/temp# wget http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/18.04/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso --2018-06-08 18:03:23-- http://mirrors.gigenet.com/ubuntu/18.04/ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso Resolving mirrors.gigenet.com (mirrors.gigenet.com)... 69.65.15.34 Connecting to mirrors.gigenet.com (mirrors.gigenet.com)|69.65.15.34|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 1921843200 (1.8G) [application/x-iso9660-image] Saving to: 'ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso.2' ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso.2 100%[==================================================================>] 1.79G 57.0MB/s in 32s 2018-06-08 18:03:56 (56.8 MB/s) - 'ubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64.iso.2' saved [1921843200/1921843200] |
Install Common Ubuntu Packages
I installed common Ubuntu packages.
1 | apt-get install zip htop ifstat iftop bmon tcptrack ethstatus speedometer iozone3 bonnie++ sysbench siege tree tree unzip jq jq ncdu pydf ntp rcconf ufw iperf nmap iozone3 |
Timezone
I checked the server’s time (I thought this was auto set before I deployed)?
1 2 | $hwclock --show 2018-06-06 23:52:53.639378+0000 |
I reset the time to Australia/Sydney.
1 2 3 4 | dpkg-reconfigure tzdata Current default time zone: 'Australia/Sydney' Local time is now: Thu Jun 7 06:53:20 AEST 2018. Universal Time is now: Wed Jun 6 20:53:20 UTC 2018. |
Now the timezone is set 🙂
Shell History
I increased the shell history.
1 2 | HISTSIZEH =10000 HISTCONTROL=ignoredups |
SSH Login
I created a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file and added my SSH public key to allow password-less logins.
1 2 | mkdir ~/.ssh sudo nano ~/.ssh/authorized_keys |
I added my pubic ssh key, then exited the ssh session and logged back in. I can now log in without a password.
Install NGINX
1 | apt-get install nginx |
nginx/1.14.0 is now installed.
A quick GT Metrix test.
Install MySQL
Run these commands to install and secure MySQL.
1 2 | apt install mysql-server mysql_secure_installation |
Securing the MySQL server deployment.
> Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD plugin?: n
> New password: **********************************************
> Re-enter new password: **********************************************
> Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
> Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
> Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
> Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : y
> Success.
I disabled the validate password plugin because I hate it.
MySQL Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.22 is now installed.
Set MySQL root login password type
Set MySQL root user to authenticate via “mysql_native_password”. Run the “mysql” command.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | mysql SELECT user,authentication_string,plugin,host FROM mysql.user; +------------------+-------------------------------------------+-----------------------+-----------+ | user | authentication_string | plugin | host | +------------------+-------------------------------------------+-----------------------+-----------+ | root | | auth_socket | localhost | | mysql.session | hiddden | mysql_native_password | localhost | | mysql.sys | hiddden | mysql_native_password | localhost | | debian-sys-maint | hiddden | mysql_native_password | localhost | +------------------+-------------------------------------------+-----------------------+---------- |
Now let’s set the root password authentication method to “mysql_native_password”
1 2 | ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY '*****************************************'; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) |
Check authentication method.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | mysql> SELECT user,authentication_string,plugin,host FROM mysql.user; +------------------+-------------------------------------------+-----------------------+-----------+ | user | authentication_string | plugin | host | +------------------+-------------------------------------------+-----------------------+-----------+ | root | ######################################### | mysql_native_password | localhost | | mysql.session | hiddden | mysql_native_password | localhost | | mysql.sys | hiddden | mysql_native_password | localhost | | debian-sys-maint | hiddden | mysql_native_password | localhost | +------------------+-------------------------------------------+-----------------------+-----------+ |
Now we need to flush permissions.
1 2 | mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) |
Done.
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Install PHP
Install PHP 7.2
1 2 3 4 5 | apt-get install software-properties-common add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php apt-get update apt-get install -y php7.2 php -v |
PHP 7.2.5, Zend Engine v3.2.0 with Zend OPcache v7.2.5-1 is now installed. Do update PHP frequently.
I made the following changes in /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
> cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
> max_input_vars = 1000
> memory_limit = 1024M
> max_file_uploads = 20M
> post_max_size = 20M
Install PHP Modules
sudo apt-get install php-pear php7.2-curl php7.2-dev php7.2-mbstring php7.2-zip php7.2-mysql php7.2-xml
Install PHP FPM
1 | apt-get install php7.2-fpm |
Configure PHP FPM config.
Edit /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
> cgi.fix_pathinfo=0
> max_input_vars = 1000
> memory_limit = 1024M
> max_file_uploads = 20M
> post_max_size = 20M
Reload php sudo service.
1 | php7.2-fpm restart service php7.2-fpm status |
Install PHP Modules
1 | sudo apt-get install php-pear php7.2-curl php7.2-dev php7.2-mbstring php7.2-zip php7.2-mysql php7.2-xml |
Configuring NGINX
If you are not comfortable editing NGINX config files read here, here and here.
I made a new “www root” folder, set permissions and created a default html file.
1 2 3 | mkdir /www-root chown -R www-data:www-data /www-root echo "Hello World" >> /www-root/index.html |
I edited the “root” key in “/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default” file and set the root a new location (e.g., “/www-root”)
I added these performance tweaks to /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
> worker_cpu_affinity auto;
> worker_rlimit_nofile 100000
I add the following lines to “http {” section in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 | client_max_body_size 10M; gzip on; gzip_disable "msie6"; gzip_comp_level 5; gzip_min_length 256; gzip_vary on; gzip_types application/atom+xml application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rss+xml application/vnd.geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml font/opentype image/bmp image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy; #text/html is always compressed by gzip module gzip_proxied any; gzip_buffers 16 8k; gzip_http_version 1.1; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss te$ |
Check NGINX Status
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | service nginx status * nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Thu 2018-06-07 21:16:28 AEST; 30min ago Docs: man:nginx(8) Main PID: # (nginx) Tasks: 2 (limit: 2322) CGroup: /system.slice/nginx.service |- # nginx: master process /usr/sbin/nginx -g daemon on; master_process on; `- # nginx: worker process |
Install Open SSL that supports TLS 1.3
This is a work in progress. The steps work just fine for me on Ubuntu 16.04. but not Ubuntu 18.04.?
