My wife wants to register a set of domains for a small (long term) project she's thinking of starting. I've checked and a nice set of 'same name' domains are available as .com, .co.uk and .biz.
The question is should I just register the domains and host them on the home Linux system or can I get a reasonable deal from anywhere for hosting and registration all in one go?
Can anyone recommend a single registration company/site which can do all these TLDs at a reasonable price? I've used Just The Names for my isbd.ltd.uk domain and they are reasonably priced for .com and .co.uk but they're expensive for .biz.
If I host them on the home system (which already hosts isbd.ltd.uk forwarded from Just The Names) is it possible to 'virtual host' a number of domains even when they're registered with (possibly) different companies?
On 2/3/06, Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk wrote:
My wife wants to register a set of domains for a small (long term) project she's thinking of starting. I've checked and a nice set of 'same name' domains are available as .com, .co.uk and .biz.
The question is should I just register the domains and host them on the home Linux system or can I get a reasonable deal from anywhere for hosting and registration all in one go?
For just registration I like http://www.gandi.net and http://www.123-reg.co.uk (in that order). 123-reg offer hosting too (now owned by Pipex), but I have no expience of that.
Everything you ask is possible if you self host.
Good luck! Tim.
Chris Green wrote:
Can anyone recommend a single registration company/site which can do all these TLDs at a reasonable price? I've used Just The Names for my isbd.ltd.uk domain and they are reasonably priced for .com and .co.uk but they're expensive for .biz.
I use One and One www.1and1.co.uk. They are dead cheap for linux hosting and have a nice administration area where you can manage all the domains and mail. I have the instant website package which costs £2 per month, the domain name resgisrations only cost between £2 and £9 each.
I was going to host the sites at my home but considering one and one have Gigabits of bandwidth and I only have an ADSL link it did not make sense.
I also use One and One for several of my clients sites and email.
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:10:28PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
Can anyone recommend a single registration company/site which can do all these TLDs at a reasonable price? I've used Just The Names for my isbd.ltd.uk domain and they are reasonably priced for .com and .co.uk but they're expensive for .biz.
http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/ kind hosts of the Alug mailing list who do my hosting+domains+ADSL, highly recommended. (also you can take a look at http://www.php4hosting.co.uk/ they host the Alug website, but I have no direct experience of their service)
If I host them on the home system (which already hosts isbd.ltd.uk forwarded from Just The Names) is it possible to 'virtual host' a number of domains even when they're registered with (possibly) different companies?
Yes, but you have to configure the webserver to do this.
Thanks Adam
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main- bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Adam Bower Sent: 03 February 2006 19:35 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] Hosting questions
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:10:28PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
Can anyone recommend a single registration company/site which can do all these TLDs at a reasonable price? I've used Just The Names for my isbd.ltd.uk domain and they are reasonably priced for .com and .co.uk but they're expensive for .biz.
http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/ kind hosts of the Alug mailing list
Blackcat are very nice people, totally professional, very reliable and highly recommended. I use them for several of my customers and am extremely satisfied with their service. No connected to them in any way just a very satisfied customer who is grateful for their hosting of the ALUG mail list.
who do my hosting+domains+ADSL, highly recommended. (also you can take a look at http://www.php4hosting.co.uk/ they host the Alug website, but I have no direct experience of their service)
As Adam said I have no personal experience of php4hosting's service except for the hosting of the ALUG web site and the speed in which they (Darren) restored our wiki from backup when it was defaced with spam not to long ago. Thanks guys.
Personally I will always use the businesses that donate to ALUG if I am able to, just so I can give back in a small way something to them because of their generosity to the ALUG community.
Cheers, BJ
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 07:35:20PM +0000, Adam Bower wrote:
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:10:28PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
If I host them on the home system (which already hosts isbd.ltd.uk forwarded from Just The Names) is it possible to 'virtual host' a number of domains even when they're registered with (possibly) different companies?
Yes, but you have to configure the webserver to do this.
Yes, of course, I was aiming to have a dig around in the Apache documentation to see what I can do.
I found that domain registration via my ADSL ISP (UK Free Software Network) is prtty competitively priced so I'm registering the domains I want via them. If they do make any profit out of me then it supports free software.
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:10:28PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
I found that domain registration via my ADSL ISP (UK Free Software Network) is prtty competitively priced so I'm registering the domains I want via them. If they do make any profit out of me then it supports free software.
Anything that supports free software gets the thumbs up from me.
Cheers, BJ
On Sat, Feb 04, 2006 at 11:53:30AM -0000, John Woodard wrote:
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:10:28PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
I found that domain registration via my ADSL ISP (UK Free Software Network) is prtty competitively priced so I'm registering the domains I want via them. If they do make any profit out of me then it supports free software.
