All posts by DH

VPS 9 Dallas to the rescue!

Uncategorized

Following the change of IP and upgrade to KVM, my lovely VPS 9 Phoenix was not the same VPS any longer.  It was still reasonably OK, but not like it used to be.  Took me hours and hours to finally get an OS that would work seamlessly with the VPS, an older version of CentOS 6.5.  For the more up to date (not that up to date any longer) CentOS 7.0, SELinux has to be disabled and for me that was a step in the wrong direction.

Anyway, about a few weeks ago when I had to do some testing on a spare VPS 9 Dallas, I found a total difference in performance, even better than my VPS 9 Phoenix before the upgrade.  Like light and day almost.  I then managed to swop VPS 9 Phoenix for Dallas, and it’s almost as though I’ve got my old VPS 9 back again.  In retrospect I had a wonderful experience with VPS 9 Phoenix on SolusVM 6 from April 2018 to October 2019. The KVM Lite experience between November 2019 and March 2020 was not bad, but performance of the VPS not nearly as brilliant as it had been before. Looks like I’m finally getting back on the happy track with VPS 9 Dallas in April 2020.

A history of my struggles with VPS 9 Phoenix after the upgrade to KVM, has been recorded in a few posts at post4vps.com.  It ended finally in comparing Benchmark tests of the two VPSs and the test results speak for themselves:

VPS 9 Phoenix

System Info
———–
Processor       : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v3 @ 2.40GHz
CPU Cores       : 2
Frequency       : 2399.996 MHz
Memory          : 7870 MB
Swap            : buffers/cache: MB
Uptime          : 86 days, 11:25,

Speedtest (IPv4 only)
———————
Your public IPv4 is 50.2.xx.xx

Location                Provider        Speed
CDN                     Cachefly        66.1MB/s

Lenoir, NC, US          Dacentec        28.5MB/s
Dallas, TX, US          Softlayer       43.1MB/s
Seattle, WA, US         Softlayer       34.7MB/s
San Jose, CA, US        Softlayer       52.8MB/s
Washington, DC, US      Leaseweb        30.1MB/s

Tokyo, Japan            Linode          15.7MB/s
Singapore               Softlayer       7.65MB/s
Taiwan                  Hinet           7.25MB/s

Rotterdam, Netherlands  id3.net         14.7MB/s
Haarlem, Netherlands    Leaseweb        10.5MB/s

Disk Speed
———-
I/O (1st run)   : 129 MB/s
I/O (2nd run)   : 108 MB/s
I/O (3rd run)   : 87.6 MB/s
Average I/O     : 108 MB/s or .10 GB/s

Speed Test by Ookla

VPS 9 Dallas

System Info
———–
Processor       : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2670 v2 @ 2.50GHz
CPU Cores       : 2
Frequency       : 2499.998 MHz
Memory          : 7870 MB
Swap            : buffers/cache: MB
Uptime          : 2:48,

Speedtest (IPv4 only)
———————
Your public IPv4 is 23.94.xx.xx

Location                Provider        Speed
CDN                     Cachefly        81.3MB/s

Lenoir, NC, US          Dacentec        53.6MB/s
Dallas, TX, US          Softlayer       57.4MB/s
Seattle, WA, US         Softlayer       30.2MB/s
San Jose, CA, US        Softlayer       33.9MB/s
Washington, DC, US      Leaseweb        25.4MB/s

Tokyo, Japan            Linode          10.2MB/s
Singapore               Softlayer       6.91MB/s
Taiwan                  Hinet           6.20MB/s

Rotterdam, Netherlands  id3.net         27.2MB/s
Haarlem, Netherlands    Leaseweb        80.6MB/s

Disk Speed
———-
I/O (1st run)   : 522 MB/s
I/O (2nd run)   : 473 MB/s
I/O (3rd run)   : 612 MB/s
Average I/O     : 535 MB/s or .53 GB/s

Speed Test by Ookla

 

Upgrade horror show!