Installing Adminer MySQL GUI
I will use the PHP based Adminer MySQL GUI to export and import my blog from one server to another. All I needed to do is install it on both servers (simple 1 file download)
1 2 | cd /utils wget -o adminer.php https://github.com/vrana/adminer/releases/download/v4.6.2/adminer-4.6.2-mysql-en.php |
Use Adminer to Export My Blog (on Vultr)
On the original server open Adminer (http) and..
Save the “.sql” file.
I used Adminer on the UpCloud server to Import My Blog
FYI: Depending on the size of your database backup you may need to temporarily increase your upload and post sizes limits in PHP and NGINX before you can import your database.
Edit /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini
> max_file_uploads = 100M
> post_max_size =100M
And Edit: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
> client_max_body_size 100M;
Don’t forget to reload NGINX config and restart NGINX and PHP. Take note of the maximum allowed file size in the screenshot below. I temporarily increased my upload limits to 100MB in order to restore my 87MB blog.
Now I could open Adminer on my UpCloud server.
Don’t forget to create a user and assign permissions (as required – check your wp-config.php file).
Tip: Don’t forget to lower the maximum upload file size and max post size after you import your database,
Cloudflare DNS
I use Cloudflare to manage DNS, so I need to tell it about my new server.
You can get your server’s IP details from the UpCloud dashboard.
At Cloudflare update your DNS details to point to the server’s new IPv4 (“A Record”) and IPv6 (“AAAA Record”).
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Domain Error
I waited an hour and my website was suddenly unavailable. At first, I thought this was Cloudflare forcing the redirection of my domain to HTTP (that was not yet set up).
I chatted with UpCloud chat on their webpage and they kindly assisted me to diagnose all the common issues like DNS values, DNS replication, Cloudflare settings and the error was pinpointed to my NGINX installation. All NGINX config settings were ok from what we could see? I uninstalled NGINX and reinstalled it (and that fixed it). Thanks UpCloud Support 🙂
Reinstalled NGINX
1 | sudo apt-get purge nginx nginx-common |
I reinstalled NGINX and reconfigured /etc/nginx/nginx.conf (I downloaded my SSL cert from my old server just in case).
Here is my /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 | user www-data; worker_processes auto; worker_cpu_affinity auto; pid /run/nginx.pid; include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf; error_log /var/log/nginx/www-nginxcriterror.log crit; events { worker_connections 768; multi_accept on; } http { client_max_body_size 10M; sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; tcp_nodelay on; keepalive_timeout 65; types_hash_max_size 2048; server_tokens off; server_names_hash_bucket_size 64; server_name_in_redirect off; include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; access_log /var/log/nginx/www-access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/www-error.log; gzip on; gzip_vary on; gzip_disable "msie6"; gzip_min_length 256; gzip_proxied any; gzip_comp_level 6; gzip_buffers 16 8k; gzip_http_version 1.1; gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript; include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } |
Here is my /etc/nginx/sites-available/default file (fyi, I have not fully re-setup TLS 1.3 yet so I commented out the settings)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 | proxy_cache_path /tmp/nginx-cache keys_zone=one:10m;# server { root /www-root; # Listen Ports listen 80 default_server http2; listen [::]:80 default_server http2; listen 443 ssl default_server http2; listen [::]:443 ssl default_server http2; # Default File index index.html index.php index.htm; # Server Name server_name www.fearby.com fearby.com localhost; # HTTPS Cert ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl-cert-path/fearby.crt; ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl-cert-path/fearby.key; ssl_dhparam /etc/nginx/ssl-cert-path/dhparams4096.pem; # HTTPS Ciphers # TLS 1.2 ssl_protocols TLSv1.2; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_ciphers "EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH"; # TLS 1.3 #todo # ssl_ciphers # ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA512:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA512:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DES-CBC3-SHA; # ssl_ecdh_curve secp384r1; # Force HTTPS if ($scheme != "https") { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } # HTTPS Settings server_tokens off; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m; ssl_session_timeout 30m; ssl_session_tickets off; add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload"; add_header X-Frame-Options DENY; add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff; add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"; #ssl_stapling on; # Requires nginx >= 1.3.7 # Cloudflare DNS resolver 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1 valid=60s; resolver_timeout 1m; # PHP Memory fastcgi_param PHP_VALUE "memory_limit = 1024M"; # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000 location ~ .php$ { try_files $uri =404; # include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf; fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(/.+)$; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock; # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini # fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; } location / { # try_files $uri $uri/ =404; try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args; index index.php index.html index.htm; proxy_set_header Proxy ""; } # Deny Rules location ~ /.ht { deny all; } location ~ ^/.user.ini { deny all; } location ~ (.ini) { return 403; } # Headers location ~* .(?:ico|css|js|gif|jpe?g|png|js)$ { expires 30d; add_header Pragma public; add_header Cache-Control "public"; } } |
SSL Labs SSL Certificate Check
All good thanks to the config above.
Install WP-CLI
I don’t like setting up FTP to auto-update WordPress plugins. I use the WP-CLI tool to manage WordPress installations by the command line. Read my blog here on using WP-CLI.