Anything that supports free software gets the thumbs up from me.
You're not picky then. :) UKFSN is a special case, because they are explicitly setup to donate all profits to Free Software, but I think there are a reasonable number of ISPs who give back to the community in other ways.
For example Demon worked on a lot of bits for FreeBSD and Apache - they hit problems with their huge number of virtual hosts and produced the fixes and submitted them, at the very least, and I'm sure did a lot more.
Numerous ISPs support their local LUGs - php4hosting and Black Cat for ALUG for example.
Energis have a good causes rack - this currently has at least zenii.linux.org.uk and www.lug.org.uk in it.
I'm sure there are many other examples, it's just you often find that while it's accepted that staff will feed fixes back in or be allowed to work on bits during work time, it doesn't get publicised much. I know the Black Cat site doesn't list most of what we try to contribute back, which is something we're trying to remedy.
For example, Black Cat provide Debian with hosting for 2 of their machines (caballero & sarti). Both the owners are Debian Developers. We provide SPI with domain registration (spi-inc.org, oftc.net & debian.org are just some of the domains we hold for them). We've submitted patches or reported bugs and helped track them down for numerous projects (Apache, the Linux kernel, Quagga, l2tpns and LinuxBIOS at least).
UKFSN just have Free Software as one of their major selling points. Don't think the rest of us aren't trying to do our bit as well. ;)
J.
-----Original Message----- From: main-bounces@lists.alug.org.uk [mailto:main- bounces@lists.alug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Jonathan McDowell Sent: 04 February 2006 12:38 To: main@lists.alug.org.uk Subject: Re: [ALUG] Re: Hosting questions
On Sat, Feb 04, 2006 at 11:53:30AM -0000, John Woodard wrote:
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 03:10:28PM +0000, Chris Green wrote:
I found that domain registration via my ADSL ISP (UK Free Software Network) is prtty competitively priced so I'm registering the domains I want via them. If they do make any profit out of me then it supports free software.
Anything that supports free software gets the thumbs up from me.
You're not picky then. :) UKFSN is a special case, because they are explicitly setup to donate all profits to Free Software, but I think there are a reasonable number of ISPs who give back to the community in other ways.
For example Demon worked on a lot of bits for FreeBSD and Apache - they hit problems with their huge number of virtual hosts and produced the fixes and submitted them, at the very least, and I'm sure did a lot more.
Numerous ISPs support their local LUGs - php4hosting and Black Cat for ALUG for example.
Energis have a good causes rack - this currently has at least zenii.linux.org.uk and www.lug.org.uk in it.
I'm sure there are many other examples, it's just you often find that while it's accepted that staff will feed fixes back in or be allowed to work on bits during work time, it doesn't get publicised much. I know the Black Cat site doesn't list most of what we try to contribute back, which is something we're trying to remedy.
For example, Black Cat provide Debian with hosting for 2 of their machines (caballero & sarti). Both the owners are Debian Developers. We provide SPI with domain registration (spi-inc.org, oftc.net & debian.org are just some of the domains we hold for them). We've submitted patches or reported bugs and helped track them down for numerous projects (Apache, the Linux kernel, Quagga, l2tpns and LinuxBIOS at least).
UKFSN just have Free Software as one of their major selling points. Don't think the rest of us aren't trying to do our bit as well. ;)
Like I said before blackcat are one of the good guys and I personally and publicly thank them for their contributions to the free software community.
Cheers, BJ
Jonathan McDowell wrote:
We've submitted patches or reported bugs and helped track them down for numerous projects (Apache, the Linux kernel, Quagga, l2tpns and LinuxBIOS at least).
Interesting to see LinuxBIOS mentioned, as this is something I've wanted to play with for ages but never found a correctly shaped tuit.
What's it like? What sensibly do I need to get started with it? I did buy a support mobo at one point (no idea what happened to it, its probably in a customers machine somewhere) but that's as far as I got.
On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 04:18:41PM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
Jonathan McDowell wrote:
We've submitted patches or reported bugs and helped track them down for numerous projects (Apache, the Linux kernel, Quagga, l2tpns and LinuxBIOS at least).
Interesting to see LinuxBIOS mentioned, as this is something I've wanted to play with for ages but never found a correctly shaped tuit.
What's it like?
In what way? I started looking at it as I want to build machines with serial consoles that will live in a datacentre and never have a keyboard/monitor plugged into them. Oh, and allow network booting.
