Octopus Computing Blog

Cookie-based login

Admin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:40:30 +1000

You can now log in to the Octopus site via a regular login form, with a link to email your password in case you’ve forgotten it.

This does away with the ugly old HTTP-based authentication. HTTPS security is also implemented.

Software upgrades

Admin — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:15:57 +1100

We’re in the process of upgrading FreeBSD major versions. There appear to be some minor compatibility problems but nothing that can’t be fixed.

The reasons for this upgrade are that the new version (v7) contains several new features of interest. SMP scaling for 4-8 CPUs is much improved, and the network stack has several speed improvements. Sun’s ZFS file system has been incorporated and while it is still experimental, I have no doubt sysadmins everywhere will make full use of it if it is stable.

Services upheaval & testing

Admin — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:07:04 +1100

In the process of installing a new server, all services have been moved off one of the old servers. During this process some gaps in our standard environment were discovered and the website was returning some errors.

These hiccups pointed out the obvious – what’s really needed is a test-bench mirroring the complete production set-up so all system-level changes can be tested properly, just like we do with our software development.

So, the addition of the old server to our existing test server will form a new cluster in our office for the purposes of an end-to-end hosting test suite.

Choose FreeBSD for reliability

Admin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:25:30 +1100

Just noticed this old Netcraft report that found that a hoster using FreeBSD was found to be the most reliable hosting company sites measured in Oct 2007. Three of the top ten were using FreeBSD.

Octopus currently uses FreeBSD for all its systems, a choice made mainly because of high levels of prior experience in installation and maintenance.

A new year at Octopus

Admin — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 21:22:23 +1100

By the end of January we will have the new servers in place.

This means the VPS packages with extra disk and RAM will become available.

A storage network will also be set up so that each VPS data is mirrored to two physical machines at all times to improve reliability.

Keep an eye on the website for updates as new features are rolled out.

DNS server - slave zones

Admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:22:18 +1000

Customers can now configure the DNS servers to slave off specified master servers.

This allows them to use our DNS server as secondary/slave servers for domains that they may have hosted elsewhere, or hosted on their own VPS.

Octopus NTP server

Admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:33:21 +1000

Octopus now runs an NTP server that uses several Australian Strata 2 NTP servers for its time source. The address:

ntp.octopus.com.au

Email & DNS config live

Admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:44:43 +1000

Email

The important bits of the email server have been set up
it is taking its configuration live from the web control panels
Webmail is also installed
Still to come: antispam, antivirus, testing, and more testing

DNS

DNS servers are up and taking their config from the control panel
still to come: a simpler web interface, stricter checking that you own the domain you are inserting

Intense beta-testing

Admin — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:18:40 +1000

Testing uncovered some quirks in the last week which are now fixed. I owe a great deal to the patience and persistence of the beta testers – thanks guys!

Occasionally incorrect permissions in /dev meant that SSHD couldn’t open a TTY and allow a user to login.

To make moving VPS faster between servers that aren’t already syncronised, I’ve developed a small utility called Diskdupe which copies a raw block device between servers by only copying blocks that have changed. The blocks are compared using an MD5 hash. Hopefully this can be made public/opensource soon as I couldn’t find anything else already out there that did this.

I’ve also been collecting data to build a FAQ based on questions asked by the beta testers. Coming soon: you will be able to format your VPS disk based on a range of templates with pre-installed software based on commonly used webserver components.

VPS admin interface

Admin — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:19:56 +1000

I’ve just finished updating the VPS customer administration interface.

This lets you start and stop the VPS, and even format the disk. The web page also shows you the statistics of the VPS such as memory, CPU, and disk usage.

Converted to PostgreSQL

Admin — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:42:57 +1000

Site admin is succesfully converted from SQLite to PostgreSQL.

(For future reference, here are the steps I took:)

Installed the ar fixures plugin
Created a list of my models with a shell script
Iterated over the models calling Model.dump_to_file
Changed database config from sqlite to postgresql
rake db:migrate
Iterated over the models calling Model.load_from_file

Shared memory problems solved

Admin — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:27:50 +1000

Discovered the source of the bug and can no longer reproduce the PostgreSQL crashing bug.

I’ve also changed the shared memory arrangement to allow >2GB allocations for the future, in case anyone really wants to give PostgreSQL alot of memory, though at the moment 1-2GB should be enough for anyone!

I am now beginning to migrate the entire Octopus Admin system from SQLite to PostgreSQL. SQlite seemed good initially but now that the system has grown to so many tables and background functions, its poor database locking is starting to become a problem.

Problems with PostgreSQL

Admin — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 01:37:20 +1000

I’ve run into dramas again with PostgreSQL not playing nicely with IPC across jails.

I thought I had it all tested and working but it appears not the case. Further testing is put on hold while I return to my clean test box and step through the shared memory code in the kernel again.

Pricing plans put up

Admin — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:12:47 +1000

Heading over to the Sydney Rails meeting tonight. Apparently the Octopus website is going to get a quick mention!

In preparation, I’ve posted the initial pricing plans on the Pricing page.

I’m hoping to find some more beta-testers to offer useful feedback (in return for free hosting credits, of course!)

Preparing to launch

Admin — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 16:13:26 +1000

Welcome to the first blog post.

I’m busy filling in the website in preparation to accept the first real paying VPS customers. Beta testing has been good so far, with a couple of bugs unearthed and fixed relating to memory management.

All systems are operating now except the billing and email server. The latter isn’t really needed until after the VPS hosting is launched for real.