Download WP-CLI
1 2 3 | mkdir /utils cd /utils curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar |
Move WP-CLI to the bin folder as “wp”
1 2 | chmod +x wp-cli.phar sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp |
Test wp
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 | wp --info OS: Linux 4.15.0-22-generic #24-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 16 12:15:17 UTC 2018 x86_64 Shell: /bin/bash PHP binary: /usr/bin/php7.2 PHP version: 7.2.5-1+ubuntu18.04.1+deb.sury.org+1 php.ini used: /etc/php/7.2/cli/php.ini WP-CLI root dir: phar://wp-cli.phar WP-CLI vendor dir: phar://wp-cli.phar/vendor WP_CLI phar path: /www-root WP-CLI packages dir: WP-CLI global config: WP-CLI project config: WP-CLI version: 1.5.1 |
Update WordPress Plugins
Now I can run “wp plugin update” to update all WordPress plugins
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 | wp plugin update Enabling Maintenance mode... Downloading update from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wordfence.7.1.7.zip... Unpacking the update... Installing the latest version... Removing the old version of the plugin... Plugin updated successfully. Downloading update from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-meta-seo.3.7.1.zip... Unpacking the update... Installing the latest version... Removing the old version of the plugin... Plugin updated successfully. Downloading update from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wordpress-seo.7.6.1.zip... Unpacking the update... Installing the latest version... Removing the old version of the plugin... Plugin updated successfully. Disabling Maintenance mode... Success: Updated 3 of 3 plugins. +---------------+-------------+-------------+---------+ | name | old_version | new_version | status | +---------------+-------------+-------------+---------+ | wordfence | 7.1.6 | 7.1.7 | Updated | | wp-meta-seo | 3.7.0 | 3.7.1 | Updated | | wordpress-seo | 7.5.3 | 7.6.1 | Updated | +---------------+-------------+-------------+---------+ |
Update WordPress Core
WordPress core file can be updated with “wp core update”
1 2 | wp core update Success: WordPress is up to date. |
Troubleshooting: Use the flag “–allow-root “if wp needs higher access (unsafe action though).
Install PHP Child Workers
I edited the following file to setup PHP child workers /etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
Changes
> pm = dynamic
> pm.max_children = 40
> pm.start_servers = 15
> pm.min_spare_servers = 5
> pm.max_spare_servers = 15
> pm.process_idle_timeout = 30s;
> pm.max_requests = 500;
> php_admin_value[error_log] = /var/log/www-fpm-php.www.log
> php_admin_value[memory_limit] = 512M
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Restart PHP
1 | sudo service php7.2-fpm restart |
Test NGINX config, reload NGINX config and restart NGINX
1 2 3 | nginx -t nginx -s reload /etc/init.d/nginx restart |
Output (14 workers are ready)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 | Check PHP Child Worker Status sudo service php7.2-fpm status * php7.2-fpm.service - The PHP 7.2 FastCGI Process Manager Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/php7.2-fpm.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Thu 2018-06-07 19:32:47 AEST; 20s ago Docs: man:php-fpm7.2(8) Main PID: # (php-fpm7.2) Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 15, Requests: 2, slow: 0, Traffic: 0.1req/sec" Tasks: 16 (limit: 2322) CGroup: /system.slice/php7.2-fpm.service |- # php-fpm: master process (/etc/php/7.2/fpm/php-fpm.conf) |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www |- # php-fpm: pool www - # php-fpm: pool www |
Memory Tweak (set at your own risk)
1 | sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf |
vm.swappiness = 1
Setting swappiness to a value of 1 all but disables the swap file and tells the Operating System to aggressively use ram, a value of 10 is safer. Only set this if you have enough memory available (and free).
Possible swappiness settings:
> vm.swappiness = 0 Swap is disabled. In earlier versions, this meant that the kernel would swap only to avoid an out of memory condition when free memory will be below vm.min_free_kbytes limit, but in later versions, this is achieved by setting to 1.[2]> vm.swappiness = 1 Kernel version 3.5 and over, as well as Red Hat kernel version 2.6.32-303 and over: Minimum amount of swapping without disabling it entirely.
> vm.swappiness = 10 This value is sometimes recommended to improve performance when sufficient memory exists in a system.[3]
> vm.swappiness = 60 The default value.
> vm.swappiness = 100 The kernel will swap aggressively.
The “htop” tool is a handy memory monitoring tool to “top”
Also you can use good old “watch” command to show near-live memory usage (auto-refreshes every 2 seconds)
1 | watch -n 2 free -m |
Script to auto-clear the memory/cache
As a habit, I am setting up a cronjob to check when free memory falls below 100MB, then cache is automatically cleared (freeing memory).
Script Contents: clearcache.sh
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 | #!/bin/bash # Script help inspired by https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/119126/command-to-display-memory-usage-disk-usage-and-cpu-load ram_use=$(free -m) IFS=$'n' read -rd '' -a ram_use_arr <<< "$ram_use" ram_use="${ram_use_arr[1]}" ram_use=$(echo "$ram_use" | tr -s " ") IFS=' ' read -ra ram_use_arr <<< "$ram_use" ram_total="${ram_use_arr[1]}" ram_used="${ram_use_arr[2]}" ram_free="${ram_use_arr[3]}" d=`date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` if ! [[ "$ram_free" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then echo "Sorry ram_free is not an integer" else if [ "$ram_free" -lt "100" ]; then echo "$d RAM LOW (Total: $ram_total MB, Used: $ram_used MB, Free: $ram_free MB) - Clearing Cache..." sync; echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches sync; echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches #sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches #Not advised in production # Read for more info https://www.tecmint.com/clear-ram-memory-cache-buffer-and-swap-space-on-linux/ exit 1 else if [ "$ram_free" -lt "256" ]; then echo "$d RAM ALMOST LOW (Total: $ram_total MB, Used: $ram_used MB, Free: $ram_free MB)" exit 1 else if [ "$ram_free" -lt "512" ]; then echo "$d RAM OK (Total: $ram_total MB, Used: $ram_used MB, Free: $ram_free MB)" exit 1 else echo "$d RAM LOW (Total: $ram_total MB, Used: $ram_used MB, Free: $ram_free MB)" exit 1 fi fi fi fi |
I set the cronjob to run every 15 mins, I added this to my cronjob.
1 2 | SHELL=/bin/bash */15 * * * * root /bin/bash /scripts/clearcache.sh >> /scripts/clearcache.log |
Sample log output
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | 2018-06-10 01:13:22 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 981 MB, Free: 387 MB) 2018-06-10 01:15:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 974 MB, Free: 394 MB) 2018-06-10 01:20:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 955 MB, Free: 412 MB) 2018-06-10 01:25:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 1002 MB, Free: 363 MB) 2018-06-10 01:30:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 970 MB, Free: 394 MB) 2018-06-10 01:35:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 963 MB, Free: 400 MB) 2018-06-10 01:40:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 976 MB, Free: 387 MB) 2018-06-10 01:45:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 985 MB, Free: 377 MB) 2018-06-10 01:50:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 983 MB, Free: 379 MB) 2018-06-10 01:55:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 979 MB, Free: 382 MB) 2018-06-10 02:00:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 980 MB, Free: 380 MB) 2018-06-10 02:05:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 971 MB, Free: 389 MB) 2018-06-10 02:10:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 983 MB, Free: 376 MB) 2018-06-10 02:15:01 RAM OK (Total: 1993 MB, Used: 967 MB, Free: 392 MB) |
I will check the log (/scripts/clearcache.log) in a few days and view the memory trends.