I ended up with an image that did serial console from the very beginning of boot and would then launch etherboot allowing me to boot from the network or it would time out waiting for a keypress after 5s and boot a kernel from disk. It boots a lot faster than a conventional BIOS (which is what interests a lot of people in it) and it gives you a lot more control (which is what interests me).
What sensibly do I need to get started with it? I did buy a support mobo at one point (no idea what happened to it, its probably in a customers machine somewhere) but that's as far as I got.
If you have a supported motherboard then you can cross your fingers and try to build and flash an image. However if it goes wrong you're a bit stuffed. I've ended up with an EEPROM programmer and a lovely device called a BIOS Saviour (see http://www.ioss.com.tw/web/English/RD1BIOSSavior.html) that lets you have 2 BIOS chips installed and switch between them easily - you keep one as the original working BIOS and then flash your new code to the other chip to try out. I was working on a barely supported board however. Datasheets are also vital, but frequently the decent stuff is only available under an NDA. :(
J.
Jonathan McDowell wrote:
Interesting to see LinuxBIOS mentioned, as this is something I've wanted to play with for ages but never found a correctly shaped tuit.
What's it like?
In what way?
Well any experience of it is interesting, to be honest.
I ended up with an image that did serial console from the very beginning of boot and would then launch etherboot allowing me to boot from the network or it would time out waiting for a keypress after 5s and boot a kernel from disk. It boots a lot faster than a conventional BIOS (which is what interests a lot of people in it) and it gives you a lot more control (which is what interests me).
So that's serial console from right at the start of the BIOS? Interesting - I can see uses for that (not that dissimilar to yours, but mostly for remote purposes, eg PCs in unattended buildings).
My main reason for looking into it was that it looked like a fun thing to play with. But we're increasingly starting to look at using PCs as black boxes for specific applications, many of them not headless (eg media PCs etc). I'm interested in speeding the boot process and in controlling the screen output during that process (making it look a little more user friendly than your typical PC boot process).
If you have a supported motherboard then you can cross your fingers and try to build and flash an image. However if it goes wrong you're a bit stuffed.
I might "invest" in a cheap EPROM programmer so I can play, but having looked at the BIOS Saviours in the past they're great products but overkill for anything I'm doing. I do have an old EPROM blower (and a UV prom erasor) kicking around somewhere, but I think technology might have moved on a bit past them now.
I know that some mobos have dual BIOS anyway (I think some Gigabyte boards did?), I presume that's a good starting point assuming the board is supported.
On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 08:37:38AM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
Jonathan McDowell wrote:
I ended up with an image that did serial console from the very beginning of boot and would then launch etherboot allowing me to boot from the network or it would time out waiting for a keypress after 5s and boot a kernel from disk. It boots a lot faster than a conventional BIOS (which is what interests a lot of people in it) and it gives you a lot more control (which is what interests me).
So that's serial console from right at the start of the BIOS?
Yup. Most modern server motherboards have the option to do that anyway these days, if they're anyway decent.
If you have a supported motherboard then you can cross your fingers and try to build and flash an image. However if it goes wrong you're a bit stuffed.
I might "invest" in a cheap EPROM programmer so I can play, but having looked at the BIOS Saviours in the past they're great products but overkill for anything I'm doing. I do have an old EPROM blower (and a UV prom erasor) kicking around somewhere, but I think technology might have moved on a bit past them now.
Don't underestimate the use of the BIOS Saviour; even with an EPROM programmer I ended up buying one, because the PLCC sockets on the Via boards aren't very robust and I had one pull away from the board after a few cycles of remove / program / insert / test / repeat. Also it's much faster to flick a switch rather than remove/insert/remove/insert a chip.
I know that some mobos have dual BIOS anyway (I think some Gigabyte boards did?), I presume that's a good starting point assuming the board is supported.
I don't know about how the dual BIOS stuff works; assuming they provide 2 full BIOSes then they should be ok.
J.
Jonathan McDowell wrote:
I don't know about how the dual BIOS stuff works; assuming they provide 2 full BIOSes then they should be ok.
That's the idea, to guard against failed BIOS updates or virus attacks. I forget what you have to do to force use of the second BIOS but its trivial.
I'll see if I can find such a board.
On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 10:28:34AM +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
Jonathan McDowell wrote:
I don't know about how the dual BIOS stuff works; assuming they provide 2 full BIOSes then they should be ok.
That's the idea, to guard against failed BIOS updates or virus attacks. I forget what you have to do to force use of the second BIOS but its trivial.
I had a board like this a couple of years back, in fact i /think/ it might be in my server under the desk. Anyhow, to use the 2nd bios you would move a jumper on the board and I think from there you could flash the other bios.
