I now have something to distract me when I should be preparing for exams (although, naturally, it won’t). Retiarius has just purchased a dedicated server from FastHosts (on which server this blog is now running) and so I’ve been spending time setting it up. So far, it has Apache, BIND, MySQL, PHP4 and PHP5 in parallel, and the beginnings of the RageControl backend. I’ll slowly be adding more and more features and software over the coming weeks, including FTP and email… and maybe more bits of RageControl.

I’ve wanted a dedicated server for a while, and it’s great to just have a machine with guaranteed uptime, a 10Mbit/s Tier 1 connection to the Internet and I have complete control. Even to hardware level; they’ve got a web-based KVM system that lets me deal with the server even during POST. In short, FastHosts are cool 🙂 It only took about 3 hours for them to set the server up, too!

We had to decide on a naming scheme for our server (and future servers) and, after some deliberation, settled on using villains. This server, therefore, is named scaramanga, and the next may be trevelyan or gredenko or sidious or muttley… the possibilities are almost endless. Then, once we need a new group of servers, we’ll start using heroes like bauer or bond or skywalker…