So I'm getting back into a few things after a few years, including rebuilding my homelab (turns out the cloud is mighty expensive), getting back into BBSing, traveling more and worrying less.
Figured some of you might enjoy this read:
http://blog.dmxrob.net/index.php/2019/02/10/back-to-the-bbs/
So I'm getting back into a few things after a few years, including rebuilding my homelab (turns out the cloud is mighty expensive), getting back into BBSing, traveling more and worrying less.
Figured some of you might enjoy this read: http://blog.dmxrob.net/index.php/2019/02/10/back-to-the-bbs/
Figured some of you might enjoy this read:
http://blog.dmxrob.net/index.php/2019/02/10/back-to-the-bbs/
Cool. This url seems to work better though: http://blog.dmxrob.net/back-to-the-bbs/ :-)
Digital Man already beat me to sharing the corrected URL, but wanted to say that was a nice post, Rob.
SyncCurrency is a great idea. I'll have to check it out.
So I'm getting back into a few things after a few years, including rebuilding my homelab (turns out the cloud is mighty expensive), getting back into BBSing, traveling more and worrying less.
http://blog.dmxrob.net/index.php/2019/02/10/back-to-the-bbs/
I'm getting back into consulting, thought that the cloud might be a cheaper way to set up a lab, given that I've gotten rid of most of my old iron...
:(
I found that I was running a bill of $300+ up per month, and to the point I was scared of running anything 24x7 because of the cost.
Picked up a Dell r710 with 2TB, 24 processors, 64GB of RAM off ebay. Slapped ESXi on it, bought a Cisco switch and a few other odds ad ends, now for less than $500 I have a homelab back in operation that I can run all the VMs I want, anytime I want. I have close to 12 running now with plenty power to run at least 12 more. The electric cost to run this will be about $20 per month, far cheaper than $300+.
$300/month and not running production services 24/7? Yikes!
I've dabbled a bit with Azure and have a cheap Linux VPS I keep around, but haven't needed to do much with either (yet).
I found that I was running a bill of $300+ up per month, and to the point I was scared of running anything 24x7 because of the cost.
So I'm getting back into a few things after a few years, including rebuildingAside from bbsing my other goal is retro gaming.
my homelab (turns out the cloud is mighty expensive), getting back into BBSing,
traveling more and worrying less.
Plus, for me, there is something about hosting it myself. I get to learn a tonThe only major server i had problems setting up was a mail server, but
of stuff (that is valuable both personally, and for my career in general) that
otherwise would just be taken care of. With consumer bandwidth becoming so fast and cheap nowadays, you can self-host a lot of stuff if you want.
what were you using that cost that much?
you can get an ovh soyoustart server or herzinger server for 30+/month
The only major server i had problems setting up was a mail server, but
most other servers are permissible on my end.
With my own in-home solution now I can run as many VMs as I want and the cost remains fixed.
Aside from bbsing my other goal is retro gaming.
The only major server i had problems setting up was a mail server, but
most other servers are permissible on my end.
Aside from bbsing my other goal is retro gaming.
Plus, for me, there is something about hosting it myself. I get toThe only major server i had problems setting up was a mail server, but most other servers are permissible on my end.
learn a ton of stuff (that is valuable both personally, and for my
career in general) that otherwise would just be taken care of. With
consumer bandwidth becoming so fast and cheap nowadays, you can
self-host a lot of stuff if you want.
The only major server i had problems setting up was a mail server, but
most other servers are permissible on my end.
Ironically, that is the one server that I still "outsource" to Microsoft. I ran Exchange for years, and eventually just went with Office365.
Mount the VM host under your desk and you have a nifty foot warmer! :)
It's a little big for that :-) It's a full size 2U server. It's found a nice home down in the basement on a rack.
I also have one development machine that lives under my desk. if I want to VM anything here at home, it's done that way. I tossed a Xeon CPU in there a few months back to give it a bit of a boost, it's nice having 6 cores with hyperthreading.
Picked up a Dell r710 with 2TB, 24 processors, 64GB of RAM off ebay.
