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Non-Red Hat Linux Hosting? 64

Posted by Cliff from the for-those-who-prefer-spirals dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "Well, my web host is down again, so I thought I'd ask the Slashdot faithful if they can recommend any GNU/Linux based hosting sites (preferably virtual servers) running distributions besides Red Hat. I know this has been covered in the past, but it seems everyone uses Red Hat, and I'm a Debian type person. Anyone out there have a host they can recommend?"
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Non-Red Hat Linux Hosting? More

Non-Red Hat Linux Hosting?

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  • Does it really matter? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OutRigged ( 573843 ) <rage@o u t r i g g e d . com> on Saturday September 21, 2002 @03:49AM (#4302232) Homepage
    I know there are differences between the two distros, but are there any differences that warrant a preference over one or the other? Is Debian faster performance wise, compared to Redhat?

    Or is this a whole matter of personal preference?
    • I was going to ask the same thing. From a shared hosting point of view, it doesn't really matter too much. IMHO, of course. :) You won't have root access to a shared hosting server, so all you really need the space for is for storing content and parsing scripts. And either distribution will do those things.

      Unless of course he's referring to dedicated hosting, in which case he should be able to choose his own distribution.
      • If you read the post you can see that he is mainly talking about virtual servers.
      • Of course it matters, OS determines what kind of things you can do on your page. The distribution and testing that goes into the distribution determines how stable it will be, as far as I can see Debian has lot more stringent guidelines for stability then Red Hat, compare version numbers in Debian 3.0 to Red Hat 7.3, Red Hat contains alot newer code, which means generally more unstable.Personally, I provide my clients with OpenBSD when they do not have a preference.

      • Re:Does it really matter? (Score:4, Informative)

        by m0rph3us0 ( 549631 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:50AM (#4302401)
        Heh, shared hosting servers are a cess pool of insecurity generally, infact most admins fail to recognize that in a shared hosting environment local exploits become remote exploits because lots of users put plainly dumb scripts on a server. Thus, admins fail to patch local security problems, and voila people have root.
    • Its just shalowness. He dosnt want to be associated with redhat users, because its not 'cool' enough for him. In reality, nothing a user hosts would notice a difference between distros. Thats why POSIX standards were made -- So all applications can follow them and not worry about enviroment. The only major relevant difference would be apache configs, but I strongly doubt a professional hosting company would be using a default apache install.
      Instead, he should look at more important things like price and speed. BSDLink.net (main page currently down) offers unlmited bandwidth plans for as low as $3 a month, and thats on a 100mbit line. I dont think anyones HTML cares if its being served off a FreeBSD box, a RedHat box, or a Debian box.
      • Instead, he should look at more important things like price and speed. BSDLink.net (main page currently down) offers unlmited bandwidth
        So they're cheap and fast, but can't keep their own site up? There's a ringing endorsement.

    • Yes it does. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by oli_freyr ( 105995 )
      We got bit in the behind a few weeks ago. Red Hat decided that it was a good idea to close a recent security hole in PHP by upgrading the PHP packages in 7.2 from 4.0.6 -> 4.1.2.
      The only problem was that some of our customers were using custom modules for PHP. For them the upgrade was time consuming (costly) and happened later than necessary.

      Right now there is a memory leak in the PHP 4.1.2 packages from RH due to shared memory not being released, and the QA people have been letting it sit there for a whole month!! [redhat.com]
      The result will probably be that they introduce PHP 4.2.2 as a fix...

      I've been using Debian at home for 4 years now, and I think their security team does an excellent job! Especially wrt not upgrading a package version unless it is absolutely necessary. (Then they dropped the ball with SSH a few weeks ago. ;)

      The net result is that we are considering a move from RH to Debian so we will get better bugfix handling as well as better overall quality of the packages. If we need bleeding edge software we can in most cases fetch the source package from unstable and compile it for woody... (that's what i've done on my home workstation).

      <plug severity="shameless">
      You can visit our website at http://www.rackserv.com [rackserv.com].
      (Sorry, danish only since our target is the danish hosting market :-/)
      </plug>
      • I've been using Debian at home for 4 years now, and I think their security team does an excellent job! Especially wrt not upgrading a package version unless it is absolutely necessary. (Then they dropped the ball with SSH a few weeks ago. ;)

        Did I miss something? They backported changes on one problem, avoided a second problem by not having upgraded to the version with a new vulnerability like everyone else in favor of backporting a patch, then leapt to the newest version when the last hole appeared which was declared as majorly bad but (at that point) undisclosed.