Post4VPS, Virmach, VPS 9, WordPress

This story started in June 2019 when Hidden Refuge at post4vps.com informed us of an expiry date for OpenVZ 6 that will affect all of our 7 post4vps VPS 9s as they were on OpenVZ 6:

https://post4vps.com/Thread-The-End-of-OpenVZ-6-Post4VPS-VPSs

March on to September the first upgrades started with VPS 9 Seattle and Chicago. The two upgrades went through effortlessly. And the KVM upgraded VPSs were as great as they had been before without any problems.

Unfortunately everything went a little downhill after that with all of the other VPSs probably being upgraded post haste against a looming deadline. Mine was the very last VPS to be upgraded. First great disappointment is that for some or other reason Virmach needed to change the IP of my VPS, which they maintain is a Phoenix IP, but it’s actually a German IP that has been networked to behave as a Phoenix IP, result of which is my ISP in South Africa has to do a double take to work with the IP from before. Latency Ping has shot up from 36 previously to a whopping 147. Speed is also significantly less.

This is what the speed looked like from South Africa to Phoenix with the old Phoenix IP:

And this is what the speed looks like with the new German IP through Phoenix:

Next issue was with the OS. We had already found issues with the other VPS 9s with being unable to work with Ubuntu. So I was trying to work with CentOS 7.0. I was completely unable to change my port number as I successfully had done before. With first attempts it worked the first time round, but somehow SSH got broken with the second attempt. I then read somewhere that Virmach discouraged the use of CentOS 7.0 for protected IPs, and then wondered whether my new IP was in that category. I then changed to CentOS 6.5, being the only other available OS closest to 7.0. Virmach hasn’t got CentOS 8 available yet. I tried only once to change the port number, and had to give up on this as it wouldn’t work. Then went ahead to install a panel together with a WordPress site from the command line, and the current Website was the result. All of WordPress worked fine, including using the All-in-one WP Migration tool to migrate my previous Website. For the first time since I had to take it down when the upgrade started early in November.

Verdict. For me I’m happy I can still use VPS 9. But it doesn’t feel like an upgrade to me. Hopefully as time moves along Virmach can try to improve on the VPSs.

Name Server Exploits?

VPS Security

A couple of months ago I had a serious issue with a new VPS at a different host, when my IP was flagged as having a Website on it that is attacking other Websites.  My Website was a simple WordPress site.  I had taken occupation of the VPS and new IP in April, and the exploit was apparently noticed in July by Anti-Spam bots.  I was away at the time and only picked up on the event three weeks after, when my VPS had already been suspended.

And now the interesting detail.  When I protested quite loudly, and my host checked my VPS, there was nothing on my VPS!  They reckoned I had something that was part of my VPS – maybe a plugin – that had automatically taken care of the problem.

NOT SO!

So when I discovered my VPS suspended, once it was unsuspended I immediately reloaded the OS and powered the VPS down.  I wanted to check up what was happening.  After three days of shut down I checked up on the IP at places like DNS inspect.  Then discovered four silly named Websites with my VPS IP.  Like there is no mention of my previous Website with the IP or connection.  But the Internet at large came back with listing four Websites as being on the VPS, without the VPS or IP being live.

The four domains were with Namecheap, and obviously had name servers pointing to my IP.  One of the domains were the one that was accused of attacking other domains.

So my own theory, for what it is worth.  Domain Registrars like Namecheap need to be more strict in scrutinizing name servers.  I picked up on at least four DUDD domains (Websites come up with blank pages), with name servers that point to an IP that doesn’t belong to them.

New Continent!

Post4VPS

So now I’m back home in Canada after many years absence, struggling struggles and trying to find a job.

Arrived on 1st of May, and for the first time since then have been able to check through my VPSs and blogs, including dhsites.

First of all – here are the differences in speed between South Africa and Canada:

This was taken in Canada today:

And South Africa in April:

S

Quite improved, although it’s the equivalent of a comparison of very fast with even faster.  Add to this consistent above average reliability, overall performance and speed.  This is a VPS that stands out completely.