Slapped ESXi on it, bought a Cisco switch and a few other odds ad ends, now for less than $500 I have a homelab back in operation that I can run all the
what were you using that cost that much?
you can get an ovh soyoustart server or herzinger server for 30+/month
That's the problem - "A" server, with shared resources and then usually very
With my own in-home solution now I can run as many VMs as I want and the cost remains fixed.
Platforms such as gameboy advance, genesis and super nintendo.Aside from bbsing my other goal is retro gaming.
What games?
Both Intel and AMD are upping the core counts on their processors these days. A while ago at work, I was doing some testing on a few machines with some newer Intel Xeon processors that had 48 and 56 threads (I think they had 24 and 28 cores with hyperthreading). Their desktop processors are getting more cores as well.. I heard Intel recently changed their desktop CPU models a bit, getting rid of the i3 and and adding an 'i9'. Their i7 now has 8 cores but no hyperthreading anymore, and the i9 has 8 cores with hyperthreading, giving you 16 cores.
Nowadays, with 1GB speeds to the house, homelab, etc. it is so cheap to bring what I traditionally hosted (and paid) elsewhere back to running it local. I'm having a blast.
Aside from bbsing my other goal is retro gaming.
Nowadays, with 1GB speeds to the house, homelab, etc. it is so cheap
to bring what I traditionally hosted (and paid) elsewhere back to
running it local. I'm having a blast.
You can have a little of both these days, too. I've been playing with Amazon and Google cloud stuff lately. You can get a tiny linux virtual machine on the free trial tier. It's not good for hosting much, but what it *is* good for is acting as a relay for stuff I host at home :)
Aside from bbsing my other goal is retro gaming.
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure why ISPs stopped offering that.
There are lots of ways to do that these days. In addition to using emulators on a PC or a Raspberry Pi, I've seen hand-held game systems that can run emulators, and you can also hack/mod a game console and install emulators on it
On 02-12-19 06:18, poindexter FORTRAN wrote to MATTHEW MUNSON <=-
Yeah, even the cool providers block SMTP, at least with the cool ones
if you show that you've got some skills and can prevent SPAM they'll
open it up.
I was a Novell admin in a former life, and 0xDECAFBAD was my IPX network number of choice back then. Thanks for reminding me of a life supporting systems that stayed up for *years*. :)
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure why ISPs stopped offering that.
I was a Novell admin in a former life, and 0xDECAFBAD was my IPX network number of choice back then. Thanks for reminding me of a life supporting systems that stayed up for *years*. :)
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure why ISPs stopped offering that.
Nightfox
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal user >space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small web pages and >files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure why ISPs stopped >offering that.
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of
personal user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put
up small web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not
entirely sure why ISPs stopped offering that.
Well, not to be too tin-foil-hatty, but most ISPs these days are also entertainment providers. They don't really like to host their competitors, no matter how small. It's a lot easier for them if the internet pipe is more for consumption than distribution.
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal
user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small
web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure
why ISPs stopped offering that.
They did it when most web page "hobbiest" moved on to social media.
IIRC, I still do have the ability to put up a small web page but have not updated it in ages.
Re: Back to the BBS
By: Nightfox to Lmorchard on Thu Feb 14 2019 01:22 pm
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure why ISPs stopped offering that.
Nightfox
Probably because people were sharing stuff they shouldn't have been :-)
Hosting competitors? I doubt that many people were using their personal ISP space to store TV content from the ISP's competitors. I'm not sure ISPs allowed enough personal storage space for that anyway.
Nightfox
regarding the web space, they just didnt want to do it anymore.
regarding the newsgroups they said it was child porn binaries.
I agree. The most likely reason was that it simply wasn't needed anymore. Most users nowadays are consumers of information online, not creators. And if they are a creator, they are using sites such as Youtube, Instagram, etc. to produce their content.
Re: Back to the BBS
By: MRO to Dmxrob on Sat Feb 16 2019 12:27 pm
regarding the web space, they just didnt want to do it anymore. regarding the newsgroups they said it was child porn binaries.
My ISPs complained that newsgroups were too hard to manage, so they called them "free services" (so people wouldn't ask for credits when their servers borked) then outsourced them to another provider and passed on the costs to their customers.
