Recently in Hosting Category

NameCheap的DNS server挂了，昨天一天域名都ping不通。最终把name server transfer到了media temple，现在一切都OK了。

一直想让Blog使用独立的域名，今天正式把域名更换至lua.me，在原先的域名上做了301跳转。

一直没有给VPS装ImageMagick，以至于Movable Type中无法显示缩略图。今天尝试安装了一下，先装了ImageMagick，然后再安装PerlMagic，但是装完后通过mt-check.cgi依然是ImageMagick没有安装，更严重的是mt.cgi竟然无法显示出登录界面了。google了一下，发现了一个solution。问题的主要原因是PerlMagic无法找到它所需要的ImageMagick libraries。follow其中的solution，问题就解决了。

Linode is a VPS service provider. I signed up Linode 360 one month ago and then upgraded to Linode 540. Until now, I am very happy with their services. I want to share some of my feelings here.

1. Easy sign-up and payment. It is said phone verification is required, but I didn't receive the call (maybe because I am in Australia), and about half an hour later, the account was activated.
2. Easy OS installation. If I mess up, just re-install in the Linode manager.
   
3. Guaranted resources. Linode 360 guarantees no more than 40 linodes on a host. Linode 540 gurantees no more than 30. The memory will not be shared with others, but the CPU time can be burstable. If the CPU slice of neighbors is idle, it will be shared with others. On my linode, the host load is always idle or low according to the graph. My host is Lighttpd based (has a personal website and a Movable Type blog). Current memory usage is about 50M. 
   
4. Data centers at different locations. It is pretty good for users at different areas. I chose the data center at Fremont CA. While SSH, it has a very little lag.
5. On the dashboard of Linode manager, the CPU usage, network usage and  I/O rate are presented with graphs, so the linode can be easily monitored.
6. Easy upgrade. If upgrade is required, just open a support ticket. The staff will response shortly. If the new host is in the same data center, the IP won't change.
7. Increased resources. The resources of each linode increase. Several days ago, the disk storage increases 20% because of 5 year anniversary.
   

Above is my feelings after one month use. Hope they are useful for you.

I just signed up a VPS plan from Linode. It is called Linode 360, which provides 360M memory, 10G storage, 200G transfer per month, and more importantly, an affordable price. Please remember, if you are in Australia, choose the data center at Fremont CA because it can give a decent ping value around 192 ms, which is better than most hosting companies in America. I plan to move my previous blog to this VPS server, but some necessary environments need to be built up first. This article is mainly about how to setup Lighttpd, MySQL, PHP, and Perl on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. They are necessary for Wordpress or Movable Type blogging systems.

Step 1: Create a new user in Ubuntu 8.04, with sudo privilege.
After Ubuntu 8.04 is deployed, we should create a new user with sudo privilege to perform most common tasks. If you have created one, you can ignore this step.

> adduser xxx

Edit the sudoer's file:

> visudo

Add "xxx ALL = (ALL) ALL" at the end of the file. Then re-login the system with xxx.

Step 2: Update the system and Install the basic tools.

> sudo aptitude update -y
/> sudo locale-gen en_GB.UTF-8
/> sudo /usr/sbin/update-locale LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
/> sudo aptitude install build-essential -y

Step 3: Install Lighttpd, MySQL, PHP

> sudo aptitude install lighttpd
/> sudo aptitude install mysql-server
/> sudo aptitude install php5-cli php5-cgi php5-mysql php5-xcache

Step 4: Configure php.ini and lighttpd.conf

> sudo vim /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini

Add "cgi.fix_pathinfo=1" at the end of file php.ini.

>sudo vim /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Find the codes like below and add  "mod_fastcig" and "mod_cgi" modules:

server.modules = (
"mod_access",
"mod_alias",
"mod_accesslog",
"mod_fastcgi",
"mod_rewrite",
"mod_cgi",
)

Add the following codes at the end of lighttpd.conf:

fastcgi.server = (".php" => ((
"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php5-cgi",
"socket" => "/tmp/php.socket"
)))
cgi.assign = (
".pl" => "/usr/bin/perl",
".cgi" => "/usr/bin/perl"
)

Step 5: Restart Lighttpd

>/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

After the steps above, the necessary environments have been built up. It is enough to install Wordpress or Movable Type. 

今天早晨起来登录Bluehost，发现又升级了，好几个unlimitied。真的很想知道那些用到几百G空间的网站是怎么用的。