Post4VPS VPS 16 Review

Post4VPS, Reviews, VPS 16

Introduction
When Jordy (F7N) presented post4vps.com with a second VPS – VPS 16, we were overjoyed, particularly since the VPS has a KVM configuration, and promised to be much faster than VPS 15.  You can have a look at my review of VPS 15 that was written earlier in the month.  VPS 15, although with generous specs, has an OpenVZ configuration and only 100 Mbps connection speed.  Speed is not really bad though, and since the RAM, traffic and disk space are generous VPS 15 should be OK for a light private game server.  Someone still has to test it for a game server, but for my test with WordPress blog, it was fast and a good VPS to use for that purpose.

When Jordy turned VPS 16 over to me he asked that I try it out before it was added to the Giveaway.  Which is what I did.  VPS 16 will be available during the next Giveaway on 1st of April.  The following is my review of VPS 16.

Network, Performance & Reliability
Not only does VPS 16 have a KVM configuration, but the connection speed is 1Gbps making it much faster than VPS 15.  RAM may be less than ideal for a fully fledged games server, but I’m sure if someone tried it for a games server, that they will find it a good VPS to have.  I again tried it out with a WordPress blog, and compared with VPS 15 VPS 16 handled much faster.  A speed test of VPS 16 appears below.  Some members mentioned that the location of VPS 16 in Los Angeles would be a problem since it’s far out of the way of most members ISPs, however I found it not to be a problem at all.  My ISP is located in South Africa, and speed was fast.

This was the speed on the first day I started using VPS 16 on 23rd of March 2019:

And this is the speed today:

Specs of VPS 16
Disk Size: 20 GB SSD
Monthly Traffic: 2 TB
Memory: 1 GB
IP Addresses: 1x IPv4
Virtualization: KVM
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Control Panel: None
Connection: 1 Gbps
Provided by: Hostlease

VPS 16 Host – Hostlease, Netherlands
VPS 16 has been donated by Hostlease, a sponsor of post4vps.com, and hosting company based in Heerde, the Netherlands.  Hostlease specializes in business hosting and reseller hosting with focus on unlimited fast SSD disk space, data and cPanel features, and e-mails.  It also provides unlimited Comodo SSL certificates for domains and subdomains. VPSs are an add on service and any one interested in a VPS should contact Jorgy (F7N) in the Forum.

System Information
The System Information below was generated by the Hidden Refuge’s Benchmark 2.0 Test.  Thank you to @Hidden Refuge for being so generous to continuously update and support it for us:

CPU Model:  Intel® Xeon® CPU ES-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
CPU Cores:  1
Frequency:  1999.999 MHz
Total Amount of RAM:  996 MB
Total Amount of SWAP:  0 MB
Uptime:  4 days, 6:42,
Download Speed: (94.20 MB/s)
I/O Speed: 198 MB/s

OS: CentOS Linux 6.10 (Final)
Architecture: x86_64 (64 Bit)
Kernel:  2.6.32-696.1.1.el6.x86_64

Benchmark Test
Here are the results of the Benchmark Test:

Code: (Select All)
wget --no-check-certificate
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hidden-refuge/bench-sh-2/master/bench.sh
&& bash bench.sh -b && rm bench.sh

Canada
Download speed from Cachefly: 11.3MB/s

America – United States
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta, GA: 4.19MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 11.0MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 11.18MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 11.2MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 10.4MB/s

Asia
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, Japan: 8.69MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 8.08MB/s
Download speed from Hinet, Taiwan: 6.23MB/s

Europe
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, Netherlands: 8.08MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, Netherlands: 11.0MB/s

Disks and Storage

Disk speed:

Drive Speed
I/O (1st run): 212 MB/s
I/O (2nd run): 232 MB/s
I/O (3rd run): 242 MB/s
Average I/O: 228.667 MB/s

Usage
I’ve been using VPS 16 mostly for a WordPress blog.  I loaded VestaCP and had it up and running in minutes.  I then added my Softaculous license on VestaCP and had a WordPress blog up and running in no time.  I gave it a solid workout with adding blog pages and posts and making modifications.  Plugins loaded in no time.  This is a very fast VPS for a blog.  Speed should sustain a Games Server as well.  Jordy says that it should be OK to run the Games Server without any limitations.  Hopefully some one can test this and do a review on running VPS 16 as a Games Server. I’d be interested to see whether the 1 core 1 GB RAM would be able to sustain a Games Server without any limits.

