You know what’s cool? Backups.
Also, bridal showers.
Database connection is down, so no comments, no permalink, no site search. Please stand by. Everything should be working now. Until the DNS change propagates, the entire site will visibly redirect to diveintomark.org.new.cr.sabren.com. Don’t panic.
In case you’re interested, here’s what happened. I have not yet decided whether to seek new hosting. I can’t deal with it until after the wedding. And honeymoon. So realistically, not until June. But suggestions are always welcome for UNIX hosting providers that provide shell access, have Python 2 installed, use Override All in httpd.conf, allow multiple sites on a single account, multiple subdomains per domain, with 1 GB of disk space and bandwidth of ~10GB per month (shared between all sites).
I taught myself how to use rsync today. Better late than never. And Sam taught me how to set up ssh with private and public keys so I can log into my remote servers without being prompted for a password each time, which means I can set up a crontab that calls rsync over ssh and securely and efficiently back up all my sites to my iMac. I tell you, this UNIX thing… it’s gonna catch on.
You can get root on your own virtual server for $65 (FreeBSD) or $75 (Linux) per month at johncompanies:
http://www.johncompanies.com/collocation/
You’d certainly have whatever control you need over your httpd.conf, plus you could run your own DNS and mail services too! :)
Testimonials on k5:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/4/14/104336/193
Comment by phyx — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 9:39 pm
I just got that recommendation over IM too, from a current user. Definitely worth looking into.
Comment by Mark — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 9:42 pm
You might also check out Kattare at http://kattare.com/. The host is physically located in Corvallis, OR just over the mountains from me. I use them to host an account.
Comment by Brad Smith — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 10:05 pm
So, it’s a bit difficult to find information on this on the web, but: a bridal shower is an event where the bride’s friends and family give her loads of presents before the wedding? Cool. (The reason it’s difficult to find that out is that pretty much every site about bridal showers assumes you know what they are.) In the UK, presents are covered by the wedding list, and everyone brings a present to the ceremony itself; does that happen over there too? If so, even better, although I concede that weddings aren’t meant to be primarily looked at as a source for loot.
Oh, and: nice house, too. Am I getting old because I now notice these things?
Comment by Stuart Langridge — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 10:31 pm
pair.com: http://www.pair.com/pair/shared/
And not just because I like their hostnames. http://www.pair.com/pair/support/library/serverconfig/serverdetails.html
Comment by Will — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 10:52 pm
http://www.python-hosting.com/ looks interesting. I’m going to give them a whirl myself soon.
Comment by Michael Bernstein — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 11:00 pm
Oh boy, tell me[1] about backups[2]. I’ve gone through data recovery hell this weekend. The good thing is that I have it mostly back. I was thinking the whole weekend, “wouldn’t it have been so easy to burn a CD last week?”
That’s a very beautiful dog in the photos (not to mention the fiance!)!
[1] http://eliot.landrum.cx/archives/2003/04/25/have_i_mentioned_lately_that_i_hate_computers.php
[2] http://eliot.landrum.cx/archives/2003/04/27/and_all_the_saints_said.php
Comment by eliot — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 11:07 pm
While I love the convienence and security of ssh pubkey authentication, I’m just a bit paranoid and I don’t think I’d feel too good about having the private keys sitting unencrypted on a machine for unattended logins. If your host with the private keys is comprimised, every account you have your public keys in is comprimised. I only have my private keys in two spots - on my desktop machine and on my laptop, and when I log out I kill the ssh agent. Ideally, I will become even more paranoid and get one of those USB flashdrive thingys and keep my private keys on that.
Comment by Paul Victor Novarese — Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 11:08 pm
You should consider implementing snapshot backups with rsync as described by Mike Rubel at http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ . Using the method described by Mike Rubel, you can keep several snapshots of your server using a little more storage than it takes to keep a single snapshot.
Here’s the script that I use to backup my server to my iMac. You will need to adjust the rsync src argument and the $BASE variable to match your situation.