        It seemed like the perfect set of maneuvers.

        • No, you didn't miss anything.

          I was referring to the "leap to the newest version" move. This newest version supposedly doesn't interact properly with PAM, which is used extensively in Debian.(Complete list of problems in the security advisory [debian.org].)
          The move was however justifiable due to the way this particular hole was (not properly) disclosed at the time. Since Woody was released a month after this security fix it wasn't actually the security team that made the decision, but the release manager and this version of ssh was the one originally released with Woody. Some searching on the mailing lists will probably turn up the reasoning behind this.

          I did actually get in trouble when I upgraded my home server to the latest version, but it wasn't due to PAM. Something went wrong during postinstall and the sshd user wasn't created. This user is needed for the new privilege separation feature and sshd wouldn't start without it. So, I had to go to the trouble of lugging a monitor and keyboard into the closet in order to solve the problem. A little annoying, but nothing serious, hence the smiley...
          That said, I haven't run into any problems with ssh after the upgrade but this is just my home setup, not the production machines.

    • ...unless you're an admin, especially if you're are poking at the package system.

      He probably just wants to have Debian to "have Debian".
      • He probably just wants to have Debian to "have Debian".

        Well from that standpoint, most of the people who want linux servers in general just want linux to have linux.. for just displaying html and running basic scripts, windows would work just as well.. if you are gonna pay for something, might as well find what you want..
  • Most of all the web hosting guys will install and give you whatever OS you want on a dedicated server. You can get one from http://www.rackspace.com

  • nfsn (Score:2, Informative)

    by Taral ( 16888 )
    www.nearlyfreespeech.net is always a good choice -- but I'm not sure whether or not they run Red Hat.

  • Not the distro (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mnordstr ( 472213 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @05:52AM (#4302402) Journal
    "Well, my web host is down again"

    It's not the distro that's failing, it's either the sysadmin or the network. (or perhaps the hardware)
    • It's not the distro that's failing, it's either the sysadmin or the network. (or perhaps the hardware)

      If he's purely talking about web hosting, the question doesn't seem to make much sense.

      For a dedicated server, I know that I'd prefer Debian, however. Because it's better? No.

      I've got several years wrapped up in Debian and FreeBSD. They're what I know, and what I trust myself most to secure and, more importantly, to administer remotely without botching and needing to go back to a tape or a CD reinstaller and a load of rsyncing. I think in this context, the question is quite valid.

    • "Well, my web host is down again"

      It's not the distro that's failing, it's either the sysadmin or the network. (or perhaps the hardware)

      Yes, but he's obviously in the market for a new host since his other one sucks, so he's trying to find one that is configured more to his liking.. I don't see anything that suggests that he thinks redhat is the reason it is down.. but the fact that it is down is the reason he is looking for a new one..

  • Red Hat versus Debian? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @06:09AM (#4302419) Journal
    I always make sure to choose my web hosts based on hair or eye color of the sys admin. I don't like people with the letter 'D' in their name. Also, the shirt style is a big deal to me.

    I can tell that you are a discerning person, just like me.

  • My recommendation (Score:2, Informative)

    by Panoramix ( 31263 )

    I can recommend "Dreamhost [dreamhost.com]". I had a couple of websites with them for almost 3 years, until very recently (moved the sites to my own servers). They are not the cheapest, I think, but they have fast pipes and very stable servers. In all that time I only remember one long downtime, of some hours, because of a hardware failure (when they fixed it and reported/apologized for it, they included a picture of the faulty component --just geeky enough). They also have a decent account administration web system, and the support guys actually have blood flowing through their brains. And yes, they're a Debian shop.

    Having said that, the distro probably doesn't matter if you're not the admin. Yes, choosing Debian over RH may speak well about their skill and knowledge... but to be completely honest, I didn't notice it was Debian until a year or so.

    Hope this helps.

  • It's all about the apt-get MAN! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vodak ( 119225 ) on Saturday September 21, 2002 @06:51AM (#4302454)
    It could very well be your web hosting company's system administrators not doing their job. It could be some little script kiddie playing bad games on your hosting company. It could even be your ISP that won't let you connect to your host. All of these things have nothing to do with it being Redhat or not.

