What’s New With InterWorx, February 2022

Hello! Your Friendly Neighborhood InterWorx Support Manager, here! Just a quick update on what we currently have in active development, some new features, and things to know.

Some good news!

• The IW6 > IW7 in place update tool is approved for use on production servers. Thank you to various forum users for helping us out with the soft launch! Documentation on how to use the upgrade tool can be found here: https://appendix.interworx.com/6.x/nodeworx/general/upgrade-major-version.html One thing to note about the upgrade tool is that it is very important to not ‘ignore’ any items that are marked as ‘Fail’ in the pre-flight checklist. Ignoring any ‘Fails’ and just pushing the update through can lead to issues with the upgrade that are far more difficult to sort out after the fact. If you have any questions, just submit a ticket to support.interworx.com. We are more than happy to assist.

What’s in Active Development:

• AlmaLinux 8 support: A lot of people have been asking about an ETA on this and, unfortunately, that is not something I can provide at this time. But what I can say is that it is a high priority item that we are actively working on, and have been since last year. It is slated for release in 2022, I am just not certain, at this juncture, which quarter that will be.
• Improved migration tool: We have been working on adding a new migration tool to facilitate both InterWorx > InterWorx and cPanel > InterWorx migrations. Some details:
  • Instead of using backup packages, it imports account settings and configurations directly from the source via API
  • It also allows for better incremental updates, which improves flexibility for importing accounts. This also will make importing large accounts far simpler, without the need for manually transferring large databases or web files
  • Accounts can be re-synced after the initial import, which allows server administrators the ability to test the imported sites for a longer period of time before updating DNS, without the worry of any kind of data loss during the interim

Things to know:

• We have been working with some third party developers for new plugins for InterWorx. MagicSpam developed a plugin for InterWorx last year (https://www.magicspam.com/anti-spam-protection-interworx.php), and Themely (https://plugin.themely.com/) is finishing up a one-click WordPress installer, as well.
  
  If you are a plugin developer and are interested in creating a plugin for InterWorx, let us know! Just submit a ticket to support.interworx.com with information about your plugin, we can go from there. Some information on developing plugins for InterWorx can also be found here: https://www.interworx.com/developers/plugin-system/
• We are drastically slowing down development on IW6. As such, it is highly recommended to update existing IW6 servers to IW7, either via the upgrade tool mentioned above, or by migrating to a new server. Outside of an improved and modernized UI, there are features that exist in IW7, which were not created for IW6, such as support for Mailman, and Imunify.
• CentOS 6/EL6 has been EOL for over a year. As such, while we are doing our best to keep our repos available for customers who are still using CentOS 6, that is not true for everything. Tasks like basic yum updates are becoming less and less possible. Because of this, we strongly, strongly, recommend updating to a server using CentOS 7. I know that some customers were holding out for AlmaLinux 8 support to be available, but with deprecations of key features like OpenSSL 1.0.1 and certbot-auto for Let’s Encrypt (see below), it is becoming more important to make the move. CentOS 7 does not go EOL until 2024, so that is still quite some time before any further changes would need to be made.
  
  We are more than happy to assist with migrations as much as we can, and will provide demo keys to facilitate the transition upon request. Just submit a ticket to support.interworx.com. We can provide demo keys that are active for up to 4 weeks for migration purposes, but are able to update those as needed, as well.
• A huge reason why the above two points are important is that last year, Let’s Encrypt announced that certbot-auto was being deprecated, and they were moving to a system that uses snapd to generate SSL certificates (https://community.letsencrypt.org/t/certbot-auto-deprecated-explanation-and-solutions/139821). As of InterWorx version 7.8.0, snapd is the method used for generating SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt. However, this is only for servers running CentOS 7 (as, due to the lack of available repos, it is not possible to install new outside packages like that for EL6). There are no plans to add this feature to IW6.
  
  So, in order to make sure there is no disruption in the ability to generate SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt, or for existing certificates to be renewed, updating both to CentOS 7 and IW7 are highly recommended. We can’t really say when Let’s Encrypt will stop supporting certbot-auto all together, but being that it has been over a year, now, since the announcement, it would not be surprising if that day was very soon.
  
  One thing we have noticed in regard to moving to snapd, however, is that snapd requires squashfs, which is not available for older kernels. We definitely recommend keeping kernels as up to date as possible. Customers who are using OVH with a shared kernel have been especially affected by this, so just something to keep in mind. Without an updated kernel that supports squashfs, snapd will not work, which, ultimately, will make it so Let’s Encrypt does not work.

That’s everything for now! My plan is to give little updates every few months, to keep you all informed as to what is going on in InterWorx-land. Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or general comments! We are always interested in customer input, and a personal 2022 “roadmap” goal of InterWorx support is to improve interaction and communication with all of you.