After 1/2 a day Ubuntu 18.04 is handling memory just fine, no externally triggered cache clears have happened 🙂
I used https://crontab.guru/every-hour to set the right schedule in crontab.
I rebooted the VM.
Update: I now use Nixstats monitoring
Swap File
FYI: Here is a handy guide on viewing swap file usage here. I’m not using swap files so it is only an aside.
After the system rebooted I checked if the swappiness setting was active.
1 2 | sudo cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness 1 |
Yes, swappiness is set.
File System Tweaks – Write Back Cache (set at your own risk)
First, check your disk name and file system
1 | sudo lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL |
Take note of your disk name (e.g vda1)
I used TuneFS to enable writing data to the disk before writing to the journal. tunefs is a great tool for setting file system parameters.
Warning (snip from here): “I set the mode to journal_data_writeback. This basically means that data may be written to the disk before the journal. The data consistency guarantees are the same as the ext3 file system. The downside is that if your system crashes before the journal gets written then you may loose new data — the old data may magically reappear.”
Warning this can corrupt your data. More information here.
I ran this command.
1 | tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/vda1 |
I edited my fstab to append the “writeback,noatime,nodiratime” flags for my volume after a reboot.
Edit FS Tab:
1 | sudo nano /etc/fstab |
I added “writeback,noatime,nodiratime” flags to my disk options.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | # /etc/fstab: static file system information. # # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5). # # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> # / was on /dev/vda1 during installation # <device> <dir> <fs> <options> <dump> <fsck> UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx / ext4 errors=remount-ro,data=writeback,noatime,nodiratime 0 1 |
Updating Ubuntu Packages
Show updatable packages.
1 | apt-get -s dist-upgrade | grep "^Inst" |
Update Packages.
1 | sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade |
Unattended Security Updates
Read more on Ubuntu 18.04 Unattended upgrades here, here and here.
Install Unattended Upgrades
1 | sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades |
Enable Unattended Upgrades.
1 | sudo dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades |
Now I configure what packages not to auto update.
Edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades
Find “Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist” and add packages that you don’t want automatically updated, you may want to manually update these (and monitor updates).
I prefer not to auto-update critical system apps (I will do this myself).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 | Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist { "nginx"; "nginx-common"; "nginx-core"; "php7.2"; "php7.2-fpm"; "mysql-server"; "mysql-server-5.7"; "mysql-server-core-5.7"; "libssl1.0.0"; "libssl1.1"; }; |
FYI: You can find installed packages by running this command:
1 | apt list --installed |
Enable automatic updates by editing /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades
Edit the number at the end (the number is how many days to wait before updating) of each line.
> APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists “1”;
> APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages “1”;
> APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval “7”;
> APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade “1”;
Set to “0” to disable automatic updates.
The results of unattended-upgrades will be logged to /var/log/unattended-upgrades
Update packages now.
1 | unattended-upgrade -d |
Almost done.
I Rebooted
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GT Metrix Score
I almost fell off my chair. It’s an amazing feeling hitting refresh in GT Metrix and getting sub-2-second score consistently (and that is with 17 assets loading and 361KB of HTML content)
WebPageTest.org Test Score
Nice. I am not sure why the effective use of CDN has an X rating as I have the EWWW CDN and Cloudflare. First Byte time is now a respectable “B”, This was always bad.
Update: I found out the longer you set cache delays in Cloudflare the higher the score.
GT Metrix has a nice historical breakdown of load times (night and day).
Google Page Speed Insight Desktop Score
I benchmarked with https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
This will help with future SEO rankings. It is well known that Google is pushing fast servers.
Google Chrome 70 Dev Console Audit (Desktop)
This is amazing, I never expected to get this high score. I know Google like (and are pushing) sub-1-second scores.
My site is loading so well it is time I restored some old features that were too slow on other servers
GTMetrix and WebpageTest sores are still good (even after adding bloat)
My WordPress site is not really that small either
FYI: WordPress Plugins I use.
These are the plugins I use.
How I use these plugins to speed up my site.
Let’s Test UpCloud’s Disk IO in Chicago
Looks good to me, Read IO is a little bit lower than UpCloud’s Singapore data centre but still, it’s faster than Vultr. I can’t wait for more data centres to become available around the world.
Why is UpCloud Disk IO so good?
I asked UpCloud on Twitter why the Disk IO was so good.
My Answers to Questions to support
Q1) What’s the difference between backups and snapshots (a Twitter user said Snapshots were a thing)
A1) Backups and snapshots are the same things with our infrastructure.
Q2) What are charges for backup of a 50GB drive?
A2) We charge $0.06 / GB of the disk being captured. But capture the whole disk, not just what was used. So for a 50GB drive, we charge $0.06 * 50 = $3/month. Even if 1GB were only used.
Q3) What are data charges if I go over my 2TB quota?
A3) Outgoing data charges are $0.056/GB after the pre-configured allowance.
Q4) What happens if my balance hits $0?
A4) You will get notification of low account balance 2 weeks in advance based on your current daily spend. When your balance reaches zero, your servers will be shut down. But they will still be charged for. You can automatically top-up if you want to assign a payment type from your Control Panel. You deposit into your balance when you want. We use a prepay model of payment, so you need to top up before using, not billing you after usage. We give you lots of chances to top-up.
Support Tips
I think it’s time to delete my domain from Vultr in Sydney.
Deleted my Vultr domain
I deleted my Vultr domain.
Done.
More Reading on UpCloud
https://www.upcloud.com/documentation/faq/
UpCloud Server Status
Check out my new guide on Nixstats for awesome monitoring
What I would like
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Update: Post UpCloud Launch Tweaks (Awesome)
I had a look at https://www.webpagetest.org/ results to see where else I can optimise webpage delivery.