—-
#!/bin/sh
BASE=/Backup/server
if [ -d $BASE.3 ]
then
echo “rm $BASE.3″
rm -rf $BASE.3
fi
if [ -d $BASE.2 ]
then
echo “mv $BASE.2 $BASE.3″
mv $BASE.2 $BASE.3
fi
if [ -d $BASE.1 ]
then
echo “mv $BASE.1 $BASE.2″
mv $BASE.1 $BASE.2
fi
if [ -d $BASE ]
then
echo “cp $BASE $BASE.1″
(cd $BASE && find . -print | cpio -dpl $BASE.1)
fi
rsync -avR –delete -e ssh ‘beagledreams.com:`cat /home/gary/backupfiles`’ $BASE
touch $BASE
—-
This Unix thing on the Mac is awsome.
Comment by Gary Burd — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 12:29 am
I’m just chipping in with my support for JohnCompanies. We’ve been with them for around six months, and they are *clueful*. It makes a nice change, especially at their prices.
Paul,
With ssh public key authentication, your private key resides on the machine you are sitting at. It’s your public key that sits on the servers you want to log into. When you think about it, it’s entirely logical - it’s your private key you need to prove who you are, and you need to prove who you are to the server, not the other way around.
Comment by Jim — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 2:27 am
I use pair too - they’re a bit on the pricy side but I’ve had 99.9+% uptime and never any issues what so ever over the last 5.5 years (note they’ve been in business for a long time!)
Comment by Anders — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 5:07 am
I’ve used Pair myself as well. Quite good. Just be sure that you fit into their acceptable use pattern - they have clauses that are a little more stringent than many web hosts (to protect the integrity of the systems and experience for all). For example, they actually limit SMTP bulk mail; scripts that do what amounts to hit logging, etc.
Heard good things about Johns Companies; but ended up buying my own machine and co-locating it. If it dies, its my fault. ;-)
Comment by Mike — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 5:18 am
10G/month? We can probably swing that for free if you don’t mind a box that’s running on a cheapo host, and provided you’re not going to make a relatively busy 1.7GHz Celeron cry.
Comment by Freaky — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 5:27 am
I’ll have to chip in another plus for Pair - when I first signed up with them, I was on kappa (6th server) - they’re now around number 400. Pair has grown well, and has far exceeded my expectations of stability.
The downside: they’re slow to upgrade to new software, instead taking a conservative route in upgrading. It’s not bleeding edge, but you know that they run a tight ship.
Comment by Paul — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 7:18 am
I wholewheartedly recommend Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?czottmann - yes, that’s a referrer ID at the end). With the features you want you’d need a CodeMonster account for roughly $40/month (includes 1 free domain registration, 7 full domains (hosting), 35 subdomains, 1000 MB Disk, 30 GB Transfer, 140 Mailboxes, SpamAssassin, Procmail, 35 Users, CVS, DNS, SSH etc. etc.). Python 2 is installed on their boxes although it’s not noted anywhere.
I’m a customer there for 2.5yrs by now, and I love it. I run a medium size blogging community (http://G-Blog.net) as well as about a dozen pet projects there w/o any problems. I even used to run a gaming community site with ~1.5mio pageviews/month on this server, and it didn’t even choke.
As I’ve said, recommended.
Comment by Carlo — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 7:40 am
Yes, rsync truly is the cat’s pajamas. I update my site on a test server, then mirror it to the production server with rsync. Quick and easy.
Comment by Adam — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 7:44 am
A BIG no on DreamHost. My uptime went down hard, during the early part of this year. But my uptime stats didn’t reflect it. I felt cheated. Others have had problems and they (DH) never admitted it. If you’re running Movable Type (you are), then you’re definately going to have problems…as the rebuilding will tax their server and a script will kill your cgi’s.
I finally left and moved to BlogOMania.
Comment by M.Kelley — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 7:48 am
Check out Atof: http://www.atof.net
I’m a bit partial to it since it’s run by a friend of mine.
It looks like you’d need the business account:
http://www.atof.net/hosting/signup/?action=showBusinessAccount
Comment by Carl — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 8:31 am
I’d recommend pair.com as well! Not that I do anything to push their machines…just a basic account for e-mail and a itty-bitty website…but no down-time and their prices DROP while their features increase since I’ve been hosting with them. What more can you ask for!
Comment by Jeff — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 9:48 am
Switching providers over one problem seems a little extreme, Mark. Or were you already dissatisfied?
