handyfloss

I will simply copy&paste an e-mail interchange between DreamHost and me, with a few extra comments (some data substituted by “xxxxx”):

DreamHost:

Dear Iñaki,

Our system has noticed what seems to be a large amount of “backup/non-web” content on your account (#xxxxx), mostly on user “xxxxx” on the web server “xxxxx”.

Some of that content specifically is in /home/xxxxx (although there may be more in other locations as well.)

Unfortunately, our terms of service (http://www.dreamhost.com/tos.html) state:

The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website, and associated email functions. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose; DreamHost Web Hosting servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service. DreamHost Web Hosting reserves the right to negotiate additional charges with the Customer and/or the discontinuation of the backups/archives at their discretion.

At this point, we must ask you to do one of three things:

* You can delete all backup/non-web files on your account.

* You can close your account from our panel at:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=billing.accounts
(We are willing to refund to you any pre-paid amount you have remaining, even if you’re past the 97 days. Just reply to this email after closing your account from the panel).

OR!

* You may now enable your account for backup/non-web use!

If you’d like to enable your account to be used for non-web files, please visit the link below. You will be given the option to be charged $0.20 a month per GB of usage (the monthly average, with daily readings) across your whole account.

We don’t think there exists another online storage service that has anything near the same features, flexibility, and redundancy for less than this, so we sincerely hope you take us up on this offer!

In the future, we plan to allow the creation of a single “storage” user on your account which will have no web sites (or email). For now though, if you choose to enable your account for backups, nothing will change (apart from the charges). If you want to enable backup/non-web use on this account, please go here:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/backups.cgi?xxxxxxxxxxx

If you choose not to enable this, you must delete all your non-web files by 2008-07-16 or your account will be suspended.

If you have any questions about this or anything at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us by replying to this email.

Thank you very much for your understanding,
The Happy DreamHost Backup/Non-Web Use Team

My answer:

Dear DreamHost Support Team,

I fully understand your point. Though apparently sensible, a detailed analysis shows that the policy you cite from the TOS makes little sense.

Right now I have a 5920 GB/month bandwidth limit, and a 540 GB disk quota in my account, both applied to web use. My current use in this regard is less than 4 GB disk space (0.7% of my quota), and my estimated bw use at the end of the present billing period will be around 0.2 GB (33 ppm (parts per million) of my current (and increasing) bw quota).

Now, on the other hand, I have some 50-100 GB of data (less than 20% of my disk quota!!) that I want to keep at the servers (for whatever private interest, that I do not need to disclose, but I will: backup and data sharing among my different PCs). Keeping this data up to date could cause between 1 MB and 1 GB worth of transfers per day (30 GB/month at most, or 0.5% of my bw quota).

All of the above raises some questions:

1) Why on Earth am I granted such a huge amount of resources that I will never conceivably use? Maybe just because of that: because I will never use them?

2) Why am I prevented of using my account in the only way that would allow me to take advantage of even a tiny part of those resources?

3) In what respect is the HD space and bw used up by a backup different from that used up by web content? Isn’t all data a collection of 0s and 1s? How can a Hosting Service, ISP, or any other provider of digital means DISCRIMINATE private data according to content?

4) Regarding the previous point, how is DH to tell if I simply move the backup dirs to the isilanes.org/ folder? I have to assume that if I make my backups visible through the web (which I can prevent with file permissions), then it makes them 100% kosher, since they become “web content” that I am allowed to host at DH?

It seems to me that you are renting me a truck to transport people, then frown at me if I take advantage of it to carry furniture. Moreover, you are advising me to keep the truck for people and rent small vans for the furniture.

[snip irrelevant part]

Believe me, I am willing to be a nice user. I just want to be able to use the resources I pay the way I need.

Iñaki

Their answer:

Hello Iñaki,

1) Why on Earth am I granted such a huge amount of resources that I will never conceivably use? Maybe just because of that: because I will never use them?

Some people will. Admittedly, very few do, but to be perfectly blunt, overselling is actually a vital part of our (and ANY) web host’s business model:

http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/05/18/the-truth-about-overselling/

2) Why am I prevented of using my account in the only way that would allow me to take advantage of even a tiny part of those resources?

That’s an exaggeration, to be honest. Anyone can use up to the entire amount of their bandwidth and space, providing they use it for the purpose intended. If we ever open DreamStorage, you’d be welcome to use that space for backing up your data.