Disable dasjhicons.min.css (for unauthenticated WordPress users).
Find functions.php in the www root
1 | sudo find . -print |grep functions.php |
Edit functions.php
1 | sudo nano ./wp-includes/functions.php |
Add the following
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | // Remove dashicons in frontend for unauthenticated users add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'bs_dequeue_dashicons' ); function bs_dequeue_dashicons() { if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) { wp_deregister_style( 'dashicons' ); } } |
HTTP2 Push
I added http2 to my listening servers
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | server { root /www; ... listen 80 default_server http2; listen [::]:80 default_server http2; listen 443 ssl default_server http2; listen [::]:443 ssl default_server http2; ... |
I tested a http2 push page by defining this in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
1 2 3 4 5 6 | location = /http2/push_demo.html { http2_push /http2/pushed.css; http2_push /http2/pushedimage1.jpg; http2_push /http2/pushedimage2.jpg; http2_push /http2/pushedimage3.jpg; } |
Once I tested that push (demo here) was working I then defined two files to push that were being sent from my server
1 2 3 4 5 6 | location / { ... http2_push /https://fearby.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js; http2_push /wp-content/themes/news-pro/images/favicon.ico; ... } |
I used the WordPress Plugin Autoptimize to remove Google font usage (this removed a number of files being loaded when my page loads).
I used the WordPress Plugin WP-Optimize plugin into to remove comments and disable pingbacks and trackbacks.
WordPress wp-config.php tweaks
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | # Memory define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT','1024M'); define('WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT','1024M'); set_time_limit (60); # Security define( 'FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true); # Disable Updates define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false ); define( 'AUTOMATIC_UPDATER_DISABLED', true ); # ewww.io define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', false ); |
Add 2FA Authentication to server logins.
I recently checked out YubiCo YubiKeys and I have secured my Linux servers with 2FA prompts at login. Read the guide here. I secured my WordPress too.
Tweaks Todo
Conclusion
I love UpCloud’s fast servers, give them a go (use my link and get $25 free credit).
I love Cloudflare for providing a fast CDN.
I love ewww.io’s automatic Image Compression and Resizing plugin that automatically handles image optimisations and pre Cloudflare/first hit CDN caching.
Read my post about server monitoring with Nixstats here.
Let the results speak for themselves (sub <1 second load times).
I hope this guide helps someone.
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Revision History
v2.1 Newer GTMetrix scores
v2.0 New UpCloud UI Update and links to new guides.
v1.9 Spelling and grammar
v1.8 Trial mode gotcha (deposit money ASAP)
v1.7 Added RSA Private key info
v1.7 – Added new firewall rules info.
v1.6 – Added more bloat to the site, still good.
v1.5 Improving Accessibility
v1.4 Added Firewall Price
v1.3 Added wp-config and plugin usage descriptions.
v1.2 Added GTMetrix historical chart.
v1.1 Fixed free typos and added final conclusion images.
v1.0 Added final results
v0.9 added more tweaks (http2 push, removing unwanted files etc)
v0.81 Draft – Added memory usage chart and added MaxIOPS info from UpCloud.
v0.8 Draft post.
This is a quick post that shows how I set up the “Feature-Policy”, “Referrer-Policy” and “Content Security Policy” headers in Nginx to tighter security and privacy.
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Aside
If you have not read my previous posts I have now moved my blog to the awesome UpCloud host (signup using this link to get $25 free UpCloud VM credit). I compared Digital Ocean, Vultr and UpCloud Disk IO here and UpCloud came out on top by a long way (read the blog post here). Here is my blog post on moving from Vultr to UpCloud.
Buy a domain name here
Now on with the post.
Add a Feature Policy Header
Upon visiting https://securityheaders.com/ I found references to a Feature-Policy header (WC3 internet standard) that allows you to define what browse features you webpage can use along with other headers.
Google mentions the Feature-Policy header here.
Browser features that we can enable or block with feature-policy headers.
Feature Policy Values
My Final Feature Policy Header
I added this header to Nginx
1 | sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default |
This essentially disables all browser features when visitors access my site
1 | add_header Feature-Policy "geolocation none;midi none;notifications none;push none;sync-xhr none;microphone none;camera none;magnetometer none;gyroscope none;speaker self;vibrate none;fullscreen self;payment none;"; |
I reloaded Nginx config and restart Nginx
1 2 3 | nginx -t nginx -s reload /etc/init.d/nginx restart |
Feature-Policy Results
I verified my feature-policy header with https://securityheaders.com/
Nice, Feature -Policy is now enabled.
Now I need to enable the following headers
Add a Referrer Policy Header
I added this header configuration in Nginx to prevent referrers being leaked over insecure protocols.
1 | add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer-when-downgrade"; |
Referrer-Policy Results
Again, I verified my referrer policy header with https://securityheaders.com/
Done, now I just need to setup Content Security Policy.
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Add a Content Security Policy header
I read my old guide on Beyond SSL with Content Security Policy, Public Key Pinning etc before setting up a Content Security policy again (I had disabled it a while ago). Setting a fully working CSP is very complex and if you don’t want to review CSP errors and modify the CSP over time this may not be for you.
Read more about Content Security Policy here: https://content-security-policy.com/
I added my old CSP to Nginx
1 | > add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; frame-ancestors 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://fonts.googleapis.com:* https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; img-src 'self' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://secure.gravatar.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; font-src 'self' data: https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://fonts.googleapis.com:* https://fonts.gstatic.com:* https://cdn.joinhoney.com:* https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; connect-src 'self' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; media-src 'self' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://secure.gravatar.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; child-src 'self' https://player.vimeo.com https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://www.youtube.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; form-action 'self' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; " always; |
I then imported the CSP into https://report-uri.com/home/generate and enabled more recent CSP values.
