I've decided to sell the code which runs bsdwebhosting (http://www.bsdwebhosting.net). This consists of account management, payment processing (via paypal), billing (based on usage), a hacked mrtg setup, plus lots of back-end code and patches to FreeBSD to run everything. Essentially this code plus FreeBSD can run everything apart from user support.

If anyone is interested, send me a PM or email; if you have any questions which you think other people might also have, post them here.

I'm planning on pricing this at $300.

Do you have a demo?

Originally posted by Asia
Do you have a demo?
bsdwebhosting (http://www.bsdwebhosting.net) ;)

I should have said above as well that I'm willing to give people the code to try out for up to 30 days (but of course that only helps you if you have a server available).

Will this script/code working only on FreeBSD?

Originally posted by Asia
Will this script/code working only on FreeBSD?

As a whole, yes. Some parts would work on other systems -- for example, the patches to sshd should apply cleanly to any system running the same version of OpenSSH, the qmail setup should work anywhere, et cetera. But stuff like automatically creating new users and groups would certainly need rewriting for any non-BSD system. You would also have to find the appropriate applications (apache, qmail, etc.) elsewhere -- the Makefile from my code installs all the necessary applications out of the FreeBSD ports collection.

Cperciva,

'hah, we meet again!' :D

I'm glad you posted your URL because if gave me the opportunity to try and browse it where I am right now, this being a big corporation using WebSense for their proxy filtering.

Turns out that your site is filtered out, cause: Sexuality. Since WebSense provide their clients a constantly updated list of sites, I guess all of their customers are denied access to your site.

This is the second time I notice this happening with a hosting company and when the other company complained to WebSense they were assured they would be removed from the filter.

Regards,
-Chris.

How secure is it?
What is the setup I need for the server?
Does it autoupdate?

Is it easy to install?
Is it controlled via a web interface?
What control do clients have over their accounts?

Is it like Cpanelish - ie Admin section where I can add accounts, it sets up DNS entries etc, plus a client section for admining MySQL/Email etc

--James

Originally posted by WildWayz
How secure is it?
I'm not sure how to answer this except that I don't know of any security holes (and I have looked). If you find one I'll certainly fix it ASAP.

What is the setup I need for the server?
The code is written to install onto a standard FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE install. (Actually any recent FreeBSD release should work, since the first step in the install is to update the system to 4.4).

Does it autoupdate?
There isn't any support builtin for the code to update itself, but I've included code to update FreeBSD while keeping the local system patches (ie, cvsup and then re-apply the patches).

Is it easy to install?
Yes. Apart from some system stuff (eg, FreeBSD make world) for which instructions are provided, everything can be done by extracting the source, editing a perl file to set some options, and then `make update install cleanup`. The entire process can take anywhere from 2 to 12 hours depending upon the system and network connection; almost all of this time is spent downloading FreeBSD source and rebuilding FreeBSD.

Is it controlled via a web interface?
What control do clients have over their accounts?
Is it like Cpanelish - ie Admin section where I can add accounts, it sets up DNS entries etc, plus a client section for admining MySQL/Email etc


There is a web interface for customers, from which they can create/delete sites, users, and email aliases, set disk quotas, enable/disable/download access logs for their sites, and view their account balance and usage statistics. There isn't any admin section, mostly because it is unnecessary -- accounts are created automatically once a user signs up via the website and sends in their first payment via paypal, and after that the user can manage things themselves.

Note that the control panel is not intended to be extensive; it exists for the purpose of allowing customers to access things which they cannot access via ssh. Things like reading email, setting crontabs, or creating mailing lists are not included, since those can be done via ssh.

The goal of this code is to provide a webhosting system which more or less runs itself with minimal administrative intervention; while answering support queries can unfortunately not easily be automated, that should be more or less the only task necessary on the part of an administrator.

We had this same problem on one of our server never our main site but WebSense did not pick up we were running the server IPLess and it listed all the sites on that one IP. That may be the problem with cperciva's site as well not sure. But i tell you want i never want to have to call WebSense again what a joke of a co. and a pain in the but software.
Took over 10 call and talking to about 12 of there tech guys till one said do you mean this is is a IPless site well it should not have the IP listed then and i was telling them this from the start and have never used or seen there software and i plan not to us it. LOL