Dreamhost file backups Jan29 '05
I love Dreamhost, and as long as they are in business, I will never use another hosting company.
Apparently, others feel the same way.
Server attacked
Recently my server for this site was attacked with malicious files and code. One day I went to look up an old entry at this site, and I was faced with this (click image to enlarge):
Beautiful, eh?
You can believe I was immediately at the Dreamhost Support page, typing out an email regarding the issue.
In less than 7 hours, I received a detailed response from John (a Dreamhost worker), apologizing about the issue, and explaining what had happened. A "kernal exploit" had been recently patched, but apparently not patched enough.
He also stated that the "security expert" was in the process of fixing the issue.
File backups
A helpful thing John mentioned was regarding file backups.
Within your server site structure, you can cd to a hidden directory (which I won’t name here) that contains DAILY backups of ALL your web site files. In fact, it even contains HOURLY backups. It’s pretty much a direct snapshot of your files and folders.
This has come in handy, because a lot of my index files were overwritten with malicious code.
With Dreamhost’s backup files, you are never without.
(Of course, it always make sense to make YOUR OWN backups, but for emergency situations, Dreamhost has your answer.)
Very grateful
You can’t believe how grateful I am right now. It saves me tons of time.
Rather than spend the rest of my Saturday re–creating code, I can enjoy the Bulls/Celtics tonight at a sports bar, and rest assured my server is safe.
Updates
01/29/2005; 1:38 PM PDT: The issues apparently have not been fixed. I am noticing the same malicious files on various other web sites that I have on the same server. I’ll know more soon.
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Hey, why don't you use their affiliates programme for linking to them? Sucks about the exploit, but that's pretty insane backing up! Spose it's j ... Read more.
is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago.
Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.
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You're very lucky to find such a good host. 1 hour backups is amazing! So far my site hasn't been hacked, but anything is possible. It's alw ... Read more.