I had been planning to get a US-hosted server for quite a while, but was hesitant because of the initial and monthly investment required and the level of support I would get. The budget hosting services I’ve tried before had quite a pathetic level of service and the servers were often offline for hours or even days. I had evaluated a number of hosting companies, but couldn’t decide on one. Yesterday, I finally went ahead with Jim’s recommendation and signed up with Cari.net. My concern about support soon vanished when I got a verification call from one of their reps who was very helpful and got the server running within a few hours.
I now have a much faster and newer server at my disposal. The default OS is Fedora Linux (almost impossible to find affordable hosting with Slackware support) and I was planning to attempt a remote Slackware install (by copying the filesystem to a new partition and overwriting Fedora), but in the end, decided that it was too risky. It is a 64-bit server and in case I lose access to it during the shift, I would have to shell out more money to get Fedora back. Might as well get Fedora to play nice.
I’m still in the process of configuring it and will start shifting to it sometime next week. There will be as many updates and tweaks as I can manage and my sites, including this one, will be less susceptible to downtimes. They should also open faster for readers and users outside Pakistan.
12 thoughts on “New Linux server”
I’m surprised that you chose Fedora. Fedora releases are only supported for 1.5 years. IMHO, CentOS (which is based on RHEL) would have been a safer choice given that RHEL releases are supported for 7 years.
It seems you got a dedicated machine, would like to share how much does it cost monthly/yearly and are you able to run background services via shell?
thanks
Hello Fawad,
The server came with Fedora by default. Any other OS would have cost extra. The idea was that I’ll get this package and remotely do a “forced” change to Slackware since I was repartitioning anyway. Now it looks too risky since I could lose all access to the server in the process.
It may be simpler to rip out Fedora’s guts and replace whatever I can with CentOS or Slackware parts. Will give that a shot.
Adnan,
Yes, it is a dedicated machine and costs about $70 per month (plus installation charges of over $100).
What do you exactly mean by background services? I have full access to the server and can do whatever I want with it.
Regards.
Ok Sajjad thanks for reply, thats what I wanted to know whether you have full power or not. $75 sounds reasonable to me. Which provider are you using?
By background process I mean running a script in background by using & sign.
Which Fedora version is that?
Adnan, I’m using cari.net. It’s based in San Diego and seems ok.
If you have full control of a server, you can do anything with it, including running this kind of script.
Atif, it is running 64-bit Fedora Core 5. Not something I like or would recommend, but there was little choice.
Regards, Sajjad
What are the specs of the server machine?
It is a Celeron D (64 bit) with 1GB RAM and 160GB of space. Not much by today’s standards, but then again, my sites don’t really require much and it is a pretty decent upgrade for them.
Do you really think somebody would risk their business on something like Slackware? Hardware vendors are not going to support them at all if it’s slackware and support costs will be increased. So long Slackware…:P
Sajjad,
I use ASmallOrange.com, and they seem to be quite good. Why not go for a monthly shared package? For a simple blog, it does the job quite well. ASO is pretty cheap, $35/year, which includes domain registration as well. Tech support is awesome too.
Farhan
Zaeem, it’s my personal site and I don’t have OS level support anyway. My personal preference is Slackware and I should have that option if I’m willing to pay for it.
As for Slackware’s marketshare and future, it’s not a commercial distro or one of the most common, but I’m sure a number of servers are based on it. Not everyone needs or wants a corporate look.
Farhan, thanks for the suggestion, but I’m too used to having my own server and haven’t used shared hosting for over 4 years.
And it’s not just for this blog. I also run my own email server and other sites that require customized tools (coded in Python for example), not to mention the Python blogging software running this blog. A shared solution would have been too restrictive to run all these things.
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