1 | add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self' ; script-src * 'self' data: 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:* https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com:* https://www.youtube.com:* https://adservice.google.com.au:* https://s.ytimg.com:* about; style-src 'self' data: 'unsafe-inline' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://fonts.googleapis.com:* https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; img-src 'self' data: https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://secure.gravatar.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:* https://a.impactradius-go.com:* https://www.paypalobjects.com:* https://namecheap.pxf.io:* https://www.paypalobjects.com:* https://stats.g.doubleclick.net:* https://*.doubleclick.net:* https://stats.g.doubleclick.net:* https://www.ojrq.net:* https://ak1s.abmr.net:* https://*.abmr.net:*; font-src 'self' data: https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://fonts.googleapis.com:* https://fonts.gstatic.com:* https://cdn.joinhoney.com:* https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:* https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net:*; connect-src 'self' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; media-src 'self' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://*.google-analytics.com https://*.google.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://secure.gravatar.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; object-src 'self' ; child-src 'self' https://player.vimeo.com https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://www.youtube.com https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; frame-src 'self' https://www.youtube.com:* https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net:* https://*doubleclick.net; worker-src 'self' ; frame-ancestors 'self' ; form-action 'self' https://fearby.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://fearby-com.exactdn.com:* https://www.googletagmanager.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:* https://www.google-analytics.com:*; upgrade-insecure-requests; block-all-mixed-content; disown-opener; reflected-xss block; base-uri https://fearby.com:*; manifest-src 'self' 'self' 'self'; referrer no-referrer-when-downgrade; report-uri https://fearby.report-uri.com/r/d/csp/enforce;" always; |
I restarted Nginx
1 2 3 | nginx -t nginx -s reload /etc/init.d/nginx restart |
I loaded the Google Developer Console to see any CSP errors when loading my site.
I enabled reporting of CSP errors to https://fearby.report-uri.com/r/d/csp/enforce
Fyi: Content Security Policy OWASP Cheat Sheet.
You can validate CSP with https://cspvalidator.org
Now I won’t have to check my Chrome Developer Console and visitors to my site will report errors. I can see my site’s visitors CSP errors at https://report-uri.com/
Content Security Policy Results
I reviewed the reported errors and made some more CSP changes. I will continue to lock down my CSP and make more changes before making this CSP policy live.
I verified my header with https://securityheaders.com/
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Testing Policies
TIP: Use the header name of “Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only” instead of “Content-Security-Policy” to report errors before making CSP changes live.
I did not want to go live too soon, I had issues with some WordPress plugins not working in the WordPress admins screens.
Reviewing Errors
Do check your reported errors and update your CSP often, I had a post with a load of Twitter related errors.
I hope this guide helps someone.
Please consider using my referral code and get $25 UpCloud VM credit if you need to create a server online.
https://www.upcloud.com/register/?promo=D84793
Ask a question or recommend an article
Revision History
v1.2 OWASP Cheat Sheet.
v1.1 added info on WordPress errors.
v1.0 Initial Post
This is a quick post that shows how I set up the “Feature-Policy”, “Referrer-Policy” and “Content Security Policy” security headers in Nginx to tighter security and privacy.
Read the full article here: https://fearby.com/article/set-up-feature-policy-referrer-policy-and-content-security-policy-headers-in-nginx
Here is how I added two subdomains (one pointing to a new UpCloud VM and the other pointing to an NGINX subsite) on Ubuntu 18.04.
Read the full article here: https://fearby.com/article/adding-two-sub-domains-one-pointing-to-a-new-upcloud-vm-and-the-other-pointing-to-an-nginx-subsite-on-ubuntu-18-04/
Here is how I added two subdomains (one pointing to a new UpCloud VM and the other pointing to an NGINX subsite) on Ubuntu 18.04
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If you have not read my previous posts I have now moved my blog to the awesome UpCloud host (signup using this link to get $25 free credit). I compared Digital Ocean, Vultr and UpCloud Disk IO here and UpCloud came out on top by a long way (read the blog post here). Here is my blog post on moving from Vultr to UpCloud.
UpCloud performance is great.
Buy a domain name from Namecheap here.
Goal(s)
Setup 2x subdomains on https://fearby.com
– Sub Domain #1: https://test.fearby.com (pointing to a dedicated UpCloud VM in Singapore for testing).
– Sub Domain #2: https://audit.fearby.com (pointing to a sub-website on the NGINX/VM that runs https://fearby.com )
Let’s set up the first Sub Domain (dedicated VM) and SSL
Backup
Do backup your server first.
VM
I created a second server ($5 month or $0.07c hour 1,024MB Memory, 25GB Disk, 1024 GB Month Data Transfer) at UpCloud. If you don’t already have an account at UpCloud use this link to signup and get $25 free credit ( https://www.upcloud.com/register/?promo=D84793 ). Read my blog post on why UpCloud is awesome and how I moved my domain to UpCloud.
Once I spun up a second server I obtained the IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses of the new “test” VM from the UpCloud dashboard.
1 2 | IPV4 IP: 94.237.65.54 IPV6 IP: 2a04:3543:1000:2310:24b7:7cff:fe92:468c |
DNS
These DNS records were already in place with my DNS provider (Cloudflare).
1 2 | A fearby.com 209.50.48.88 AAAA fearby.com 2605:7380:1000:1310:24b7:7cff:fe92:0d64 |
I added these DNS records for the subdomains.
I added a new A NAME record for the new shared NGINX subdomain (for https://audit.fearby.com), this subdomain will be a sub-website that is running off the same server as https://fearby.com
1 2 | A audit 209.50.48.88 AAAA audit 2605:7380:1000:1310:24b7:7cff:fe92:0d64 |
I added another set of records for the new dedicated VM subdomain (for https://test.fearby.com)
1 2 | A test 94.237.65.54 AAAA test 2a04:3543:1000:2310:24b7:7cff:fe92:468c |
I waited for DNS to replicate around the globe by watching https://www.whatsmydns.net/
Setup a Firewall
On the new dedicated https://test.fearby.com VM, I installed the ufw firewall.
1 | sudo apt-get install ufw |
I configured the firewall to allow minimum ports (and added whitelisted IP for port 22 and added UpCloud DNS servers). I will lock this down some more later.
TIP: If your ISP does not offer a dedicated IP try a VPN. I use https://cyberghostvpn.com on OSX and Android.