3) In what respect is the HD space and bw used up by a backup different from that used up by web content? sn’t all data a collection of 0s and 1s? How can a Hosting Service, ISP, or any other provider of digital means DISCRIMINATE private data according to content?

Well, just as we have…there’s a ton of data in a non-web-accessible directory. That’s a pretty good tip that something’s up. By your argument, we couldn’t take down someone for copyright, or even child porn violations, as it’s just “a collection of 0s and 1s”, and who are we to “discriminate”? Our Terms of Service, which you agreed to 2008-02-22 at 3:39pm. If you didn’t agree, this simply wasn’t the service for you.

4) Regarding the previous point, how is DH to tell if I simply move the backup dirs to the isilanes.org/ folder? I have to assume that if I make my backups visible through the web (which I can prevent with file permissions), then it makes them 100% kosher, since they become “web content” that I am allowed to host at DH?

Honestly, we’re not going to let you off on some weak technicality. If you don’t wish to comply with the ToS, we’ve even allowed you the option of receiving a prorated refund, regardless of how far out from your 97 day guarantee you are. We have no desire to lose your business, but your truck analogy is almost there. We’re offering you trucks for transporting furniture…and we’re doing it at a nice low rate. But we do require you actually use them. We count on the fact that very few people are going to be moving furniture 24/7, but if someone wanted to use it to it’s fullest, they could. However, that doesn’t mean you get to rent the truck, park it somewhere, and use it as a free self-storage unit. We want the truck if you’re not using it for it’s intended
purpose.

[snip irrelevant part]

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks!

Jeff H

My final answer:

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the kind answer! This kind of support is what gives DH an edge over other hosting providers. Keep it up.

What I say in my second point is not an exageration. It’s the plain truth: if not for backups, I will never use 1% of my quota. I mean *I* won’t. Don’t know about others, just me.

It seems a little unfair that some guy with 500 GB of HD use and 5800 GB/month of bw use is paying 8$/month as I am (I don’t recall the exact amount), while I am using 4 GB and 0.2 GB/month. Then I want to use 80 GB and 30 GB/month and I have to pay an extra 16$. That’s a total of TRIPLE that of the aforementioned guy, while I’m still using 6 times less HD and 200 times less bw.

I would love to pay for some resources, and administer them as I like, be it for web, backup, svn, or whatever. What I meant with my third point is that 100 MB of my backups “hurt” the system as much as sb else’s 100 MB of web content, so I can’t see the reason to make the user pay a separate bill for “backups”. Just make ftp traffic count against the disk/bw quotas and that’s it! You could then stop worrying about “fair” use.

But that’s pointless ranting on my side. Thanks for the attention. I will consider what to do in the light of the information you provided me.

Iñaki

I just want to point out how ridiculous their answer to my third point above is. DH tells me that they should be able to discriminate my data according to content (or use), because the opposite would supposedly allow me to break the law with copyright violations or child pornography. To follow with the truck metaphor, I am renting a truck from them, to carry furniture around. Since I don’t use up all the space in the truck, and I have a fridge I want to move, I put it into the truck. Now DH wants to patrol what I carry in the truck, and tell me that the fridge is not allowed, because it is not “furniture”. When I complain, and say that what I carry in the truck they lend me is none of their business, they answer that it is, because I could well be using the truck for drug smuggling. That’s really lousy reasoning. If I use the truck for carrying something illegal, then the police will sort it out, not the renting company. It is the general Law that will tell me what I can use the truck for, not the renting company.

8 Comments »

As I said in a previous post, I bought a MacBook, and I am making all bits work correctly. Out-of-the-box support from Ubuntu (the only GNU/Linux I tried on the MacBook so far) is excellent, but some things (camera, WiFi…) need proprietary drivers, so some more tweaks are needed.

I have followed the instructions in the Ubuntu community site, as with the procedures detailed in the previous post.

Basically, it all boils down to:

Fetch the Apple drivers for the camera

As root (if, unlike me, you like sudo, then run the following as user, but prepended with sudo), mount the Mac OSX partition (you didn’t delete it, right?) and copy the relevant file somewhere else (the cp command should be all in one line):

# cd
# mkdir /mnt/macosx
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/macosx
# cp /mnt/macosx/System/Library/Extensions/
     IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBVideoSupport.kext/
     Contents/MacOS/AppleUSBVideoSupport .
# umount /mnt/macosx

You might have noticed that the Mac OSX partition is not sda1, but sda2. Don’t ask me. It turns out like this after following my own installation instructions. Apple must have decided to install the OS in the second partition for some reason.