    Why choose Debian over Redhat? does it give you some nifty little feature? Hell yeah. apt-get r0x. Should your hosting company install Debian over Redhat simply because it has apt-get? HELL NO
    • Assuming the guy isn't colo'ing and just getting a virtual host...
      He can't really use apt-get anyway.

      Pretty stupid "Ask Slashdot", as usual.
    • You can run apt get on distros which use standard Linux (RPM) packages too. And you can use up2date to do the same thing - download apps and any dependencies necessary to install them on your system. And redhat-config-packages in RH 8.0 provides a cute interface for it all :).

  • Recommendation (Score:2, Informative)

    by headshrinker ( 37311 )
    A lot of friends use Rhydio [rhydio.com] which is a UK-based company and only have good things to say about them. They run Slackware.
  • blackcatnetworks [blackcatnetworks.co.uk] run debian [blackcatnetworks.co.uk].
  • did you chack google? a little ways down searching on debian hosting [google.com] i see a link to tummy.com and their debian hosting [tummy.com]. add in the word "web" and the search [google.com] seems to have even more on offer.
  • I don't know what criteria you're looking for, but Dreamhost.com has been great for me.

    They're running Debian on all of their servers and their web administration panel is quite powerful.

    They've had a few problems lately, but I believe they're mostly growing pains and they've handled them *very* well.
  • Ontariotek [ontariotek.net] uses Debian, and their tech staff is competent and helpful.

    They are based in Toronto, Ontario, but they're happy to take your yankee dollars.

    Their accounting staff seemed to have a little trouble figuring out that I no longer wanted to be the contact, nor to be billed for a client's website, but I suppose that it's my fault for failing to make it simple for them.

  • Sigh (Score:1)

    by Evro ( 18923 )
    Well, I submitted the following to Ask Slashdot and it was rejected, so I guess I will ask here. With all the stupid-assed, inane questions that frequently get asked of Slashdot I thought mine would be a shoe-in, as it's an actual real-world issue whose answer is not available in the first ten lines of a Google search, but I guess the retardedness factor was too low in my post. Can anyone either a) help with the questions below, or b) help me make the question stupid enough that Slashdot will approve it?

    Ask Slashdot: Using Webmail for a Company's Main Email Client?
    Posted by SmartSlashdotEditor on 9:01 Saturday 21 September 2002
    from the slashdot-too-stupid-to-really-post-this dept.
    Evro [slashdot.org] writes: "I work for a small company and this week I finished setting up the IMAP server [inter7.com] that is expected to replace our Exchange 5.5 system. I had really high hopes for the new system, but it seems to be acting very quirky. Everyone wants to continue using Outlook 2000 as the mail client, and it gives us nothing but problems when trying to use imap-ssl - users can check their mail, then 5 minutes later it says they can't open messages that are already in their inbox; even regular IMAP gives problems from time to time. Plus there's the annoyance of Outlook not saving sent mail to the server's Sent folder. I personally use Mozilla mail and it works pretty well, but I don't think these people are quite ready for Mozilla's quirks yet, though the fact that Mozilla works as well as it does is what leads me to believe the problem is with the clients rather than the server. I've set up Squirrel Mail [squirrelmail.org] as a webmail interface, and that's been received much better than Outlook, Outlook Express, or Eudora (which worked well technically, but nobody liked the interface) as mail clients. Squirrel Mail (over https) seems to do everything I would expect a mail client to do, does it pretty well, and is extremely easy to use and set up. My question is, has anyone setup a mail system for their (or any) company in which the main interface is a webmail client such as Squirrel Mail? If so, what problems have you encountered, and/or what pitfalls can you foresee?"

    • ...if a not hugely insightful one

      I think there are some major concerns that could come up.

      Most mail clients allow for local archiving, how do you implement this? If not are you ready for your users expenentially increasing mail storage needs?

      Does your web mail interface work offline? A 'real' client can usually work & offer some access to mail if the netork goes down - can yours? Do you have laptop users who are not always connected?

      Have you tested your client on every concievable browser? point releases etc? - peoples browsers get updated incredibly often.

      Does it have SSL?

      How fast is it under heavy load? - remember you're essentially going to be running a fairly busy web server.

      Can you really really only get to your web server from your LAN?

