dealing with a dedicated server's "custom" linux?

CLIFFORD ILKAY clifford_ilkay-biY6FKoJMRdBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org
Tue Aug 2 18:20:56 UTC 2005


On August 1, 2005 22:57, Aaron Vegh wrote:
> Hi there,
> I've got a dedicated server package with CI Host (www.cihost.com).
> I've been happy with the features of my package, in terms of
> bandwidth, machine specs and price. However, over time I've
> realized that while they refer to the distro on the machine as "Red
> Hat 7.2" it is in fact a customized version of same.
[snip]
> I want to manage this thing myself but I don't want to break
> something that inadvertently relies on this custom brand of Linux.
> Does anyone know about this version of Linux, what makes it custom,
> and what I can do to get around it?

The fact that they are using Red Hat 7.2 should be a tip off that all 
is not as it seems. Anyone running RH 7.2 today who cares about 
keeping it updated and running modern versions of kernels and 
applications, essentially has to create their own distro using RH 7.2 
as the base. It can only be called RH 7.2 under the most generous of 
interpretations.

Mass hosting companies that compete on price often use proprietary 
tools, like those from SW-Soft, that effectively lock them into 
specific and arguably proprietary Linux distributions. If you are 
running the run of the mill PHP/MySQL apps, that is probably good 
enough. However, when you stray outside of that, you are in for 
adventures.

> And please, no suggestions that I move to another provider. I
> sympathize, but I'm in the midst of a 12 month contract. That won't
> help me right now.

No it won't but neither will a lame custom distro that you cannot use 
they way you would like.

Assuming you have enough disk space to play with, you could do an in 
place installation of another distro. Many hosting companies will 
offer free a reimaging service so that if you really get the machine 
bent out of shape, you can always go back to a clean, baseline 
installation. Some also offer alternate boot methods so that you can 
leverage that to fix your main distro. I have installed Mandrake 10.1 
using the existing (broken) Fedora Core 2 that was provided by the 
hosting provider before. I shrunk the filesystems, created new ones, 
and then expanded a tarball of a base Mandrake 10.1 installation to 
the newly created filesystems. I then modified the boot loader 
entries to point at the new Mandrake kernel and root and rebooted. It 
took many tries to get it right only because I did not know that the 
hosting provider assigned static IPs via DHCP. Once I figured that 
out, it was a simple matter of installing a DHCP client by booting in 
FC2, chrooting to the Mandrake installation, and using urpmi to 
install the DHCP client.

This is fraught with dangers. You can easily lock yourself out of the 
server so be sure you have an alternate boot method. There are some 
lilo and grub tricks you can use to mitigate the risks of doing this. 
You might also consider creating a cron job before you boot your 
freshly installed distro to reboot using the original boot method in 
say, ten minutes. Having a remote console to the server so that you 
can see boot time messages before networking comes up is also 
invaluable, though often not available.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

+1 416-410-3326
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