Comment by Arthur — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 11:37 am
I just switched over to IExpressHost (http://www.iexpresshost.com). Not sure if they’ve got the Python thing going on but they’ve got everything else. I’ve got a 1gb disk space, 30gb bandwidth, 8 domains and unlimited subdomains and MySQL databases. $100/year. Been running with them for about 3 months now and haven’t had a single issue.
Comment by sean — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 11:55 am
I’ve been on pair.com for several years and have been very happy. I’ve never had downtime problems. Their servers are rock solid. They have maintained their prices the whole time I’ve been with them AND increased disk and band width allocation.
Highly recommended: http://www.pair.com/
- Hans
Comment by Hans — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 1:30 pm
It must be national “Torture your hosts by restaging your hosting services and make them make backups or lose all their data” month.
Something similar happened to me, except much worse. It was mostly my fault, but it seemed rather silly. My host upgraded all their servers and said that all my files would be lost, but I didn’t thoroughly read their emails to me. I think its silly for a hosting company to demand I backup my own files and instead should simply restore them as best as they can after any upgrades. Oh well… what can you expect for $2.50 a month.
Fortunately Mark the wonderboy reminded me about Google Cache and one by one, painfully, I restored my posts.
Comment by Adrian — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 2:22 pm
Interesting to see all the comments about Pair. I find a lot of “low end” consumers know nothing about them - very odd to see so many of us vouching for them.
They really are a class act; when I first stumbled across them I noted that their terms of service were somewhat restrictive, when compared to most hosts. But then I thought about why they made certain choices — its all about stablity.
I’m not a Pair client any more but that’s only because I outgrew their packaged dedicated server offering - I needed to be able to get in my own trouble, and not worth through another sysadmin. They tried valiantly to meet my needs - but it was too hard having to “tell someone what I needed done” rather than just doing it.
But I do miss the Pair safety net… that’s for sure.
Comment by Mike — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 4:11 pm
Another seemingly good hosting service is http://www.onsmart.net - they’ve got some very good deals on Virtual Private Servers. I’ve moved some sites over to them (too recently to tell if they are as good as they look), but everything I’ve heard about them is positive so far. Definitely worth a look.
Comment by RPW — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 6:04 pm
hey,
i don’t know you and you don’t know me, so feel free to tell me to (blow|fuck|eat) myself.
lose the sandals. nobody likes to see a guy’s toes.
buy yourself a hip pair of kicks. puma anjans, nike air bruins, adidias campus, something…
if you post your address and shoe size, i’ll send you a pair as a bridal shower present.
just promise me that you’ll lose the sandals.
Comment by b — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 8:04 pm
Slashdot has a thread going along the same lines. There seem to be some good hosts mentioned.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/28/185257&mode=nested&threshold=-1
Comment by Adam — Tuesday, April 29, 2003 @ 9:41 pm
Rats, I thought it was a /. thread on whether Mark should wear sandals. With maybe a fork to discuss that can of Sprite. Sprite? Squirt rulez, but Sprite’s just lame.
Comment by Phil Ringnalda — Wednesday, April 30, 2003 @ 3:05 am
Mark, you inspired me to share a little Perl I use to CRON a backup and then FTP my MySQL databases to an offsite location.
Comment by Mean Dean — Wednesday, April 30, 2003 @ 8:02 am
Mark, bridal showers ROCK. I remember coming back to my then-not-yet-in-laws’ house and just finding all this new, cool STUFF (and lots of left-over food)!
Hope that was a thank you list that I saw on the coffee table. It’s easy to get so excited about opening things that you overlook keeping track of whom you have to thank for what. Blech, thank you notes…Sarah and I were writing the things for weeks.
Comment by Ken Walker — Wednesday, April 30, 2003 @ 1:21 pm
What we do is host a CVS repository on our internal server that everybody works from, and check it out from the live server when ready.
Comment by Anonymous — Wednesday, April 30, 2003 @ 1:32 pm
re: ssh authentication.
You should always protect the private part of your key-pair with a passphrase. Otherwise, as people here have mentioned, anyone who finds them can use them to access the hosts that you have your public key on. A key-pair without a passphrase should only be used when you want to limit it to one command (like rsync). This limiting can be done using ‘command=”command to limit key to”‘ in your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote host.
Comment by Mark A. Hershberger — Wednesday, April 30, 2003 @ 3:12 pm