For this 2019 Fall semester, we rolled out the following features:

11-04-2019 (CHG0014670): mysqldump
A command-line executable used to create a dump file of your site's database, available to use in custom scripts or when SSH'ing to your site.

11-04-2019 (CHG0014670): diskspace Usage Viewer extension
A Plesk site control panel tool for an at-a-glance view of your site's diskspace usage.

OIT Web Hosting Team

In preparation for this upgrade, we will be making the following changes:

1. From today Aug 26th, all newly provisioned sites will be created with PHP 7.3.
2. On October 1st, any site on Plesk21 still running on PHP 7.1 will be transitioned to PHP 7.2
3. On October 8th, all site on all remaining servers still running PHP 7.1 will be transitioned to PHP 7.2

To minimize the impact, we are updating existing sites to PHP 7.2, while we will provision a new site to the most current version of PHP (PHP 7.3).   We strongly encourage the testing and early transition to PHP 7.2 or PHP 7.3 (preferred) before our major update in October.

WHEN IS THIS HAPPENING?

Monday, August 26 - new site requests will provision with PHP of 7.3. 

Tuesday, October 1 - convert all sites on Plesk21 on PHP 7.1 to PHP 7.2.

Tuesday, October 8 – convert all remaining sites on all Plesk servers on PHP 7.1 to PHP 7.2.

Please Note: You will be able to revert back to PHP 7.1 while testing PHP 7.2 and 7.3 between October 1st and December 2nd. The December 2nd transition deadline cannot be extended; it is critical that your application be upgraded to ensure its continued security.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO?

We strongly recommend appropriate testing and moving to PHP 7.2 or 7.3 as soon as possible. Before October, if one or more of your application environments is currently using PHP 7.1, we encourage you to request the upgrade by submitting a form at https://hosting.gatech.edu/upgrade-service-plan to avoid a forced upgrade. 

Note: Even if you will be able to select PHP 7.2 subscription on the form, we strongly encourage you to choose PHP 7.3. Since PHP 7.3 will have a longer support.

WHAT IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS?

For more information about this platform, visit https://www.php.net/releases/7_2_0.php, https://www.php.net/releases/7_3_0.php.

If you have questions or would like additional information, please submit a ticket to https://hosting.gatech.edu/request/help.

We advise you to patch your site as soon as possible.  Cyber Security will be evaluating the vulnerability once more information is released today and take additional action. 

Site is in Installatron typically patch within 72 hours. Though, please be prepared to manually patch if Cyber Security deems this to be a very critical update. We will post any instructions we receive here on how to manually update sites in Installatron: https://faq.oit.gatech.edu/content/how-update-your-site-drupal-7-and-8-core-highly-critical-release-psa-2018-001

The Drupal User Community is available for help. You can join the Microsoft Teams instance ( https://drupal.gatech.edu/about-us/ms-team ) and join the #Support room.

We request that your site is patched by Thursday. If you are unable to make this deadline, please let us know by submitting a request at: https://hosting.gatech.edu/request/help

Sites that are not patched by Thursday will have their traffic restricted to campus-only. Sites without owners or admins will be restricted to campus and decomissioned after 30 days if an owner and admin is not identified. 

Note that Drupal version 6 has reached End of Life and all security patches and announcements have been halted. It is suspected the vulnerability will be exploitable in all versions, therefore; all Drupal 6 users should immediately upgrade to version 7 or 8.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Web Hosting

If you have received a notification email with subject line "Pending for Termination: Old CMS on web-plesk1", you have a website on our Plesk 1 server that needs to be upgraded or removed from our server.

What You Need to DO:

Please contact us back by replying to the notification email and let us know if you want to keep your site or remove your site. If you want to keep your site, you will need to update your CMS to the most up-to-date version.

What We Will Do:

If we do not hear back from you by Feb 22, 2018, we will disable your site. March 22, 2018, we will decomission your site.

Definition:

A content management system (CMS) is a computer application that supports the creation and modification of digital content. It typically supports multiple users in a collaborative environment.

Examples of CMSs: Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, Moodle, Wiki, etc.