Software roundup: server edition
As you may know, I spent like all of October migrating stuff from my dying Layered Tech server onto a handful of Linodes.
Here's what they're running. All of them are using Ubuntu.
koiru.veekun.com: System stuff.
IRC daemon: InspIRCd
I used to run Unreal. It was, you know, okay. But it's stagnated a bit, and its (already small) dev team seems to be split between slowly developing the existing codebase and more-slowly rewriting it from scratch. That's some crap, so I went a-huntin' for a replacement and quite enjoyed the look of inspircd. Everything in it is pluggable, and it comes with quite an entertaining assortment of default modules. Enjoying so far.
IRC services: atheme
I actually switched on accident. I thought I'd been using IRCservices before, which has been abandoned, and so I went looking for a good alternative and the inspircd docs recommended atheme. I only found out I'd actually been using anope when I went to import everything. Whoopsie. Anyway, uh, as services go they're... services, what can I say? They have some nice extras, but I use them so little that I can't think of any to name at the moment. The one major difference from the usual bunch is that channel access levels are role-based rather than level-based, which is even more incomprehensible to most people. But the defaults should generally be fine.
Version control system: git
git is just absolutely fantastic and I adore it. Thusfar it's been able to do nearly anything I've wanted and works in a pretty transparent way. The terminal interface is amazing.
I've got gitosis for access control, and gitweb for http perusal.
Web server: nginx
I decided abruptly to switch to nginx after migrating, and haven't regretted it. Most of the stuff you'd expect from a Web server is pretty simple to do, and it takes a very UNIXy approach in that anything else can just be proxied.
Only sore spots are:
- Can't do CGI. You'll need to run a persistent wrapper around a CGI script, then proxy to that. It's also possible to proxy to a generic CGI server that will execute whatever's asked of it.
- Uses its own mime-type list instead of the system one; I had a few issues with veekun because not-so-obscure extensions like .ogg weren't in the default list.
Mail server: postfix + dovecot
I still feel like I'm flailing wildly whenever I set up postfix, but it works well and it's not too hard to understand now that they're done with whatever documentation migration I stumbled upon.
Dovecot, uh, does IMAP? I haven't exactly explored the depths of possibility here.
VoIP: Mumble
Runs well on Linux, is apparently crazy fast, has some cool admin stuff, and is built all around SSL certs. 'Tis nice.
Roguelike launcher: dgamelaunch (NetHack, Crawl, ADOM)
This was a total bitch to set up, but it sort of works. I also have a crappy high-score-browser site and an IRC bot that reports game endings.
Monitoring: munin
This is rather more useful now that I have multiple machines. Helpful for diagnosing horrible problems and when they started, and gives me pretty graphs to look at the rest of the time.
Bug tracker: Redmine
This thing is very VERY enterprisey, but it's the closest I found to what I wanted (which was pretty much Trac for multiple projects). I had to hack it up a bit to make OpenID work, and its Railsy guts are a mystery to me, but I can generally leave it on its own with no problems. Fucking memory hog, though, which is funny for something running on a server called Thin.
diguda.veekun.com: Minecraft server.
Timewaster: Minecraft
I've only actually played on this server for a total of half an hour since throwing it up, and I have no idea whether it still works. But a few people had been heckling me, so I gave it its own little machine.
The thing thrashes after being up for a few days, because it ONLY has half a gig of RAM to itself. Fucking Java, man.
rankurusu.veekun.com: Runs veekun.com.
Web stats: awstats
This thing is so dated but I can't find anything better. :( Someone save me from this hell. I made the mistake of looking at the source, once; it's just a single Perl script, ten billion lines long.
Database: PostgreSQL
I am in love. Why are you still using MySQL? Knock that the fuck off.
I think that's all of interest. I've eliminated every trace of Apache, MySQL, and PHP, so I guess now I can only say I do L development.
Here's what they're running. All of them are using Ubuntu.
koiru.veekun.com: System stuff.
IRC daemon: InspIRCd
I used to run Unreal. It was, you know, okay. But it's stagnated a bit, and its (already small) dev team seems to be split between slowly developing the existing codebase and more-slowly rewriting it from scratch. That's some crap, so I went a-huntin' for a replacement and quite enjoyed the look of inspircd. Everything in it is pluggable, and it comes with quite an entertaining assortment of default modules. Enjoying so far.
IRC services: atheme
I actually switched on accident. I thought I'd been using IRCservices before, which has been abandoned, and so I went looking for a good alternative and the inspircd docs recommended atheme. I only found out I'd actually been using anope when I went to import everything. Whoopsie. Anyway, uh, as services go they're... services, what can I say? They have some nice extras, but I use them so little that I can't think of any to name at the moment. The one major difference from the usual bunch is that channel access levels are role-based rather than level-based, which is even more incomprehensible to most people. But the defaults should generally be fine.
Version control system: git
git is just absolutely fantastic and I adore it. Thusfar it's been able to do nearly anything I've wanted and works in a pretty transparent way. The terminal interface is amazing.
I've got gitosis for access control, and gitweb for http perusal.
Web server: nginx
I decided abruptly to switch to nginx after migrating, and haven't regretted it. Most of the stuff you'd expect from a Web server is pretty simple to do, and it takes a very UNIXy approach in that anything else can just be proxied.
Only sore spots are:
- Can't do CGI. You'll need to run a persistent wrapper around a CGI script, then proxy to that. It's also possible to proxy to a generic CGI server that will execute whatever's asked of it.
- Uses its own mime-type list instead of the system one; I had a few issues with veekun because not-so-obscure extensions like .ogg weren't in the default list.
Mail server: postfix + dovecot
I still feel like I'm flailing wildly whenever I set up postfix, but it works well and it's not too hard to understand now that they're done with whatever documentation migration I stumbled upon.
Dovecot, uh, does IMAP? I haven't exactly explored the depths of possibility here.
VoIP: Mumble
Runs well on Linux, is apparently crazy fast, has some cool admin stuff, and is built all around SSL certs. 'Tis nice.
Roguelike launcher: dgamelaunch (NetHack, Crawl, ADOM)
This was a total bitch to set up, but it sort of works. I also have a crappy high-score-browser site and an IRC bot that reports game endings.
Monitoring: munin
This is rather more useful now that I have multiple machines. Helpful for diagnosing horrible problems and when they started, and gives me pretty graphs to look at the rest of the time.
Bug tracker: Redmine
This thing is very VERY enterprisey, but it's the closest I found to what I wanted (which was pretty much Trac for multiple projects). I had to hack it up a bit to make OpenID work, and its Railsy guts are a mystery to me, but I can generally leave it on its own with no problems. Fucking memory hog, though, which is funny for something running on a server called Thin.
diguda.veekun.com: Minecraft server.
Timewaster: Minecraft
I've only actually played on this server for a total of half an hour since throwing it up, and I have no idea whether it still works. But a few people had been heckling me, so I gave it its own little machine.
The thing thrashes after being up for a few days, because it ONLY has half a gig of RAM to itself. Fucking Java, man.
rankurusu.veekun.com: Runs veekun.com.
Web stats: awstats
This thing is so dated but I can't find anything better. :( Someone save me from this hell. I made the mistake of looking at the source, once; it's just a single Perl script, ten billion lines long.
Database: PostgreSQL
I am in love. Why are you still using MySQL? Knock that the fuck off.
I think that's all of interest. I've eliminated every trace of Apache, MySQL, and PHP, so I guess now I can only say I do L development.