Then, they gave up.
When we went from being nodes on a content-agnostic internet to "consumers of internet content", that's the moment that things started going south.
On 02-14-19 13:22, Nightfox wrote to Lmorchard <=-
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small
web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure
why ISPs stopped offering that.
For me it wasn't just about storing a web page, but if I had other files I wanted to share with people, I'd often put them there and share a link.
Then, they gave up.
On 02-14-19 13:22, Nightfox wrote to Lmorchard <=-
One thing I miss is when ISPs used to give you a little bit of personal user space on one of their servers. Sometimes I used to put up small web pages and files there to share with people. I'm not entirely sure why ISPs stopped offering that.
Probably lack of use, I suspect 99% of users today wouldn't know what to do with that space. I stopped using ISP provided space after accidentally almost losing a website when I changed ISP.
another thing is, not everyone should HAVE a website.I had problems of my blog being hacked by script kiddies several times.
they have facebook.
Hosting competitors? I doubt that many people were using their personal ISP space to store TV content from the ISP's competitors. I'm not sure ISPs allowed enough personal storage space for that anyway.
I always assumed that part of the reason mine gave up was that no one was really using that kind of thing anymore... most internet uses want point-and-click rather than the old text-based discussion of a newsgroup.
Vk3jed wrote to Nightfox <=-
Probably lack of use, I suspect 99% of users today wouldn't know what
to do with that space. I stopped using ISP provided space after accidentally almost losing a website when I changed ISP.
another thing is, not everyone should HAVE a website.I had problems of my blog being hacked by script kiddies several times.
they have facebook.
You also have to make sure that your themes and plugins are upgraded
because they will find the holes.
Re: Back to the BBS
By: Nightfox to Lmorchard on Sat Feb 16 2019 10:25 am
Hosting competitors? I doubt that many people were using their personal ISP space to store TV content from the ISP's competitors. I'm not sure ISPs allowed enough personal storage space for that anyway.
Well, lots of MP3s showed up in those personal spaces, along with early blogs. And it's not just about TV content - it's anything entertaining that might distract from their own offerings. (But, honestly, that's where my tinfoil hat comes in.)
Re: Back to the BBS
By: Dumas Walker to POINDEXTER FORTRAN on Sun Feb 17 2019 12:02 pm
I always assumed that part of the reason mine gave up was that no one was really using that kind of thing anymore... most internet uses want point-and-click rather than the old text-based discussion of a newsgroup.
There's that and I remember a few cable ISPs carried the Usenet binaries groups until they realized just why there was so much download traffic from them. And that that was why a vocal minority of customers wanted full Usenet feeds.
Hosting competitors? I doubt that many people were using their
personal ISP space to store TV content from the ISP's competitors.
I'm not sure ISPs allowed enough personal storage space for that
anyway.
I agree. The most likely reason was that it simply wasn't needed anymore. Most users nowadays are consumers of information online, not creators. And if they are a creator, they are using sites such as Youtube, Instagram, etc. to produce their content.
True, though I never really used my ISP space that way. Sometimes if I had stuff like photos I wanted to share or other files I wanted to share with someone, I'd put them on my ISP space for people to download.
few minutesanother thing is, not everyone should HAVE a website.I had problems of my blog being hacked by script kiddies several times. You also have to make sure that your themes and plugins are upgraded because they will find the holes.
they have facebook.
yeah, if you have a wordpress up you will be attacked almost every
all day long. it also takes some decent resources to host a wordpress site.
On 02-16-19 09:56, Dumas Walker wrote to NIGHTFOX <=-
IIRC, I still do have the ability to put up a small web page but have
not updated it in ages.
On 02-17-19 07:05, poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Vk3jed <=-
They probably figured when GeoCities came up with ad-supported personal web space that made money, that paying to provide web space seemed
pretty stupid.
True, though I never really used my ISP space that way. Sometimes if
I had stuff like photos I wanted to share or other files I wanted to
share with someone, I'd put them on my ISP space for people to
download.
