FAQs

This page answers some of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) about Magnolia PaaS.

How do I find the latest Helm chart version?

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The latest helm chart version is 1.5.7.

Check out the Magnolia helm repo for more details.

I’m upgrading my helm chart, what do I do now?

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When you upgrade your Helm chart because of a major release, like moving from 1.4.x to 1.5.x, you need to delete the workloads before your next deployment. You also need to recreate the indexes folder from your Author environment.

For more information, see Delete indexes and workloads after Helm upgrade.

How do you prevent DDoS attacks?

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To prevent and mitigate DDoS attacks, Magnolia PaaS grants all customers (using Fastly as their CDN):

Access to origin shielding
Automatic resistance to availability attacks
Access to Fastly cache IP space
Custom DDoS filter creation abilities

Learn more at Fastly’s Always-on DDos Mitigation page.

What if I’m not using Fastly?

Go to https://ipinfo.io/www.xxx.yyy.zzz (where www.xxx.yyy.zzz is the suspicious IP).
Update your values.yml file with the following snippet:
```
kind: Ingress (1)
metadata:
  annotations:
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/server-snippet: deny www.xxx.yyy.zzz; (2)
```
1 Specifies the kind Ingress.

2 Denies the specific IP address.

For more information on server-snippet, see NGINX Ingress Controller reference.

For more details, see Preventing DDoS attacks.

What is a sticky session?

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Sticky sessions, or session persistence, is when you instruct the load balancer to remain linked to a specific node (server) to avoid losing the session data if the request goes to the other server. Essentially, you send the request from a given IP to the delivery server, but continue to send follow-up requests to the same server until the session expires. Session persistence is needed when the project has transactions or required data in the session.

Sticky sessions are typically used in situations where you have some data in the session and the sessions are not replicated between servers, but you also need to ensure that the data doesn’t get lost.

How do I configure sticky sessions?

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To enable sticky sessions:

Go to your values.yml file in your Magnolia PaaS project.

Set the following ingress annotations:

ingress:
  enabled: true
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/ingress.class: "nginx"
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size: 512m
    cert-manager.io/cluster-issuer: "letsencrypt-prod"
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/affinity: "cookie" (1)
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/affinity-mode: "persistent" (2)
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/session-cookie-name: "COOKIE_NAME" (3)
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/session-cookie-max-age: 10 (4)
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/configuration-snippet: |
      more_set_headers "X-Robots-Tag: noindex, nofollow";
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/default-backend: {{ .Env.DEPLOYMENT }}-magnolia-error-page-svc
    nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/custom-http-errors: "503"
  hosts:
    - host: {{ .Env.DEPLOYMENT }}.eu-playground.magnolia-platform.com
      paths:
          - path: /
            instance: public
          - path: /author
            instance: author
.....

1	Set `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/affinity` to `cookie`.
2	Set `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/affinity-mode` to `persistent`.
3	Put the `COOKIE_NAME` at `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/session-cookie-name`.
4	Set `nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/session-cookie-max-age` to the time (in seconds) you want the cookie to persist. After this configured time, the cookie is deleted.

Find out more here.

How do I define custom environment variables?

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You can define custom environment variables in the Helm Values file in your project.

To define a varible for the OS: Define the name and value of the variable like so:

...
magnoliaAuthor:
    - name: VARIABLE
      value: "VALUE"
...

To define a varible for the Java Virtual Machine (JVM): Set the value for the specified object like so:

...
magnoliaAuthor:
  catalinaExtraEnv:
    variable: "VALUE"
...

Can I delete environment indexes?

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Yes you can.

Cockpit
k8s

To delete the index folders:

Go to Environments.
Click the Manage tab.
Click Delete indexes for the desired environment.

To delete the index folders:

In Rancher, click on the Execute shell navigation item on the desired Author environment.
Run the following commands:
```
cd /mgnl-home/repositories/magnolia/workspaces/ (1)
find . -name index -exec rm -rf {} \; (2)
```
1 Changes to your workspaces directory.

2 Finds and removes the index folders.

1	Specifies the kind `Ingress`.
2	Denies the specific IP address.

1	Changes to your `workspaces` directory.
2	Finds and removes the index folders.