Initially it looked as though VPS 16 like VPS 15 wouldn’t come with a panel, but looks as though Jordy will be able to set up a panel for the VPS as well.

Things to Improve
Both VPS 15 and VPS 16 still have to be tested for Games Servers.  Jordy believes that VPS 15 should be good for a light games server and VPS 16 for a heavier games server with no limits.  Depending on the outcome of the tests, I’d say that 1GB RAM may be too little for VPS 16 and the 100Mbps connection speed too little for VPS 15 for a Games Server, but that would depend on the outcome of the tests. So far there is nothing I can fault on VPS 16.  Particularly since it looks as though it will come with its own panel as well.

Conclusion
All in all everything worked excellent with VPS 16 – like really really fast – distance from Los Angeles was never an issue.  Support from the sponsor through F7N (Jordy) during the set up of the VPS was excellent and I want to extend a special note to him for Hostlease’s super support and the donation of VPS 16 for use by post4vps.

Post4VPS VPS 15 Review

Post4VPS, Reviews, VPS 15

Published first at post4vps.com

Introduction
It is probably unfair to compare a VPS of such huge specs like VPS 9 with VPS 15.  Not that VPS 15 specs are anything to complain about, as they are very significant as you can see below.  The performance is however very different and the speed of VPS 15 much slower, mostly due to the difference in connection speed between the two.  1 Ggbps (VPS 9) vs 100 Mbps (VPS 15).  Having said that though, there is nothing wrong with the speed of VPS 15, and any one should be OK with using the VPS for normal resource applications.  I’d guess however with users who require a lot of resources for games servers or possibly other heavier non-website applications I’m not so sure that I’d recommend VPS 15 for the application.  I have however not tested VPS 15 for these applications, so it would be great if someone else would give VPS 15 a try for a games server and do a review on it.

Here are the specs of VPS 15:

Disk Size: 270 GB SSD
Monthly Traffic: 10 TB
Memory: 3 GB 3 GB vSwap
IP Addresses: 2x IPv4
Virtualization: OpenVZ
Location: Los Angeles, USA
Control Panel: None
Connection: 100 Mbps
Provided by: Hostlease

VPS 15 Host – Hostlease, Netherlands
VPS 15 has been generously donated by Hostlease, a sponsor of post4vps.com, and hosting company based in Heerde, the Netherlands.  Hostlease specializes in business hosting and reseller hosting with focus on unlimited fast SSD disk space, data and cPanel features, and e-mails.  It also provides unlimited Comodo SSL certificates for domains and subdomains. VPSs are an add on service and any one interested in a VPS should contact Jorgy (F7N) in the Forum.

Network, Performance & Reliability
When I first started to use VPS 15, the installation of VestaCP was super slow, but I think it was an extreme event as after a couple of hours things started to speed up, and still is good.  This is what the speed was when I first started using the VPS on 8th of March 2019:

Possibly the slow speed that I first encountered could also have had something to do with my ISP, however it soon sorted itself out, and settled into the following average speed (taken today) that is definitely OK for working with the VPS:

System Information
The System Information below was generated by the Hidden Refuge’s Benchmark 2.0 Test.  Thank you to @Hidden Refuge for being so generous to continuously update and support it for us:

CPU Model:  Intel® Xeon® CPU E5520 @ 2.7GHz
CPU Cores:  4
Frequency:  2266.742 MHz
Total Amount of RAM:  3072 MB
Total Amount of SWAP:  0 MB
Uptime:   11 days, 11:42,
Download Speed: (81.86 MB/s)
I/O Speed: 68.2 MB/s

OS: CentOS Linux 7 (Core)
Architecture:  x86_64 (64 Bit)
Kernel: 2.6.32-042stab125.5
Hostname: Hostlease-freevps

Benchmark Test
Here are the results of the Benchmark Test:

Code: (Select All)

wget --no-check-certificate
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hidden-refuge/bench-sh-2/master/bench.sh
&& bash bench.sh -b && rm bench.sh

Canada
Download speed from Cachefly: 8.95MB/s

America – United States
Download speed from Coloat, Atlanta, GA: 4.37MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Dallas, TX: 8.75MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Seattle, WA: 8.18MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, San Jose, CA: 10.1MB/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Washington, DC: 3.37MB/s