Install the required packages

We need a package called isight-firmware-tools. Unfortunately it is not present in the Hardy repos at the moment (it was in the Gutsy ones, I think). You can add a Launchpad repo, editing /etc/apt/sources.list to add:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mactel-support/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/mactel-support/ubuntu hardy main

Then, as root:

# aptitude update
# aptitude install isight-firmware-tools

You will be prompted for a path to the driver you copied before. You can press Enter without paying much attention, then execute (assuming you copied the driver to your root home):

# cd
# ift-extract -a ./AppleUSBVideoSupport

To activate the driver, restart HAL:

# /etc/init.d/hal restart

Test it with Ekiga

As explained in the Ubuntu community site, you can run Ekiga as user (after installing the ekiga package). Choose V4L2 as video plugin, and Built-in iSight should appear among the Input device list. If it does, the process worked.

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Yes, dear reader, I committed the heresy of purchasing an Apple MacBook. I obviously didn’t do it for MacOS X, for which I couldn’t care less, but for the hardware, which is quite good. I was looking for a laptop as small as possible, keeping price low (it cost 799 eur), and screen not too small (this one has a 13″ one. Maybe even 12″ is acceptable. 13″ sure is).

You can see some pictures of it at my MacBook gallery.

If you, like me, are used to PCs, then there are a few things to note:

• It has a different layout in the keyboard. Most prominently, some keys are missing: Del, PgUp, PgDn, Home, End. Some others (Win key, AltGr) have substitutes that can be mapped. Also the equivalent to AltGr and right Ctrl are kind of swapped: the key closest to the SpaceBar is right “cmd” (could be right Ctrl), and the farthest one is left “alt” (could be AltGr)
• The touchpad has a single button, and tapping on it won’t click. There is no zone on it to use as vertical scroll, either. Luckily the latter can be fixed via software, so that in Ubuntu the touchpad does behave correctly: you can tap-click, and you can scroll with a smooth movement of a finger. The single-button issue is not present in USB mice: they work “normally”.

I would like to outline here the process of installing Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) in this machine. For that, I recommend reading (as I did), the following links:

• How to install Ubuntu on a MacBook
• Specifics for Santa Rosa MacBooks (mine is a SR).
• As usual, google the net for “Linux on a MacBook”, and you’ll find a good list of sites

Repartition of the hard disk

My Mac came with 120 GB (109 real) of HD, all of it devoted to OS X. Unfortunately, the Ubuntu installer can not cope with resizing of HFS+ partitions. Fortunately, OS X itself can. You can make use of Boot Camp as follows: go to Go->Utilities->Boot Camp Assistant. There you can (should) reduce the existing HFS+ partition to the bare minimum (in my machine it was 22GB, because OSX already uses 17GB, and it won’t accept less than 5GB of free disk). Leave the rest unassigned, and quit.

Installation of multi-boot system

The first hurdle in our Linux installation is that the Mac machines do not have a “normal” BIOS. The BIOS is important for Linux/Windows installations, so this is a drawback. Macs come with a thingie called Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), instead. However, there is a nice little tool called rEFIt that can help us with it.

To install rEFIt, you can follow the instructions at its Sourceforge site. I followed the Automatic Installation with the Installer Package instructions. Basically I downloaded the Mac disk image from the download page, opened in the Mac OSX file browser, double-clicked it to open it, then double-clicked on the rEFIt.mpkg file inside, and followed the instructions.

This will make the rEFIt menu appear in the next reboot, but only if you hold some key while booting (I think it’s “C”). If you want the menu to always appear, do the following in a terminal, inside Mac OSX:

% cd /efi/refit
% ./enable-always.sh

Installation of Linux OS

After doing the above, you should reboot with an Ubuntu installation CD inserted. If the EFI installation was correct, you will be presented with the rEFIt menu, in which you will have two big icons (OSX and the Linux CD), and five small ones below (”Start EFI Shell”, “Start Partitioning Tool”, “About rEFIt”, “Shut down computer” and “Restart computer”).