Firewall rules.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 | sudo ufw status numbered To Action From -- ------ ---- [ 1] 22 ALLOW IN x.x.x.x [ 2] 80 ALLOW IN Anywhere [ 3] 443 ALLOW IN Anywhere [ 4] 53 ALLOW IN 93.237.127.9 [ 5] 53 ALLOW IN 93.237.40.9 [ 6] 25 DENY IN Anywhere [ 7] 80 (v6) ALLOW IN Anywhere (v6) [ 8] 443 (v6) ALLOW IN Anywhere (v6) [ 9] 53 ALLOW IN 2a04:3540:53::1 [10] 53 ALLOW IN 2a04:3544:53::1 [11] 22 ALLOW IN x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x [12] 25 (v6) DENY IN Anywhere (v6) |
I enabled the firewall.
1 | sudo ufw enable |
Install NGINX (on https://test.fearby.com)
On the new dedicated https://test.fearby.com VM I…
Created a new www root
1 | mkdir /www-root |
Set permissions
1 | sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /www-root |
Installed NGINX
1 2 | sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install nginx |
I created a placeholder webpage
1 | sudo nano /www-root/index.html |
Configured the root value in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
Created a symbolic link of the nginx config
1 | sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default |
Lets Encrypt SSL
I have previously setup Lets encrypt on Ubuntu 16.04 but not 18.04. Certbot had info on setting up Lets Encrypt for 14.x 16.x and 17.x but not 18.x
Full credit for the SSL steps goes to @Linuxize ( tips on setting up Lets Encrypt on Ubuntu 18.04 ). Check out https://linuxize.com/
I installed Lets Encrypt certbot
1 2 | sudo apt update sudo apt install certbot |
I created a new Diffie–Hellman key
1 2 | mkdir -p /etc/ssl/certs/ sudo openssl dhparam -out /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem 2048 |
Map requests to http://test.fearby.com/.well-known/acme-challenge to /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known ( Read the linuxize post for detailed steps ).
1 2 3 | mkdir -p /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known chgrp www-data /var/lib/letsencrypt chmod g+s /var/lib/letsencrypt |
Create a /etc/nginx/snippets/letsencrypt.conf on http://test.fearby.com and enforce the redirect.
1 2 3 4 5 6 | location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ { allow all; root /var/lib/letsencrypt/; default_type "text/plain"; try_files $uri =404; } |
Create a /etc/nginx/snippets/ssl.conf file on http://test.fearby.com
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 | ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem; ssl_session_timeout 1d; ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m; ssl_session_tickets off; ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!DSS'; ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_stapling on; ssl_stapling_verify on; resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 valid=300s; resolver_timeout 30s; add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubdomains; preload"; add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN; add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff; |
Let’s get a certificate
1 | sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email your@email.com --webroot -w /var/lib/letsencrypt/ -d test.fearby.com |
Certificates have been created 🙂
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 | ls -al /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/ total 12 drwxr-xr-x 2 user user 4096 Jun 26 11:30 . drwx------ 3 user user 4096 Jun 26 11:30 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 543 Jun 26 11:30 README lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 39 Jun 26 11:30 cert.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/cert1.pem lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 40 Jun 26 11:30 chain.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/chain1.pem lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 44 Jun 26 11:30 fullchain.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/fullchain1.pem lrwxrwxrwx 1 user user 42 Jun 26 11:30 privkey.pem -> ../../archive/test.fearby.com/privkey1.pem |
Now lets edit “/etc/nginx/sites-available/default” on https://test.fearby.com VM and add the cert paths.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 | server { listen 80 default_server; listen [::]:80 default_server; listen 443 ssl http2; listen [::]:443 ssl http2; if ($scheme != "https") { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/privkey.pem; ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/test.fearby.com/chain.pem; include snippets/ssl.conf; #ssl_stapling on; # Requires nginx >= 1.3.7 # add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubdomains; preload"; add_header X-Frame-Options DENY; add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff; add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block"; root /www-root/; include snippets/letsencrypt.conf; index index.html; server_name test.fearby.com; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } } |
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Reload NGINX
1 | sudo systemctl reload nginx |
or
1 2 3 | sudo nginx -t sudo nginx -s reload sudo systemctl reload nginx |
Now let’s setup the second subdomain (subsite off https://fearby.com) and SSL
VM
I already have NGINX on https://fearby.com set up a second site.
DNS
We have already setup a DNS record for https://audit.fearby.com (above)
Firewall
Already configured at https://fearby.com
SSL
Because I had an existing Comodo certificate on https://fearby.com I am going to repeat the steps above to generate a new certificate but save the NGINX config to /etc/nginx/sites-available/audit.fearby.com (this activates the second site)
TIP: Follow the Linuxize guide here (for creating ssl.conf, letsencrypt.conf etc config files), Do a backup and restore if need be.
I created a new Diffie–Hellman key
1 2 | mkdir -p /etc/ssl/certs/ sudo openssl dhparam -out /etc/ssl/certs/dhparam.pem 2048 |
Let’s get a certificate
1 | sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email your@email.com --webroot -w /var/lib/letsencrypt/ -d audit.fearby.com |
Configure NGINX
Map requests to http://audit.fearby.com/.well-known/acme-challenge to /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known ( Read the linuxize post for detailed steps ).
1 2 3 | mkdir -p /var/lib/letsencrypt/.well-known chgrp www-data /var/lib/letsencrypt chmod g+s /var/lib/letsencrypt |
I created a new NGINX site ( /etc/nginx/sites-available/audit.fearby.com )
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 | #proxy_cache_path /tmp/nginx-cache keys_zone=one:10m;# server { root /www-audit-root; # Listen Ports listen 80; listen [::]:80; listen 443 ssl http2; listen [::]:443 ssl http2; # Default File index index.html index.php index.htm; # Server Name server_name audit.fearby.com; include snippets/letsencrypt.conf; location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; } ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/audit.fearby.com/fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/audit.fearby.com/privkey.pem; ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/audit.fearby.com/chain.pem; ssl_dhparam /etc/ssl/certs/auditdhparam.pem; ssl_session_timeout 1d; #ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:50m; ssl_session_tickets off; ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA38$ ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ssl_stapling on; ssl_stapling_verify on; #resolver 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 valid=300s; #resolver_timeout 30s; add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubdomains; preload"; add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN; add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff; if ($scheme != "https") { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } } |
I created a symbolic link of the config file
1 | sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/audit.fearby.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/audit.fearby.com |
Reload NGINX
1 | sudo systemctl reload nginx |
or
1 2 3 | sudo nginx -t sudo nginx -s reload sudo systemctl reload nginx |
How to test the certificate renewal
1 | sudo certbot renew --dry-run |
Automate the renewal in crontab (every 12 hours)
I set this crontab entry up on https://fearby.com and https://test.fearby.com
1 2 | crontab -e 0 */12 * * * root test -x /usr/bin/certbot -a \! -d /run/systemd/system && perl -e 'sleep int(rand(3600))' && certbot -q renew --renew-hook "systemctl reload nginx" |
Conclusion
Yes, I haVe 2 subdomains (1x dedicated VM and the other is a sub-website off an existing server) with SSL certificates.
