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Why is my Web site constantly down?


Raf
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Raf:

quote:
Isn't that costly? Plus I'd never be able to turn my computer off?
Why would it be costly? As long as your traffic is light, and if it doesn't violate your service agreement, no one cares what you do with your connection.

What you would do is get another computer that you leave on all the time and set that up as a web server. It doesn't have to be a new one--my web server is running on an old 133-MHz Pentium-1 box with 80MB of RAM and an 8GB Hard drive. A $39 KVM switch means I don't even have to have a separate monitor, keyboard, or mouse for it.

I bought one of those "Teach Yourself Red Hat Linux in 24 Hours" books, which came with Linux on CD. I had the Apache webserver up and running in under an hour, and it only goes down when I turn the box off to mess with it.

My domain is free because I use a basic dynamic-hosting client, and I don't have to have a static IP address because the host automatically keeps its routing tables updated to point to my server as the dynamic IP changes. It sits behind the firewall on my router and only allows traffic on the HTTP port 80.

Monthly cost additional to my cable modem bill: zero. Domain setup fee: zero. The computer was an old one I had lying around. My wireless router already had the firewall built in. Linux is free. Apache web server software is free. Webmin remote Linux administration suite -- free.

Total cost: One $39 KVM switch, one $29 Linux book. Neither of those were 100% necessary, anyway.

Now Paw might have a little difficulty with his ISP doing that, since this site bangs out a good amount of traffic, but it's nothing even a three-year-old computer couldn't handle, given the proper bandwidth. Your site won't have near the traffic GSC does, Raf, so it's something to think about.

Secret Signature of the Day==v

If nobody knows what you're doing, nobody knows what you're doing wrong.

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Rick: Yeah, I know. icon_wink.gif;)--> I've also switched it to SecureHttp access as well to cut down on traffic sniffers. I'm no Linux expert, but I do cover my backside on things like remote administration! icon_biggrin.gif:D-->

Thanks,

Zix

Secret Signature of the Day==v

If nobody knows what you're doing, nobody knows what you're doing wrong.

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Glad to hear it Zix!

A lot of people use Webmin and really don't realize how unsecure it is. I started working with Unix back in the mid-80's when I was a programmer for At&t. Best os ever, in my opinion. Now I use Free-BSD for servers, although Red Hat looks really good for the Desktop.

I see your just teaching yourself linux...if you have any questions, let me know!

Rick

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Rick: Thanks, I appreciate the offer! I have much, much more experience with IIS on WindowsNT, but with the old clunker machine I had, running NT4 would have been more trouble than it was worth.

Apache is quite low-maintenance (more like no-maintenance) for what I use it for, although I may just install Tomcat and play around with some Java Server Pages for it... icon_biggrin.gif:D-->

I don't use the X desktop--too slow on that box. The command line interface is usually good enough for anything I have to do, and I can ssh into Webmin for most stuff. I do hate the vi editor though...the cutting edge of 1975 technology. icon_rolleyes.gif:rolleyes:-->

Secret Signature of the Day==v

If nobody knows what you're doing, nobody knows what you're doing wrong.

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Wasn't the vi editor the first screen based editor for Unix and workalikes? I think up till then only line based editors were used.

And this was *w-a-y-y* before multi-talented word processors like M$ Word came into vogue. Like back during the days of DOS 2 and edlin. icon_cool.gif

Prophet Emeritus of THE,

and Wandering CyberUU Hippie,

Garth P.

www.gapstudioweb.com

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VI was the first full-screen editor, to my knowledge. It followed ed, which M$ stole later and called Edlin.

VI is STILL the best text editor I have ever used, for programming. The Set commands, which are abbreviated by se are very powerful. As are global substitutions. But that would be a thread unto itself, to go into all that! icon_smile.gif:)-->

Rick

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Also, for those that may be interested in anti-bot scripts and such, I've written some in PHP that work well. If you have root on your own server you can even block them with whatever firewall you run on the server (it's trivial to update the /etc/hosts.deny file) or set up your .htaccess file (if you're using mod_rewrite with apache) to block bad people.

I've taken the protection of my visitors pretty seriously, as well as come up with ways to foil those bots that look for email addresses to spam. The latest version of my script looks for the ISP of the spambot (which is blocked in robots.txt) and then sets up a honeypot that creates a list of 1000 fake email addresses that will go back to the ISP they are using, so they end up harassing their own ISP. At the same time, I block them from visiting my site ever again, and then redirect them to a vulgar site.

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quote:
Originally posted by GarthP2000:

P-mosh, the master white hat hacker and spam destroyer!

icon_biggrin.gif:D-->


Well, I've been getting too much spam lately, so I'm going to drop my cable modem ISP when I move, and I've already moved my personal email to my own server, which uses a few spam filtering programs. I have SpamAssasin, as well as some filters I set up myself, and I'm thinking of implementing a whitelist so that only people send me email that I allow to send it to me. That way, only my friends and family can send me email directly, plus any random people that visit my site can use the forms I set up to send me email rather than exposing an email address.

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