Use the left-rigth arrow keys to select the Ubuntu CD, and press Enter. At that moment, or after installing Ubuntu (I don’t recall), the computer could complain saying: “No bootable device — insert boot disk and press any key”. If so, reboot and, in the aforementioned rEFIt menu, choose the second small icon, “Start Partitioning Tool”. This tool will prompt you to update the MBR. Accept, and let it do its magic.

When booting with the CD, you will have the option to make an absolutely normal Ubuntu installation. The Ubuntu MacBook page says that Boot Camp will complain if you make more than two partitions in total. It will, but for me this is ridiculous, since OSX is already eating up one. There’s no way I will install any Linux in a single partition (withouth even swap!). If you do not care about opening Boot Camp ever again (I don’t), do a totally normal install. I created two 8.5GB partitions for / (one for Ubuntu, another one unused for the future), a 750MB swap partition, and the rest (73GB) as /home (potentially shared among the two Linux I could install).

After the installation, reboot and you will find the aforementioned rEFIt menu. Choosing the penguin icon on the right side will take you to the GRUB screen you probably are accustomed to. What this means is that you have to go through two boot menus when booting, but that’s a minor issue, I think. The first menu is an EFI menu, in which you choose OSX or GRUB. The second one is the GRUB menu that lets you choose among different installed kernels.

And I think that’s it…

I will keep on writing when I have time, at least about how to make WiFi work, and also how to configure Compiz Fusion. Yes, the X3100 graphics chip that the MacBooks carry is blacklisted, as not working with CF. But, believe me, it does work!

4 Comments »

I decided to give a try to Ubuntu Hardy Heron, and installed the amd64 version of it in my laptop.

My gripe is caused by a really annoying issue with the installation in a multiboot system. I have a laptop with four root partitions (Windows, Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu), and obviously GRUB generates the menu that allows me to choose at boot time. The file that GRUB reads is /root/grub/menu.lst, at /dev/sda5 (the Fedora partition, which was the last one).

The annoying issue I mention is that the installation is absolutely smooth but a bootloader is not installer. What this means is that when I reboot the computer after installation, I always get the old GRUB menu, and the new OS does not appear in the list.

The only solution I found is to do the following:

1. Do a normal install of Ubuntu, but do not reboot
2. Open a console (after installation Ubuntu lauches a GNOME live session)
3. Locate the kernel and initrd images I need. They are, respectively: /target/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic and /target/boot/initrd-img-2.6.24-16-generic.bak
4. Mount /dev/sda5 into /mnt/root3
5. Edit /mnt/root3/boot/grub/menu.lst (the old GRUB menu), and add the lines:

title --------- Ubuntu 8.04 TLS Hardy Heron - sda6 ----------
root

title Ubuntu Hardy Heron - kernel 2.6.24
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=/dev/sda6 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic.bak
boot

6. Reboot

After that, the new Ubuntu appears in the GRUB list.

The procedure is not incredibly difficult, but for a beginner it would be a major showstopper. And, in any case, it is a really sad error.

3 Comments »

Around 1 month ago I said I had made the switch from KMail to Thunderbird for managing e-mail. Well, now I must confess I am making another switch, this time to Evolution, the native e-mail client for GNOME.

The main (sole) reason is that Icedove (Thunderbird) was unreasonably slow lately. Maybe it’s a matter of versions (I’m running the latest in Debian Lenny), but it was driving me crazy. And so is Iceweasel (Firefox), but that’s another story. Evolution seems to be as fast as KMail to start up/minimize/maximize/quit, and as fast as Icedove to manage the IMAP folders (something KMail was seriously lacking).

3 Comments »

Hace poco que he cometido la blasfemia de cambiarme de Vodafone a Movistar, y ya me he topado con el primer coñazo: el 1000 veces maldito buzón de voz. Si queréis saber más sobre este “servicio” y sus “bondades”, podéis leerlo en el sitio de Movistar.

Si visitáis la página que menciono, notaréis una curiosa carencia en ella. Venga, visitadla y no sigáis leyendo esto hasta que la hayáis encontrado… ¿Ya la habéis encontrado? Pues efectivamente: la puta página no dice cómo leches dar de baja el servicio. Mis amigos me odian porque si me llaman mientras estoy hablando con otra persona les salta el maldito buzón, y se les COBRA una llamada para NADA.