      And some more, I'm not saying don't do it, just think carefully and do a partial role-out for a while.
      • I wrote a big long reply to this, but closed the browser before posting it. Sigh again.
        • Local archiving: no, never came up, but something I'll have to consider.
        • Working offline: no, but the benefits of not being bound to the exchange server in our office outweighed the possibility of the network going down.
        • We have tested Netscape, IE, Mozilla and Opera, though only 2 or 3 versions of each. It's not like the interface is using advanced dhtml or javascript... I would imagine that good old html renders pretty similarly across browsers?
        • It does use SSL.
        • It's quite fast, though since we have only 5 users it's hard to test "heavy load."
        • It is publicly accessible, though you need a login and password to check mail, of course. Rather than a problem, this was seen as a major benefit as it allows users to check mail from home (yes, I know it is possible with imap clients, but these people are not really the configure-your-own-mail-client types).
        Thanks for the tips, and thanks for replying. We're going to be evaluating the situation this week. As I said, the other users are currently running Outlook 2000 which has horrible imap and imap-ssl support. If Outlook doesn't work for them then I guess we'll try Mozilla or Netscape mail next, and then if they still don't like that, we'll look at using webmail as the primary.
  • 34sp.com [34sp.com] is the host that I use. Their servers are FreeBSD, are based in London and they only charge £15 per year (~ 21USD)


    I don't know how they do it, but they do. The support is great, with an IRC channel as well as forum based FAQ's etc.


    I don't have any interest in this company.

  • some years ago i saw an ad for dreamhost [dreamhost.com] here ... back in the pre-osdn days of slashdot. i've used them since and been pleased with the experience. prices are good, service is good, and they run debian on all their servers. i've run a few mid-traffic sites there for a few years, as have a few friends - and downtime has been truly insignificant (and I measure it). as well, i've never had to ask them to install an apache module or perl lib - as they always have their servers well stocked with recent, well-patched libs.

    and no, i don't work for them or anything like that.

  • www.1hourhosting.com uses FreeBSD. They are rock solid!
  • Check http://www.debian.org/partners/ [debian.org].

    Chances are, one of the sponsors there (specifically Brainfood, which provides machines and hosting) uses Debian on their servers.

    Might be worth sending them an email and seeing what they say.

    -Vic
  • With virtual-dedicated servers you have multiple server environments running on the same physical hardware. From your perspective it looks just like you have your own server (root password, install whatever you like) but it is cheaper because you are sharing the hardware.

    Does anyone have experience/recommendations with this sort of service? I saw a discussion about one that sounded good on kuro5hin.org a while back but the only one I could find now is rosehosting.com [rosehosting.com] - same idea but different company (I think).
  • Last year when I was getting frustrated with my new webhost [aletiahosting.com], I had this idea to create a webhosting co-op. Basically, a group of people would get together and share the cost of a dedicated server. No profits would be made on the hosting. Members could vote on things like how to run the server, etc. It never got past the idea stage because of some of the implementation challenges and no one I mentioned it to seemed to think much of the idea but I still think it could be pretty cool.

    Has anyone tried anything like that? Have any opinions on the idea?
  • Sorry for the slightly off-topic posts...

    I have become frustrated with my current domain/dns situation and need something new. What I would really like is domain name registration and DNS hosting for <= $15/year. Something reliable would be nice.

    Any suggestions in general or comments on, pairNIC.com [pairnic.com], ZoneEdit.com [zoneedit.com], MyDomain.com [mydomain.com], or EveryDNS.net [everydns.net]?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I use Seagull Networks [seagull.net] for all my sites. I recommend them highly.

    I've been with them for something like five years. I always get prompt personal customer service for the rare issue that ever comes up.

    They support SSH login. I upload my web pages with SCP. You can use SSH tunnelling to get your pop mail, or log into a shell via ssh and use elm or pine.

    There is a full suite of development tools online, and you can run CGI's that you write yourself.

  • Dreamhost.com runs on all Debian, and they are CHEAP, with a nice web-interface, and they even give you ssh shells :) No, I don't work for them, I'm just a long-time, happy customer.

  • Hosting (Score:2)

    by Sturm ( 914 )
    Check out Mikro Data [mikro-data.net]
  • I think name2host has the cheapest hosting around. Their servers run FreeBSD and for $35 a year (yes a year) and you get PHP4 & MySQL accounts along with a domain name. (If you sign up please put that expugno recommended you!)
  • The hoster I work for runs its systems on Linux from Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org]. In our opinion the most Linux distro's are much too bloated with all kind of stuff we never need on our servers. LFS gives us the possibility to do things exactly the way we want them to. Oh, we also run the Dutch LFS mirror :).
  • Another Debian moron

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