Tweaking a Dedicated Virtual Web Server

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One thing I hated about WebHostingTalk is how much bad advice the so-called “professionals” are giving out to the world. Some poor college student asked in the VPS forums whether he is able to run 18 static HTML sites on VPSLink.com Link-1 plan (64MB RAM, 2.5GB storage & 100GB/month data), and the typical responses are:

“I do not believe you can host 18 websites on 64MB of RAM. I’d bump that up to at least 128 or 256.” –nexbyte

“I really wouldn’t advise anything lower than 265MB RAM for website hosting.” –RikeMedia

(Well, there are some more optimistic comments but I mainly list out those “with things to sell”)

So, just trying to prove the point that yes, 64MB is more than enough to host 18 static sites, I decided to add a Link-1 Xen to my account and document the process. Btw, thanks to Dan @ VPSLink for getting my billing issue resolved :) You can get 10% recursive discount here, or 66% off for the first 3 months here.

DNSimple is a hosted DNS service that you can use to manage your domains. Plans start at $3 per month. We offer both a web-based interface and an iPhone application for adding and removing domains and DNS records as well as an HTTP API and command-line tool.

I am constantly telling my friends about the new technology tricks that I learn in my internet travels. I learn a lot, which has caused my friends to ignore around 90% of what I say about technology. I don't mind, because I know that I am a genius(heh) and they will come around some day.

This is exactly what happened with my most recent hacked upon hosting setup. I told my buddy kanno, and he didn't pay attention. Then he started diving in a bit on his own. Once he experienced a taste of the magic, I helped him to the rest of the koolaid and he was hooked. The result was him begging me to do this post to help people understand how awesome this setup is.

nhosted is a project for strengthening free software against hosted software. With our protocol, a website is only source code. Dynamic data is encrypted and decentralised, to per-user storage nodes. This benefits free software, as well as scalability, robustness, and online privacy.

Everyone loves the Google CDN right? Even Microsoft runs their own CDN.

The problem is, they only host the most popular libraries.

We host the other stuff.

This guide is meant to serve as a comprehensive reference for setting up an Ubuntu slice. It was started by a fellow who started taking detailed notes after having hosed his slice multiple times. It won’t tell you how to do everything, but it should be enough to get most people started.

The guide is broken up into sections. Each is meant to be somewhat self-contained, although later sections may depend on the actions of previous sections.

This guide assumes you’re starting out with a brand new slice, loaded with Ubuntu (6.06 Dapper Drake edition). Hopefully you already know some command-line Linux and know how to operate an SSH client (like PuTTY). Your IP can be found in the SliceManager.

Finally, I pulled a lot of stuff from other guides in compiling this. Thanks to all the other developers out there for documenting your experiences! As a relative newcomer to VPS hosting, I can’t thank you enough.