Thanks Adam
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 09:11 +0000, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
Yup. Most modern server motherboards have the option to do that anyway these days, if they're anyway decent.
It's always been a weakness of the X86 platform, it was never designed to be a server platform from the outset and so therefore lacks some of the better management features like this in the core design.
Actually most of the legacy server platforms (Sparc, Alpha and I think Mips) have a serial pre-boot console and have had since the dawn of time.
One of my trusty Alpha's even has a modem port that can autodial a pager number in the event that certain hardware events occur, otherwise you can use the same modem to dial into the SCU (Alpha bios setup equiv) (even if the machine is turned off) as the modem console runs on a separate microprocessor that stays powered as long as there is a mains supply (there is a PC equiv of this but it's a 3rd party board). Comes in really handy if you have to real with a remote machine that has completely hung..simply dial in and force a cold boot.
What would be really cool is if on a PC you could assign unique i2c bus device ID's (i2c bus is present on all modern mainboards, it's how the information passes for lmsensors etc) then you could dasychain a rack of such systems together and monitor *everything* from one place.
Just to tempt me some of the miniITX kit has the i2c bus on a header, waiting for me to muck around with it...you have to be careful though, we are talking about what can be done to stuff a board when working with the Bios contents, that's nothing compared to what you could do with i2c.
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 08:37 +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
I might "invest" in a cheap EPROM programmer so I can play, but having looked at the BIOS Saviours in the past they're great products but overkill for anything I'm doing. I do have an old EPROM blower (and a UV prom erasor) kicking around somewhere, but I think technology might have moved on a bit past them now.
Erm no I wouldn't go plugging modern EEPROM/Flash based Bios chips into an old Eprom programmer, or you may be needing that BIOSsaviour more quickly than you think :-)
On Mon, Feb 13, 2006 at 09:50:59PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Mon, 2006-02-13 at 09:11 +0000, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
Yup. Most modern server motherboards have the option to do that anyway these days, if they're anyway decent.
It's always been a weakness of the X86 platform, it was never designed to be a server platform from the outset and so therefore lacks some of the better management features like this in the core design.
It's getting better with things like IPMI, but I still find that not well documented and it tends to want custom software to work.
Actually most of the legacy server platforms (Sparc, Alpha and I think Mips) have a serial pre-boot console and have had since the dawn of time.
Even Apple managed to make the PowerPC based Macs support it as part of OpenFirmware. Plus they all had line based interfaces, which are much more sensible over a serial console than some menu driven constantly updating thing.
J.
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Erm no I wouldn't go plugging modern EEPROM/Flash based Bios chips into an old Eprom programmer, or you may be needing that BIOSsaviour more quickly than you think :-)
Shame, really; I miss having to wait half an hour to test a minor code change while I wait for the EPROM to erase. Of-course you could always try to find a code mod with a suitable bit pattern that you could overwrite the EPROM without wiping it first.
EEPROMs took all the fun out of it! I'm not sure by USB thumb drive would be so convenient otherwise, though.
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 18:20 +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
EEPROMs took all the fun out of it! I'm not sure by USB thumb drive would be so convenient otherwise, though.
You joke but my first Psion Organiser used EPROM storage modules that you had to erase with a UV eraser (sold separately) when you had filled them...The 2nd unit had EEPROMS but you could only erase the whole thing to reclaim space..."deleting" a file would remove it from the list but it would still be there taking up space.
On 14-Feb-06 Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 18:20 +0000, Mark Rogers wrote:
EEPROMs took all the fun out of it! I'm not sure by USB thumb drive would be so convenient otherwise, though.
You joke but my first Psion Organiser used EPROM storage modules that you had to erase with a UV eraser (sold separately) when you had filled them...The 2nd unit had EEPROMS but you could only erase the whole thing to reclaim space..."deleting" a file would remove it from the list but it would still be there taking up space.
Which reminds me of using an audio cassette as a file-system (on a Sharp MZ-80B CP/M machine). It can be done -- you need to do computation on the sizes of the "deleted" slots, then find them on the tape and write chunks to them, then rewind and update the "directory" segment near the beginning ...
NB::: Been There. Done it. Got the tee-shirt. Not going back.
Cheers, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Feb-06 Time: 19:07:38 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 19:07 +0000, Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
Which reminds me of using an audio cassette as a file-system (on a Sharp MZ-80B CP/M machine). It can be done -- you need to do computation on the sizes of the "deleted" slots, then find them on the tape and write chunks to them, then rewind and update the "directory" segment near the beginning ...
NB::: Been There. Done it. Got the tee-shirt. Not going back.
