patrick.net

Patrick says

richwicks says

Patrick says

OK, I'll do some experiments today. I have an always-on laptop I can use to host it.

If you have virtualbox installed on your machine, I suggest using that.

I've used it, but find it to be a pain, just another layer of cruft to deal with.

Ideally, I'd have an a laptop that just has the same linux I have now on my server so I could migrate without recompiling anything or re-installing any pacakages, just a mass copy.

The reason I suggest a virtual machine is that it's really easy to archive - just shut down the machine, and tar -czf archive.tgz [directory] - another thing I use it for is when I'm doing a new setup, I prefer to do it one a machine I don't worry about screwing up, before I move it to my real machine. For example, when I'm compiling libraries that have to be installed on my base system.

NOTE: Virtualbox MUST be installed not from your package manager but from this site:

https://www.virtualbox.org/

There's two parts, the virtual box program itself, and the VirtualBox 6.1.28 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack - they have to be downloaded at the same time. The Extension Pack allows you to resize the screen, use USB 2.0/3.0 - stuff you take for granted, if you don't install the extension pack, you have a machine, but you want to ssh into it, and you won't want to work directly on the display (I think it's like 800x640 of something in screen size).

Virtual machines are VERY USEFUL to segregate work and experiment with new versions of operating systems. I've run AROS on mine - which is a re-implementation of the Amiga OS (it sucks!), but I also have multiple windows and linux machines. With a VM, I don't have to worry about breaking something, if I'm doing something weird.

True, VMs have a place for moving images archived images around and segregating work spaces.

But they also add a lot of work and complexity: installing virtualbox, the extension pack, setting up networking to map it to the host machine, starting up and keeping the vm running etc.

I just found that for a single website, they felt like more of a pain in the ass than they were worth.

If Digital Ocean would just let me upload an run a virtualbox image, that would be compelling. But I think they do not.

Yeah, containers seem to be the way to go now. All I run are internal services for the house though, so don't even bother with that. Just a headless server, and I'm good to go.

I tried containers too, like Docker, but they were even more painful than virtualbox imho.

Patrick says

True, VMs have a place for moving images archived images around and segregating work spaces.

But they also add a lot of work and complexity: installing virtualbox, the extension pack, setting up networking to map it to the host machine, starting up and keeping the vm running etc.

I just found that for a single website, they felt like more of a pain in the ass than they were worth.

Docker might be more appropriate. I'm not well versed in it though. A VM is a staging area for me. I have a bunch of them. All you have to do is screw up your main machine once, and suddenly you'll see the value of a VM.

Setting up VirtualBox isn't hard, and once you've made one VM, it's basically a 30 minute job, 25 of the minutes are waiting for it to install.

Patrick says

If Digital Ocean would just let me upload an run a virtualbox image, that would be compelling. But I think they do not

You're almost CERTAINLY running on some sort of VM, probably Docker. I should learn Docker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGz9DS-aIeY

I've not done it myself, but it LOOKS pretty easy.

I wasted several months of my after-work time a couple of years ago just getting Docker going and trying to figure out how to use the same image on my laptop and my server.

I was not impressed.

The main problem is that hosting sites don't let you just drop images on their servers and run them. At least they didn't at the time.

It was less work in the end to simply start from a new, say, Debian distro, and install the things I needed.

@Patrick - if you need to host it somewhere that costs more money, I bet a bunch of us would chip in annually. Your site is my home away from home.

Thanks @porkchopexpress that's a kind thought.

I think if I do this right it should not cost any more to host at home than I pay now.

HunterTits says

Patrick -- I no longer get emails notifying me if someone LIKES my posts/comments since the site was restarted. Do you have something you need to restart for that too?

Thanks for telling me @HunterTits. I don't see why that should have happened because I still get them.

Could they have been marked spam?

I don't see any bounces from mails sent to you, so that's not it either.

Now that he mentioned it I didn't get notifications for the replies ITT.

Can be useful to keep up with long running threads.

Comment from a test account. I'll like it and see if the test user gets the email.

Yes, when I liked that, my test user got an email.

Huh.

So the mechanism clearly works, mails are being sent and not bouncing.

Ah, most of a working day later, I get a reply to my ticket:

Thank you for contacting DigitalOcean and I am sorry that you were having issues accessing your website on your Droplet.
The Droplet is on a hypervisor that was undergoing emergency maintenance. We migrated your Droplet automatically in order to try and keep things operating normally. I understand this has a serious impact on your deployment and these situations are only done as an emergency measure and not intentional. We appreciate your patience around this issue and I am glad that you were able to return your Droplet back to working condition.

A couple just came through on my end so some module must be back to functionality.

Patrick says

Yes, when I liked that, my test user got an email.

Huh.

As a feature, why not just have a list of likes that ages out after, say, 7 days.

What I'd really like is a notification when somebody replies to me.

But, of course, your site.

Wow, that's weird.

It must have something to do with the reboot, but I don't understand what. Sorry about the flood.

Maybe a bunch of them were queued up but couldn't be sent for some reason until the reboot.

richwicks says

As a feature, why not just have a list of likes that ages out after, say, 7 days.

What I'd really like is a notification when somebody replies to me.

@richwicks I don't know what you mean by a list of likes that ages out. Where would that be visible? Maybe on your own profile page?

Also, how would I know that someone is replying to your comment? Maybe because they quoted it?

Please tell me you're using a salted database for (hopefully) encrypted user passwords...

The database passwords are all md5'd. I don't even know them myself.

HunterTits says

Now I am getting flooded with them going back over a year. Not sure if they are duplicates or originals.

OK, that is damn weird.

@HunterTits can you forward one of them to me, preferably an older one.

Anyone else seeing a flood of old patrick.net emails?

HunterTits says

My spam folder just got flooded with tons of emails from likes/replies going back from Sept, @Patrick

mine is fine

Perhaps NSA hacked Patnet to figure out who we are...FEMA camps can not stay empty!!!

Automan Empire says

I'm getting ready to migrate my tiny business website to a discount host.

@Automan Empire
also @Patrick does ^^^ that work above? A username with a space? I feel you might be looking to move as well.

I BELIEVE we host our website on here:

https://www.h4y.us/

It's like $6/month. If you have a really simple website (like we sure do!) you might want to check that out. Anything over $10/month seems nuts to me. There might be a bandwidth limit. I think they are run in some East European country, but - whatever, good enough.

It's basically a shared server. Doubt there's much of any security on it, has email on it (if you want it), has ssh (if you care), think it runs on Apache but I really have no clue.