What would be involved in administering a rackshack dedicated server? How much time, How much knowledge. I am interested in the Pentium© III 1GHZ - 512 RAM - 2-40GB Hard Drives - 300GB Monthly Transfer - plan that they currently have. All comments and suggestions welcome.

I just bought that plan about an hour ago. Better hurry before I buy them all!

:D

Just kidding, but I did get one. It's HUGE. One drive is a 40 gig empty partition mounted on /home2. I'm going to use it for backups (along with offdrive copies) and set the thing up for the ext3 file system (journaling).

Get one. Then we can race.

Seriously, it depends on what you want to do with it and how far you want to go. You could "administer" the thing as a full time job if the circumstances warranted it. Go to the bookstore and buy the Dummies Guide to Linux and the RedHat 7 weekend crash course and perhaps swing by cheapbytes.com and see if you can snag "Linux Volume 1: ac to zcat". You're a bright guy, you'll soak it up like a sponge. Besides, it has Plesk and if you can run a Cobalt or stir coffee then you're in.

It's an odd question but I would presume the same as any other dedicated server. A good book on linux and lots of time to keep an eye on things...

Linux tends to run pretty well on it's own, and doesn't do too much it shouldn't. If you're running it as a shared environment most questions will be control panel related. Ideally there's very little you should need to do the operating system at all beyond making sure everything's up to date.

Greg Moore

So it would be pretty easy with minimal knowledge?
I will take your advice on the dummies book though.

There are a lot of good people at RackShack in the forums that are starting to really administrate their new Linux servers. I think RackShack is seeing this and are responsive to it. It would be a wonderful time to get one, while quite a few are starting together, and learn something.

We all have to be careful at the command line, so don't sweat it. I installed a new kernel today, amongst many other modifications, and I'm going to give my RH 7.1 install the ext3 filesystem like 7.2 has. I have a lot of things I want to do. No Php, no my_sql. Don't use 'em, don't want them on the drive to fatten up my backups. I like Perl, Java, and XML and I'm trying out a new CMS. I don't use Plesk, so that went as well. You can call your own shots too.

Get some books. Install RH on a partition on your local machine or install another small drive and put it on there and dual boot the machine if you can. Boot Linux from a floppy so you don't mess with your boot sector until you're comfortable. That way you can play with it and if you break it no biggie... just reinstall. It will make you more relaxed too.

I think you are going to enjoy it and learn something from it. I do, every day. You're not going to find a better deal than RackShack either. 1Ghz 512K Intel PIII with 2 40 gig platters and 300 GB a month traffic.. for a hundred bucks. I know I'm not ever going to use a sliver of that, but I'm doing what I like and you can too.

Go fo it while they still have the 2 40 gig drives. The next shipment will have 2 20 gig drives for the same price...

I really want to, but I'm afraid I might messup the server or something if I do something wrong. I cannot afford for the server to be down, for long periods of times.

Get one and use Plesk.

If you mess it up they do one free OS reinstall. Being afraid just isn't any fun, is it?

:)

I don't see how anyone could mess up Plesk. And the server rocks.

I don't see how I could mess it up either, but what if?
Or what if I got attacked with a virus?

Don't be so afraid.

A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but one.

It's really quite fun. I could spend all day in 'what if land', but the pay is lousy and you work a lot of free overtime.

I think it is ok to be cautious. Afterall , it is hard earn money.

However, the answer to your question depends on what you want to do with the server. For example, I myself have a dedicated server(not in RS, but servers are all the same), and I haven't touched it in two months(the hosts is still charging me $100 a month), in that sense, it takes zero knowledge on my part.

If you plan to resell webhosting, with plesk, it still should not be difficult, but you should read some book and get yourself familarized with administrating a server.

As the thing you want to do with the server gets more high-end, you need more knowledge.

Peter

On a slightly different note we have a Raq4i with Rackshack and the speed is and service is great. About 6 months ago we upgrade our Linux Kernal and unfortunately this was not supported by the RaQ4i software and teh machien went into meltdown and Linux eventually had to be re-installed after we had tried everything. Rackshack did nothing wrong but RaQ had to tested there machine/software with the particular combination we tried.

Since then life at Rackshack has been fine! Now we where thinking of upgrading to a more powerful machine, either a P3 or a Duron with Plesk or Ensim WEBppliance LS 3.0 administration system. Does anyone know of any compatibility issues with running a Java Application server, such as JBoss and this type of administration software? Has anyone had experiences installing Java2EE, mySQL or similar, an application server and running CPU intensive EJB and JavaBean components while offering a little webhosting on the side to others on the same machine?

I'm also still learning to manage my Linux server and found this site pretty damn useful for me:
http://frf.hypermart.net/linux-newbie/

Well, if you haven't the confidence to start taking paid hosting on the server, then take it and muck about with it for a couple of months first. That's what I did with mine. Host some sites for free for friends for a month or two. Or offer free hosting to a select few sites in return for in-kind support such as site design or banner ads, etc for when you do launch a paid hosting service. I am assuming here that is what you want the server for?

Believe me, there are plenty of "hosts" out there who are taking peoples' money who don't have a clue about how to administer their server ;)

Don't forget to add www.linuxdoc.org to your bookmarks.

Guess the biggest worry is security.. How secure are they when RS sells them?