DWM (8/12/2002) I created an Operations page to provide a few basic details about SpookyDistance's minimal resources. I included information on costs there.

Because our costs are truly minimal at the moment, I'm not asking anyone for money. However, here's a thought to consider.

Setting up a server and configuring it is time-consuming, and although I have made some progress on creating a server with intent to host it at one of our members' homes (JFH and JDH both offered), I am basically stalled and not very eager to continue the effort. (i.e. I got bored -- this is admin work, not programming.) So, what's the American way of avoiding unpleasant work? Spend money, of course! (Preferably other peoples'...)

Interestingly, I just noticed today that LiquidWeb has a new service which seems to fall in between virtual hosting and dedicated server hosting, in terms of features and price. They call it "virtual dedicated server" hosting. This might meet our needs for a cost we could be comfortable with. I've sent them an inquiry to get some more technical details. You can see the feature list here: [Virtual Dedicated Server]

The key question I need them to answer is: Can I install additional server software of my own choosing? My immediate goal is to get a source code control system of some sort up and running. The cost would be $80/month => $960/year. Interestingly, it includes tools for reselling space to others, so we could offer each member of spookydistance their own virtual Web site, which you could use as a family site or whatever you want. However, the basic $80 service is a bit tight on disk space. Anyway, those are some thoughts to ponder while you look at the price tag and wonder if you'd be willing to pay for a hunk of something like this. If anyone wants to do further shopping on the net for other alternatives, please do.

DWM (8/13/2002) Got a reply from LiquidWeb -- looks good! We could apparently install any software we want on a virtual dedicated server. That means we could get a source control system up and running in fairly short order. Installing Subversion (see Source Control) would probably still be a tad difficult, because it needs version 2.0 of Apache, and they install 1.3.26. But it sounds like we could upgrade the web server ourselves if we chose to. And we could install game servers on it, too -- although I wouldn't get any ideas about running a shared TFC server, because the actual hardware would be shared with other virtual dedicated servers. (When our own server software's processing requirements get large, we would probably have to take the next step to a dedicated real server.)

Poking around their sample Web-based admin interface, I get the impression that they do not (a priori) provide a way to define additional telnet logins. But if this 'virtual server' really works like a real server, it should be possible to do so directly from the root login. Hmmm ... another email to LiquidWeb to clarify. If this is possible, then everyone in the group could also have their very own login to play around with Linux.

DWM (8/15/2002) Got another answer from LW -- upgrading Apache would be possible, and we could create as many UNIX login names as we like. So if anyone is looking for a way to play around with the UNIX software on the command line, this would be another bonus -- you'd be able to log in via SSH. That can also make it easier to manage your personal web site, which would appear as a subdomain of spookydistance.com.

DWM (8/16/200) A few people have indicated a willingness to commit to a share in this setup. If we get at least four people, I'm definitely in. In that case, it works out to $960/4 = $240/year = $20/month/person. Heck, I'd just have to cancel my JG subscription in order to cover this. (I'll continue to cover the $15 annual domain name expense myself, so that if this group ever melts down, there won't be any dispute over who owns that precious bit of virtual real estate.)

Show if you're, in, out, undecided here: |ABC | in | |DJH | ask me again when we have source code that needs controlling | |DWM | in | |JDH | in | |JFH | | |NFS | What the heck. | |SJH | undecided |

Istvan (8/16/02) I volunteered to pay a share of our original costs a couple weeks ago, when I heard Dan had paid the regular annual fees once again, which share I figured would be a two-digit dollar amount. My only concern with the proposed new costs for the virtual server, which I've already voiced to Dan, is whether it will actually get used. Aside from a little random noise, largely my own, the Wiki's been very quiet since April or so. I'm planning more major activity, but I'm also planning to be unemployed for about the next year (which adds time and also reduces my available funds). I want to contribute a share, but if I'm going to invest a three digit dollar amount into the community pot, I also want some assurances that the resources are actually going to be used. Hate to be so blunt, but I want no misunderstandings among us.

DWM (8/16/2002) Perfectly reasonable to be cagey about throwing money away. I also don't want anyone to feel that they have to contribute. To be clear, this shouldn't become a membership test. If we reach the magic number 'four', I'd like to go ahead with those who are comfortable with it. (Huh, that number also turns out to be the minimal majority of the members. Coincidence, I swear it!) If we don't reach that number, I'll just take Dave's in-table comment to heart and try to produce something he considers worthy. :-)

I've been getting myself slowly cranked up again by groping through all the good ideas on the wiki. (The "Random Page" link can be fun!) I'm just torn no where to start - there are so many things to do. Even with as much experience as I have in programming, this will easily be the biggest project that I've helped to start from ground zero.

DWM (8/17/2002) More info from LiquidWeb: No backup services are available on these virtual servers at this time. We would have to arrange for backup via one of our cable-connected folks. I'll spend some time thinking about how this could be done efficiently. A simple method is to compress all directories needing backup to a file and using ftp to download and store it, but that would eventually start to need quite a bit of disk space on the server.