Asia
Download speed from Linode, Tokyo, Japan: 348kb/s
Download speed from Softlayer, Singapore: 4.73MB/s
Download speed from Hinet, Taiwan: 4.34MB/s

Europe
Download speed from i3d.net, Rotterdam, Netherlands: 6.31MB/s
Download speed from Leaseweb, Haarlem, Netherlands: 11.4MB/s

Disks and Storage

Disk speed:
Drive Speed
I/O (1st run): 3.3 MB/s
I/O (2nd run):  14.5 MB/s
I/O (3rd run):  12.1 MB/s
Average I/O: 9.96667 MB/s

Usage
I’ve been using VPS 15 mostly for a WordPress blog.  I loaded VestaCP, when it loaded slow, but I’m sure if I should repeat this that it would load must faster.  It’s still much slower than VPS 9 though.  For WordPress this VPS works great.  When I work with the Dashboard Plugins and themes they load and activate very fast.  It’s easy and fast to blog.  However as previously said, I’m not so sure this VPS would be ideal for a Games Server, but then it hasn’t been tested as a Games Server yet.

VPS 15 doesn’t come with its own panel, so that would be a drawback for some who need the panel for reinstallation of the OS.  However, for someone to own the VPS, the panel that is available is really great.  At one stage when I was trying to change the port number of the VPS I was completely locked out of the VPS.  Fortunately the panel that Hostlease has available allowed me to temporarily SSH in to fix the problem.

Things to Improve
Definitely the connection speed.  100 Mbps is much too slow for a large VPS like this.  It would be great if the speed could be increased to the average speed one gets for the VPS of this size – 1Gbps minimum or faster.  The sponsor mentioned the possibility of adding a panel for the user, and that would definitely be a great plus.  Must say I’m a bit puzzled too with the location of the VPS in Los Angeles for a VPS host who is located in the Netherlands.  I’d say one of the reasons for the lower speed has to be the far distance on top of the low connection speed.

Conclusion
All in all everything worked well with VPS 15, and support from the sponsor through F7N (Jordy) during the set up of the VPS was excellent.  The Hostlease Website has a great chat feature “TalkTo” that works much better than Discord or support tickets.  Also no captchas to worry about which had me smiling from ear to ear.   We were able to conduct our business on TalkTo with maximum efficiency and the least waste of time.

I want to extend a special note of appreciation to Jordy for Hostlease’s super support and the donation of VPS 15 for use by post4vps.

Giveaway Manager!

Post4VPS

So for my sins I became a Giveaway Manager of post4vps.com with effect of the February 2019 Giveaway. Reason why I became a Giveaway Manager was to see whether I could find a way to streamline the administration of the Giveaway Process so the load on the VPS Manager would become less. Previous Giveaway Managers, although technically well qualified, found difficulty to manage the load.

Must say it’s a great pleasure to work with the owner of post4vps.com, whom I already admired before I took on the position. I got to know Dynamo as HMR at freevps.us as a contributor of substance. I’m totally in admiration of his specialist skills with the myBB Forum. Particularly with coding plugins. He is also a highly qualified Administrator, and I felt myself fortunate to start with a system that was already in great shape. It was effortless to learn how everything worked as there was a logic to every aspect of the process. Hopefully I’ll be able to do justice to what is already an excellent project.

Post4vps presently has a collection of 15 VPS plans that are contributed by sponsors who wish to promote their hosting businesses. Here is a link to all of the plans that are available:

Post4VPS VPS Plans

For a comparison of the plans you can check post4vps’s comparison page:

Post4VPS Comparison of VPS Plans

There is a Giveaway on 1st of every month where active members of the post3vps forum can request a VPS.  They need 20 posts with a minimum of 100 $ credits in order to compete, and also has to have a zero status for warnings.  The ones with the higher credit scores can apply for the better VPSs for which they have a better chance to win.  However for VPS 9, because of its huge size, judging is on a needs basis in addition to credit scores.  Members have to justify why they need to have a very large VPS.