I think in terms of inconvenient file system access you win (unless Peter Onion wants to step in with some story about paper tape hell on a Elliot 803) :-)
On 14-Feb-06 Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 19:07 +0000, Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
Which reminds me of using an audio cassette as a file-system (on a Sharp MZ-80B CP/M machine). It can be done -- you need to do computation on the sizes of the "deleted" slots, then find them on the tape and write chunks to them, then rewind and update the "directory" segment near the beginning ...
NB::: Been There. Done it. Got the tee-shirt. Not going back.
I think in terms of inconvenient file system access you win (unless Peter Onion wants to step in with some story about paper tape hell on a Elliot 803) :-)
Yeah ... In these days of the Magic GUI I am sometimes tempted to growl
R.e.a.l...M.e.n...U.s.e...T..E..L..E..T..Y..P..E..S......
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 14-Feb-06 Time: 23:32:45 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On 2/14/06, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Erm no I wouldn't go plugging modern EEPROM/Flash based Bios chips into an old Eprom programmer, or you may be needing that BIOSsaviour more quickly than you think :-)
Shame, really; I miss having to wait half an hour to test a minor code change while I wait for the EPROM to erase. Of-course you could always try to find a code mod with a suitable bit pattern that you could overwrite the EPROM without wiping it first.
When I last worked with EPROMs (late 90s) the UV box always contained a few extra blanks, so there'd always be some ready. They couldn't be damaged by too much UV, could they?
Waiting for the code to compile, and then download into the proms, that was long enough! My favourite error message was "There can be only one master".
Tim.
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 23:01 +0000, Tim Green wrote:
When I last worked with EPROMs (late 90s) the UV box always contained a few extra blanks, so there'd always be some ready. They couldn't be damaged by too much UV, could they?
Do you know I always thought they could...and that was why you had the little clockwork timer on most erasers...but maybe that was only there to make sure you didn't "undercook" them.
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 23:01 +0000, Tim Green wrote:
When I last worked with EPROMs (late 90s) the UV box always contained a few extra blanks, so there'd always be some ready. They couldn't be damaged by too much UV, could they?
Do you know I always thought they could...and that was why you had the little clockwork timer on most erasers...but maybe that was only there to make sure you didn't "undercook" them.
I always thought they could too, but I'm not sure if this is something I was told or just guessed based on the timer.
I did always have a few blanks around, although I seem to recall most of mine were "second hand" anyway and write failures were not uncommon. I also had a tendency to hoard old versions of code in their EPROMs until I was sure the new code was better, thus finding that most of my spares were not available for use.
<div class=nostalgia> I did my O Level Computing course project based on a Z80 assembler application programmed into EPROM for testing on a home assembled board. I got a good grade purely (I am sure) because none of the teachers had the faintest idea what I was doing! Everyone else used the latest and greatest BBC micros programmed in BASIC, although there was an RM 380Z sat in the corner which nobody understood (for a start it had to be "booted", which sounded scary enough in itself!) </div>
Of-course I'm nowhere near old enough to have proper nostalgia. That will have been mid-80s.
Hi Chris
Chris Green wrote:
My wife wants to register a set of domains for a small (long term) project she's thinking of starting. I've checked and a nice set of 'same name' domains are available as .com, .co.uk and .biz.
The question is should I just register the domains and host them on the home Linux system or can I get a reasonable deal from anywhere for hosting and registration all in one go?
We do hosting + domains names (We currently host the alug site)
Can anyone recommend a single registration company/site which can do all these TLDs at a reasonable price? I've used Just The Names for my isbd.ltd.uk domain and they are reasonably priced for .com and .co.uk but they're expensive for .biz.
.biz are slightly more expensive as they have to be registered for 2 years. But it works out £8.50 per year. If you contact us first we can also do something on the domain cost.
Hosting starts out at £3 per month and normally is restricted to one domain, but for alug members we would remove that restriction.
If I host them on the home system (which already hosts isbd.ltd.uk forwarded from Just The Names) is it possible to 'virtual host' a number of domains even when they're registered with (possibly) different companies?
Yes there are no restrictions, and if you find they are getting more traffic you could always move them.
We offer free DNS hosting as well so could do this included in the domain cost.
If you have any questions please feel free to email me and Ill do my best to answer them
Regards Darren http://www.php4hosting.co.uk
On Fri, Feb 03, 2006 at 07:41:23PM +0000, Darren wrote:
.biz are slightly more expensive as they have to be registered for 2 years. But it works out £8.50 per year.
I don't think that's the case any more, though it certainly was when .biz started out.
J.
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Adam Bower -
Chris Green -
Darren -
David Simon Cooper -
John Woodard -
Jonathan McDowell -
Mark Rogers -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood