I don't know about now, but my first Linux OS was Ubuntu and I appreciated the long support because of this. That was in the dial up days, tho, I can't imagine why anyone would require that now ☠️
20.04 and 22.04 were LTS versions, aka, long term support.
Any application that requires stability should run on LTS versions. Combined with Ubuntu being one of the most popular distros, makes 20.04 and 22.04 the most popular choices for anything in a home lab and many smaller business needs.
Whether you’re building a server for home DNS, or a time server for a small business, then you’re probably using Ubuntu as the base.
I think the next LTS version will be 24.04, so things might shift sometime after that.
Systemd haters? But seriously, this could well be because of business environments where applications require specific OS versions to keep being supported by the vendor. Or better: where the orchestration tool cannot be updated because of the old OSs while said OSs cannot be updated because it will break orchestration.
This is why people love containers: you can run insecure software on insecure OS (component)s while pretending to be in control on your shiny Kubernetes cluster.
I can give you an answer from someone who regularly downloads really old EOL versions of Ubuntu and Debian. I personally use them as part of attack and defense competitions. They are normally very close to unusable and are nearly impossible to update to a more recent or secure version. This forces my team to find creative ways to keep them working while also taking measures to isolate them as much as possible. I also use them to teach old exploits that have been patched in more recent versions, walking people through how it worked and why it existed.
It happens a lot more with Windows machines, but there might be some manufacturing systems out there that require software that won’t run on modern versions of the OS. These systems often require new manufacturing tools in order to upgrade, or they need massive overhauls that smaller companies can’t always afford.
This forces my team to find creative ways to keep them working while also taking measures to isolate them as much as possible. I also use them to teach old exploits that have been patched in more recent versions, walking people through how it worked and why it existed.
I am interested in learning more about this. I know a fair bit about networks but exploit history and modern attack / defense strategies and server hardening are not my main specialty. Do you have any good links or resources that you can share?
Ok so to be clear when I said team I mean a bunch of college students preparing for different ctfs, but these are some of the more helpful resources we have found:
Tryhackme: personal favorite especially for beginners Hackthebox: great for learning/practicing attacks Overthewire: another good ctf site
We try to build many of our own ctf like machines, then each person switches their machine with another person and the other person tries to secure the vulnerabilities without knowing anything about the machine. Once everyone has secured their machines we try to attack them using the notes made while setting them up. This is our step by step for that process.
download an old version of a distro. (Ubuntu 14, deb 9, ect)
install and setup the VM without any updates or changes to the default configuration
google the distro version (Ubuntu 14.04) + vulnerabilities or exploits
read through the different sites to find applications that had huge security issues on that version and begin installing some of the programs that have known exploits
So for example with Ubuntu 14.04 we know there are some Linux kernel exploits.
From here I could add some of the packages mentioned as having exploits and then attempt to exploit them. I could also check newer versions of Ubuntu like 16 to find vulnerabilities that would also apply to older versions.
There is also Mitre’s list(s) of the most dangerous software vulnerabilities. They have one for 2023, but also a catalog of lists from previous years.
Yes, Ubuntu 20 isn’t EOL yet. A lot of those downloads are probably IT staff or developers that are running Ubuntu servers or developing on those versions.
ETA: We still have some RHEL 7 and clones at my day job
Some of it may be, but the fact that the LTS versions (20.04 & 22.04) are downloaded overwhelmingly more than the others seem to indicate it’s more intentional.
To summarize a few details, the PM1633A is a SAS3 (aka SAS 12 Gbps) SSD drive, which accepts an SFF-8482 plug. This SFF-8482 plug is the one named in the SAS3 standard for use on drives. You mention the LSI 9311 HBA, which does support SAS3 and has a pair of SFF-8643 receptacles, which is specified in the SAS3 standard for use on backplane aggregators. That is to say, when multiple drives are bundled up onto a single cable.
When used for SAS3, SFF-8643 supports up to four drives. And so you will find forward-breakout cables online that go from SFF-8643 to 4x SFF-8482.
The cable you mentioned – an SFF-8643 to SFF-8639 – is meant for U.2 drives. Because of the 4x PCIe lanes used for U.2, a single drive uses all the pins in an SFF-8643 plug, which is why this cable can only attach to a single drive. Because SFF-8639 is backwards compatible with SFF-8482, this could still be used for SAS3 drives, but it would waste the other three “lanes” in the cable.
With all that said, I would not recommend the cable you listed, and instead replace it with the aforementioned forward-breakout to 4x SFF-8482. This way, you can later buy three more SAS3 drives. I presume you’re not planning to ever use U.2 here.
Also, regarding the choice of HBA, was there a reason you chose the 9311? I have both the venerable 9300-8i and a newer 9305-16i. Both work great for me and support SAS3. It’s notable that power and heat is lower on the 9305. The 9300, 9305, and 9311 all have the same pair of SFF-8643 connectors.
An aside: one-to-many breakout cables have a forward and backward variety, and care must be taken to avoid buying the wrong one. This link explains the difference, which is still applicable to SAS3: …unraid.net/…/6723-sas-to-sata-cables-forward-or-…
Note that some combinations of backwards breakout cables simply don’t exist, so there might be only one version available for sale. Still, read the product descriptions carefully for which end is meant for the HBA and which end goes to drives or the backplane.
BTW OP: when you get this set up, please run some benchmarks and tell this community how it performs. I’ve had a free PM1633A sitting on my desk for 1.5 years, just because I haven’t gotten around to it. I’m keen to know how it behaves.
Sure, I would love too. Do you know what software to run in Windows to provide good results? I can temporarily attach it to my linux machine if necessary
I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with benchmarking in Windows. I think I’ve seen CrystalDiskMark mentioned in a few places, and it’s FOSS under MIT License.
Cool, I will give it a try. I may install it to my linux machine and access over samba. I need to test if game installs will work over network like this first
Thank you for the much needed help. I have been clueless and trying to find a decent inexpensive solution.
QA: Q “was there a reason you chose the 9311?” A: no, only that it looked nice.
The 9300-8i is 1/4 the price so I will go with it.
I took a gamble on a cheap used drive purchase at $500 for local game installs. The drive arrives in 2 days. I couldn’t find out what connection type the drive had or power delivery needs
Here are the products I have selected based on your recommendation. Do these look like good choices?
The first link is an SFF-8087 to 4x SFF-8482. While this cable could technically support SAS3 speeds, the SFF-8087 connector was specified for SAS2, not SAS3. As a result, you won’t really find any HBAs that have an SFF-8087 connector and do SAS3 over it. This cable is incompatible with the 9300-8i from your second link. I would choose something more like this: www.amazon.com/dp/B01GPD5KFK . Also be advised that if your SSD isn’t recognized with this cable, the reviews mention that the 3.3v power pin – if you have one at all – might need to be disabled, to avoid PWDIS issues.
For the second link, that Inspur 9300-8i appears identical to the HBA I have, and it’s worked fine for me, although I only have SAS2 drives hooked up to it right now. The nice thing is that the listing advertises “IT mode”, which was important to me, because burning firmware to switch to IT mode is a sad experience.
EDIT: BTW, when you receive this drive, you should probably dump the SMART data to see how much lifetime is left on this SSD. This is an enterprise SSD, so it’s possible that it came from several years of use as a caching drive in a server somewhere. That could do a number to its remaining lifetime, but I would imagine its performance would fit well for your use-case.
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