Register today to post for a great VPS

R.I.P. Frihost 2005-2019!

Frihost

Frihost.com Forum is no more.  It has been down since mid-May 2018 … and on 14 February 2019 Frihost server 1 finally ended too. Our heartfelt thanks to Bondings for supporting us for a very long time with providing free hosting to those who could not afford it, long after he stopped being involved with Frihost.  Not only did he continue to provide free hosting, but the hosting was of the best quality ever on a 5-star cpanel server with Hetzner.  Specs were enormous and for the period January 2015 to 14 February 2019 we rarely had a down time on the server.   We’re sad Bondings stopped communicating with us, but wish him the best wherever he is and with whatever projects he is involved with.

After a very busy period from 2005 to 2012 when Frihost was one of the most active quality post4host communities on the Web, it started to spiral downwards from January 2013 when Bondings started his “day job” (as he called it with his typical sense of humour).  Since then his presence had become less and less until by mid 2014 he only was seen during emergencies. He was very loyal and dedicated to the Frihost community however and continued his sponsorship of the servers and domains.

When Bondings created Frihost with phpbb 2.0 in April 2005, he had done a lot of the coding himself, to the extent when the Forum was hastily moved in mid-July 2014 from Burstnet Datacenter in Scranton, Philadelphia to Hetzner in Germany, it required some major re-coding that could not happen because of lack of time. Since he was the only one who had access to the coding none of the absentee Admin were able to help out. We were still very lucky to have tidruG, a retired Frihost Admin assisting where he could in the background, but he had limited Admin privileges and no access to the servers. Quite a number of the old members who tried to modify their passwords to get into their forum accounts were unable to do so. Also a few of the hosting accounts that had been opened around 2006-2007 got left behind at the Datacenter in the US because of the way they had been coded.

So some damage to the Forum occurred during the big move in July 2014 that became permanent as time went on. This could possibly be considered collateral damage at the time, when during the Burstnet, Scranton, Philadelphia DataCenter disaster scandal Burstnet stopped existing in July 2014 with quite a large number of owners unable to access the data on their servers. Bondings somehow got access to the servers and saved Frihost in the nick of time. We were very lucky as he managed to moved all of the servers to a much better home at Hetzner in Germany. So there was a proverbial silver lining to what could have been a major disaster for Frihost in June/July 2014 that postponed the final ending by approx four years to February 2019.

Next important event in the decline of Frihost was when Server 4 with the majority of Frihost hosting accounts (created from 2010 to 2016) crashed and died in mid-2016.  All of the hosting accounts had gone up in smoke when the Server 4 had melted down.  Regrettably there had been no maintenance in a long time and no backups taken by Bondings. Bondings was the only one who had access to the Server. When this event happened Bondings decided to cancel Server 4 and the remaining active Frihost members who had hosting accounts on Server 4 were offered alternative hosting accounts on Server 1.

Server 1 had gone through some troubled times too, however at beginning of 2015, when it had experienced a similar melt down, Bondings somehow felt obliged to replace the Server because it contained all of the hosting accounts of the sister Forum, freeftpspace.org. All of the old Frihost hosting accounts had been lost, but through the different and more visible application system for hosting accounts at freeftpspace.org, we were able to recreate the FFS accounts on a brand-new cpanel. Since January 2015 when the Server had been completely replaced at Hetzner it had had an unbelievable quality up time. One of the best servers I’ve ever had hosting on and a joy to work with.  Here is a speed test that was taken in January 2019 and shows a result that has been consistently as good as this since 2015:

Things went very well for a while from mid-2016 to mid-May 2018. There weren’t that many actively posting members, but Frihost was still regularly attended by some loyal members and we were getting new members. We weren’t all together sure how the hosting on Servers 2&3 (on one server) would last, but since Frihost.com Forum had been on Server 2, we thought at least Server 2 had a chance for a longer life and that it would likely outlast Server 1. Unfortunately this was not to be. Similar to the melt down of Server 4 in 2016, the server with Servers 2 and 3 on it must have bitten the dust in mid-May of 2018. Could be there hadn’t been a backup for the accounts and Forums (due to the re-coding that hadn’t happened during the transfer of the Forums) so that Bondings was unable to reload the Forums. We may never know what happened as sadly there had been no communication from Bondings to date. We tried everything to get hold of him. Asked Hetzner to ask him to check in with us. But nothing happened, and as time marched on we got less and less hopeful that the old Frihost and FreeFTPSpace.org Forums would ever make their appearance again.