Throw up a BBS and instant FTP server ;-)
They probably figured when GeoCities came up with ad-supported
personal web space that made money, that paying to provide web space
seemed pretty stupid.
One possibility, or I think simply as people stopped using it, ISPs didn't see a need to bother.
I never really stopped using my personal ISP space.. But I suppose not enough people were using it, so I just have to follow the crowd in that case as personal ISP space disappears and I have to find alternate ways to share my stuff. :)
I never really stopped using my personal ISP space.. But I suppose
not enough people were using it, so I just have to follow the crowd in
that case as personal ISP space disappears and I have to find
alternate ways to share my stuff. :)
It's all about copyright and liability. No ISP wants to be involved with folks sharing binaries of god-knows-what. Or adult images. Or ....
On 02-19-19 10:14, Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
I never really stopped using my personal ISP space.. But I suppose not enough people were using it, so I just have to follow the crowd in that case as personal ISP space disappears and I have to find alternate ways
to share my stuff. :)
It's all about copyright and liability. No ISP wants to be involved with folks sharing binaries of god-knows-what. Or adult images. Or ....
So then people just end up going to other services to host that stuff..
It's all about copyright and liability. No ISP wants to be
involved with folks sharing binaries of god-knows-what. Or adult
images. Or ....
So then people just end up going to other services to host that
stuff..
And pay for it after agreeing to a 50-page Terms of Service that nobody reads, but when the Copyright police come-a-calling, the provider can say "Here's all his info, good luck with the lawsuit!"
Kevin wrote to MRO <=-
But you do really have to be up to date on your updates regardless, and it's a total arse ache. Which is incidentally how JetPack have been hawking their premium plans.
Nightfox wrote to Vk3jed <=-
I never really stopped using my personal ISP space.. But I suppose not enough people were using it, so I just have to follow the crowd in that case as personal ISP space disappears and I have to find alternate ways
to share my stuff. :)
The market is calling out for a simple, light personal blog platform. WP used to be it, now it's gotten pretty big. I liked Bloxsom, it didn't do
Re: Back to the BBS
By: Nightfox to Dmxrob on Mon Feb 18 2019 03:58 pm
True, though I never really used my ISP space that way. Sometimes if I had stuff like photos I wanted to share or other files I wanted to share with someone, I'd put them on my ISP space for people to download.
Throw up a BBS and instant FTP server ;-)
I have a hard time wanting to pay for something that was once free..
I haven't used either of those, but I used to use LiveJournal a long time ago. It seemed fairly simple, though it felt like a bit of a social network, and the people I knew who used it seem to no longer use it anymore and have moved onto Facebook.
Re: Back to the BBS
I found that I was running a bill of $300+ up per month, and to the point I was scared of running anything 24x7 because of the cost.
Ok, you were using something that was CPU/IO intensive. That's a ridiculous amount to be spending on hosting of any kind. I had a fairly busy WP blog on Amazon's AWS service, free tier of course. When they started charging me after the free year was up, I ended up paying maybe $6 a month. Then I found a VPS with 10 times the resources for $2 a month, and moved off of AWS. :)
The market is calling out for a simple, light personal blog platform. WP used to be it, now it's gotten pretty big. I liked Bloxsom, it didn't do more than prettify text documents and mark them up for you. I keep thinking about going to something like that for all of the tech bits I host on my
web site for posterity's sake.
Lmorchard wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
FWIW, Jekyll is pretty much the modern go-to spiritual ancestor to Bloxsom. It's super easy and cheap to generate a static blog and upload
it to Amazon S3.
Then, they gave up.
I always assumed that part of the reason mine gave up was that no one was really using that kind of thing anymore... most internet uses want point-and-click rather than the old text-based discussion of a newsgroup.
| Sysop: | Ragnarok |
|---|---|
| Location: | Dock Sud, Bs As, Argentina |
| Users: | 136 |
| Nodes: | 10 (0 / 10) |
| Uptime: | 11:17:39 |
| Calls: | 15,171 |
| Calls today: | 4 |
| Files: | 19,857 |
| D/L today: |
57 files (5,495K bytes) |
| Messages: | 1,691,608 |