Ping Results
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 | ping -c 4 fearby.com PING fearby.com (209.50.48.88): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=220.000 ms 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=290.602 ms 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=311.938 ms 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=330.841 ms --- fearby.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 220.000/288.345/330.841/41.948 ms ping -c 4 test.fearby.com PING test.fearby.com (94.237.65.54): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=333.590 ms 64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=252.433 ms 64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=271.153 ms 64 bytes from 94.237.65.54: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=292.685 ms --- test.fearby.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 252.433/287.465/333.590/30.200 ms ping -c 4 audit.fearby.com PING audit.fearby.com (209.50.48.88): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=0 ttl=44 time=281.662 ms 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=307.676 ms 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=2 ttl=44 time=227.985 ms 64 bytes from 209.50.48.88: icmp_seq=3 ttl=44 time=215.566 ms --- audit.fearby.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 215.566/258.222/307.676/37.845 ms |
Webpage Results
Troubleshooting
If you are having troubles generating the initial certificate check that you have not blocked port 80 and don’t have “Strict-Transport-Security” heavers enabled.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email your@email.com --webroot -w /var/lib/letsencrypt/ -d g Saving debug log to /var/log/letsencrypt/letsencrypt.log Obtaining a new certificate Performing the following challenges: http-01 challenge for yoursubdomain.domain.com Using the webroot path /var/lib/letsencrypt for all unmatched domains. Waiting for verification... Cleaning up challenges Failed authorization procedure. yoursubdomain.domain.com (http-01): urn:acme:error:unauthorized :: The client lacks sufficzLlmg_w6Tc: q%!(EXTRA string=<html> <head><title>404 Not Found</title></head> <body bgcolor="white"> <center><h1>404 Not Found</h1></center> <hr><center>) IMPORTANT NOTES: - The following errors were reported by the server: Domain: yoursubdomain.domain.com Type: unauthorized Detail: Invalid response from http://yoursubdomain.domain.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/_QA3jblEydx5mE8I8OdRsd2EdHIj4R-przLlmg_w6Tc: q%!(EXTRA string=<html> <head><title>404 Not Found</title></head> <body bgcolor="white"> <center><h1>404 Not Found</h1></center> <hr><center>) To fix these errors, please make sure that your domain name was entered correctly and the DNS A record(s) for that domain contain(s) the right IP address. |
I re-ran the certbot command but pointed to the real /www-root (not/var/lib/letsencrypt/)
Create a new
1 2 3 | mkdir /www-root/.well-known/ mkdir /www-root/.well-known/acme-challenge/ sudo certbot certonly --agree-tos --email your@email.com --webroot -w /www-root -d yoursubdomain.domain.com |
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Revision History
v1.1 Troubleshooting
v1.0 Initial Post
This guide will aim to inform you of strong cryptographic protocols and ciphers to use on a web server on Ubuntu 16.04 and NGINX.
Read the full article here: https://fearby.com/article/setting-strong-ssl-cryptographic-protocols-and-ciphers-on-ubuntu-and-nginx/
This guide will show you how to enable the latest Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3 protocol with it’s predecessor Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) with NGINX and OpenSSL for better website security on an Ubuntu 16.04 server
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I have a number of guides on moving hasting away form CPanel, Setting up VM’s on AWS, Vultr or Digital Ocean along with installing and managing WordPress from the command line. Making sure your server is up to date and running the latest SSL software is important. I have updated Open SSL before and blogged about this here. Do backup your server before changing settings and if you use Cloudflare (if you don’t do it now) enable Development Mode (and disable caching until changes are made).
For the best performing VM host (UpCloud) read my guide on the awesome UpCloud VM hosts (get $25 free credit by signing up here).
TLS 1.3 is the latest SSL security protocol that can be used between clients and servers to encrypt connections on the web.
TLS 1.3 uptake is only 60% according to https://caniuse.com/#search=TLS%201.3
Read why TLS 1.3 is important and news on TLS 1.3 can be found here: https://www.openssl.org/blog/blog/2018/02/08/tlsv1.3/
The Good and Bad
Done be like this commercial site with very poor security (tested with SSL labs and asafaweb)
Here is what the top 1 million sites do
Here it is!! Alexa Top 1 Million Analysis – February 2018 https://t.co/TjBHNX7zTi
— Scott Helme (@Scott_Helme) February 26, 2018
Installing Open SSL on Ubuntu
Connect to your Ubuntu 16.04 server via SSH (I connected to my Vultr server)
Check what version of OpenSSL you have? My OpenSSL is out of date.
1 2 | # openssl version OpenSSL 1.1.0g 2 Nov 2017 |
Tip: What Ciphers does your Open SSL Support?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 | openssl ciphers -s -v ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=ECDSA Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 TLSv1.2 Kx=DH Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(256) Mac=AEAD ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=ECDSA Enc=CHACHA20/POLY1305(256) Mac=AEAD ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=RSA Enc=CHACHA20/POLY1305(256) Mac=AEAD DHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305 TLSv1.2 Kx=DH Au=RSA Enc=CHACHA20/POLY1305(256) Mac=AEAD ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=ECDSA Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 TLSv1.2 Kx=ECDH Au=RSA Enc=AESGCM(128) Mac=AEAD DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 TLSv1 |
