[TAG] "I'll do it myself, thanks" open-source app: Gobby (cf. SubEthaEdit)

[Suramya Tomar]

Hi,

[snip]
> It's where you lease a "virtual server" as Rick described rather than an 
> entire computer.  It's cheaper for the ISP because they can host several 
> people on one box.  You usually have a choice of three or four Linux or 
> BSD distros, although they may give better support for the distro they 
> use themselves.  If you hose your "system" they just replace the 
> filesystem image and you start again.  It'll come with Apache and a 
> database preinstalled, but you can install your own webserver or 
> mailserver or whatever you want.  It's more expensive than a chroot or 
> limited-shell service because the ISP has to provide more memory and 
> disk space -- the libraries and software aren't shared between users.  
> I've seen prices from $20 - $99 / month.
> 
> One such company is tummy.com.  They are dedicated to Linux, the owners 
> are active in the Python community, and they were even distributing 
> Linux CDs at one of the PyCons.  I haven't used the service, but I 
> haven't heard any complaints from those who do.
> http://tummy.com/Hosting/virtual.html

Thought I should share some of my experience with Linux Virtual 
Servers(LVS). I had a Debian based virtual system running on User-mode 
Linux (http://usermodelinux.org/). It was pretty stable and I liked 
having root access on the server without having to pay through my nose 
for hosting.

One thing to keep in mind is that you should try to get as much RAM and 
swap space as you can afford or you will end up getting some very wierd 
errors or a lot of coredumps (As I found out the hard way) when 
processes start running out of memory.

So if you want to run a plain old webserver/mailserver that doesn't need 
a lot of horsepower then a LVS would be the way to go, but if you are 
running applications/websites that need a lot of juice to run (e.g. Some 
blogging software like Serendipity need a lot of juice) then you 'might' 
have a problem.

I used redwoodvirtual as my hosting service and I would have probably 
stuck around and tried to work out the problems I was having if their 
tech support had been more helpful/responsive.  (The only way to contact 
them was via email and they usually took about 2-3 days to respond. The 
one time I was really really upset with them was when my LVS went down 
and it took them over a day to restart it)

I might look at other LVS services in the future but for now I guess I 
will stick with a shared hosting website for my site.

Hope all this made some sense.

Thanks,
  Suramya


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Mountain Dew and doughnuts... because breakfast is the
most important meal of the day
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Name : Suramya Tomar
Homepage URL: http://www.suramya.com
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