After the Forums had gone down, we created http://frihost.club as a temporary Forum for active members with hosting on Server 1.  It was a Forum not to replace frihost.com, but just a stop over until Bondings had contacted us or until Server 1 had gone down as well. Membership of the Forum had been by invitation only to hosted members of frihost.com and its sister forum freeftpspace.org.  At end of December when the cpanel and server were due for renewal, we thought this time round it would definitely end, however to our great surprise the server continued past 3rd of January to survive until 14 February when it abruptly went lights out at the root level.

I’m still missing the old frihost forum with its special old-fashioned design. And of course Bondings with his quirky sense of humour and entertaining posts. Bikerman and Indi with their relentless pursuit of the truth in the Philosophy & Religion Forum. I miss the members that were posting right to its end – my good friend Standready stands out completely.  Ankhanu and I were the two surviving mods during the last 2/3 years before the Forum went down with tidruG, retired Admin in London, helping where he could in the background.  Thankfully now and then one can check up at the wayward machine and have a look at the old Frihost.com. It will take a very long time for Frihost to disappear from the Internet memory.

My preferred free VPS Panels for 2019

VPS Panels

WHM/cpanel is the best panel there is. However, of course VERY pricey. For a VPS a WHM/cpanel license will cost you approx 15 US$ per month. WHM/cpanel also takes up a lot of resources for a beginner VPS, so is not recommended. It will slow down your VPS.

If you have limited experience of Linux, and want a look alike cPanel, then a free VPS panel would be great to have. Only thing is there are a great number of them out there and it can be confusing which one to select.

One has to be very careful when one selects a VPS panel as the free panels require regular security updates.  By their very nature panels can make the VPS vulnerable for hacking. They can also eat up your VPS resources. So not only should one scrutinize the management of the VPS panel carefully for security and resource use before you select one, but you need to continuously check that the management of the updates are in good hands after you have installed the panel. Since the free VPS panels are managed by admin who are doing it on a voluntary basis, it’s easy for them to either sell the panel or disappear – resulting in lack of security updates after. So it’s good to check up on the panel. I also check whether the panel has additional documentation and/or a discussion Forums available, as that is a good way to keep tabs on the panel, as well as a great resource for troubleshooting panel issues.

My top choices for a Free VPS Panel for beginners – from the consideration of security and use of resources – is Softaculous WEBUZO and VestaCP. For those who are very hardware technically inclined WebMIN would be my choice.

WEBUZO

WEBUZO is a brother/sister of Virtualizor and part of Softaculous and has a very close feel to cPanel about it. Only difference is that it is a single admin server, so if you plan to resell web hosting services or want to provide separate control panels to other users, then you will need to check out other alternatives.

I wouldn’t recommend the free version of Webuzo as it is very limited and lacks the WordPress script. However the 25 USD per year license is so little and to me worth every penny in the difference with the free version. Webuzo is feature rich, and easy to work with. Has more than one option for FTP and File Manager. Works perfectly with DNS, everything that is needed to manage Websites as a single user.

WordPress is listed first in its long list of 316 Softaculous scripts that have been neatly categorized. I had a WordPress site up in less than five minutes. It automatically created my database and database user, without prompting me for those.

What is also attractive to me is the wealth of how-to documentation in the WEBUZO blog. Easy to search on as well.

A step-by-step tutorial for how to install WEBUZO can be found here:

https://webuzo.com/wiki/Install

VestaCP

VestaCP is by far my favourite free panel for a VPS, but because of some security concerns that cropped up during 2018 in April and September, I’m a little hesitant to recommend it for absolute beginners.  I’m a great fan of it particularly because of its above average low use of resources.  It works with nginx on top of apache so have the best of both worlds in fast processing and efficient file management.  Another plus is an actively supported forum with tons of documentation.  And in January 2018 it included a free Softaculous in its applications.  VestaCP is a multi-account panel, in other words you can set it up for more than one user.

VestaCP provides an excellent “menu” for choosing what one wants to include in VestaCP in ONE installation command. All one needs to do is navigate to its installation page and you will find a command generator and instructions for how to install the script (below).

Note: It is important to install the script on a minimal installation of the OS only, however if you have been provided with a full OS you can override this with including “force” in the installation command.

VestaCP of course doesn’t come with a free File Manager, however I’m quite happy with FileZilla and am using SFTP instead of FTP. I also don’t use a mail server. If mail is needed with my domain later on, I will use a free e-mail host like Zoho or Yandex. Yandex in particular is very generous with the number of e-mail accounts that are allowed for use with one’s domain.

My choices for the Install Command are:

WEB: nginx + apache
FTP: No
MAIL: No
DNS: Named
FIREWALL: iptables + fail2ban
SOFTACULOUS: Yes
DB: mySQL
REPOSITORY: Remi
FILE SYSTEM QUOTA: No
HOSTNAME: domain.net

In summary these are the commands I use with a minimal installation of CentOS-7 64 bit:

curl -O http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh
bash vst-install.sh –nginx yes –apache yes –phpfpm no –vsftpd no –proftpd no –exim no –dovecot no –spamassassin no –clamav no –named yes –iptables yes –fail2ban yes —softaculous yes —mysql yes –postgresql no –remi yes –quota no –hostname vps.domain.tld –email name@yahoo.com –password 123456

If you want to make Softaculous premium, you need to add ioncube to be able to access the Softaculous Admin Panel in VestaCP (Softaculous is “hidden” behind the Apps link that is next to the Firewall Link in the top Index links of VestaCP). Here is the command for CentOS:

<code>/usr/local/vesta/ioncube/ioncube.sh</code>

WebMIN

WEBMIN is a control panel for system administration of both dedicated and VPS Linux servers. It is popular with super geeks who may use it for a quick access interface for remote control of their servers. I tried WEBMIN and can be corrected on this, but looks as though the control panel is more suited for dedicated servers as it ran quite slow on my VPS. Still, for someone with a VPS who is reasonably Linux literate particularly on the technical side of things, WEBMIN is at least worth checking out. WEBMIN can be used by any web browser and can help one set up user accounts, Apache, DNS, firewalls, file sharing and much more.

Here is what the panel looks like:

How to install WEBMIN
This is an excellent tutorial by Anthony Binns:

How to measure the speed of your VPS

VPS Speed

Ever wondered how some of the geeks are able to produce a speed test of their VPS?  The following tutorial shows how you can set up your VPS to do the test.  Note that this tutorial uses CentOS Linux distribution.

First of all, it’s a complete misunderstanding that the VPS speed is independent of your Internet speed.  A very big component of the speed is how well your Internet Service Provider (ISP) deals with the location of the VPS.  In other words, how many packages it takes per megabyte/second for the ISP to send your information to the VPS and return.  There are other important components too of the speed, including RAM and speed of the VPS.  Also latency of the IP which will be indicated by a ping count in the speed test.  Those who look for a VPS will do well by asking the host for a test IP first so they can check how fast their ISP deals with the VPS.  Once you have the test IP all you do is to go into the Command Prompt of your computer (type cmd in your start box), then cd .. to get to the c: command prompt.  Then simply ping the IP.

To test the speed of your VPS you need to SSH into your VPS, load python first and then the speed script.  Note the tutorial uses  CentOS:

yum install python

wget -O speedtest-cli https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py

chmod +x speedtest-cli

To get the image file so you can proudly share it with others the following command is needed:

./speedtest-cli --share

And this is what the shared results look like.

The above ping count refers to the latency of the IP – the higher the ping, the more the dragging effect by your ISP on the IP. Ideal is below 5. Download speeds are almost always high – it’s the upload speed that matters a lot.  In the image above the speed is way above average. Super fast.  You don’t have to expect speed like that.  For a speed of approx 300 Mbps and even below 100 Mbps upload it’s still very fast.  And as previously mentioned, the RAM and space on your VPS will also make a difference in how fast you can work with your VPS.