Es un servicio que no quiero, que me molesta, y que no entiendo por qué tengo. No entiendo por qué no tengo que hacer nada para que se me dé de alta, y sin embargo darse de baja es complicado. Bueno, sí lo entiendo, claro: es un medio de las operadoras de telecom para forrarse cobrando llamadas que de otra manera habrían sido “perdidas”. ¿La verdad?, me dan asco.

Update: se puede lograr la información para desactivar el buzón en esta otra página de Movistar. En resúmen: llamar al 537 y pulsar 4 (quitarlo del todo), o esperar y oir las instrucciones si eres masoca.

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Yesterday evening I boldly decided to upgrade WordPress (the software this blog runs on), to version 2.5. DreamHost, my hosting service, provides easy click-through installation and upgrades of software, so I used it for the upgrade.

Sadly, and probably for some mistake I did, everything ended up screwed, and my blog experienced some problems like not showing any post at all! I proceeded to contact the support team, and the response was awesome: they answered incredibly fast, and the solution was concise and correct.

I have to say that DreamHost has surprised me very positively!

1 Comment »

As outlined in some previous posts[1,2,3,4], I have been playing around with a piece of Python code to process some log files. The log files to process were actually host.gz files from some BOINC projects, and the data I want to extract from them is quite simple: the Windows, Linux and Mac shares in the number of computers contributing to them (and the work they do). By logging this processed data myself, I can see the time evolution of this share, and hopefully show the slow but steady rise of GNU/Linux :^)

I figured out that the contribution to distributed computing projects could be a reasonable indicator of the Windows predominance status. There are many other indicators (for example the number of visits to a web site, e.g. this very one), and I don’t claim that this one is “better”. I just want to add it to the reference list for the reader.

There is a problem with “Windows vs. Linux” figures, and it is that they are not really “competing” products. When cars or soft drinks are the subject, one can figure out the market share, looking at the number of items sold. Linux being free software, one can hardly measure the amount of “sold copies”, and with Windows being pre-installed in most new computers, one can not really trust the “number of computers sold = number of Windows copies sold”, because some users even remove the Windows partition and install Linux on top of it.

Counting the visits to some sites is not without problems, either. Any web site will have a particular audience, and the result will be biased by that fact. When my blog was in WordPress.com, I had roughly as many visits from Windows users as from Linux users, and almost all of them used Firefox as a browser. Obviously this data is not an accurate reflection of the world at large. It so happened that free software users are more likely to surf to sites like mine, hence the bias.

So, without further ado, let me introduce the “BOINC Host Statistics” program (BHS). Here you are a link to its home page. You can find results I have harvested so far in the Screenshots section. For example, the SETI@home credit generation rate statistics follows:

What the plot tells us is that (at the time of writing this) 500 million cobblestones are being granted to contributors each day. Of them, around 82% are being given to Windows computers, 9-10% to Mac, 8% to GNU/Linux, and the rest to computers running other OSs.

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Another reason to love FLOSS: developers are close to the users, and they LISTEN.

I recently started using the Sociable WordPress plugin for this blog. This wonderful plugin by Joost de Valk, lets you put some links to social bookmarking/news/recommendation sites on the web at the bottom of each post, so a reader can send your post to such a site with a single click.

There are many WP plugins that do this, but I liked the looks of Joost’s, and the pleasant way of managing it. I chose Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, Technorati and Slashdot, but I felt that at least two sites that I liked were missing from the available sites list: Menéame and Barrapunto.

So I boldly decided to contact the developer, Joost de Valk, and ask for them:

Hi Joost,

I have just discovered your “Sociable” WordPress plugin, and I like it a lot.

However, there is always room for improvement, and as such I would like to suggest you to add links to the following sites:

Menéame (http://meneame.net/)
Barrapunto (http://barrapunto.com/)

Both are Spanish “versions” of popular sites: Digg and Slashdot, respectively.

I mainly write in English, but I think that blogs with a Spanish audience could benefit a lot from these links.

Now I realize I even forgot to say “thanks in advance” or anything… I was a bit unpolite, I fear. Anyway, his answer came a couple of days later:

I’ll add them in the next version, coming out… tonight I guess :)

Can I trust upon you to promote it a bit there? :)

Cheers,
Joost

It is actually true that a new version of Sociable has been released, and it includes Menéame and Barrapunto as available sites. So here it goes your promotion, Joost ;^)

Isn’t it great when people collaborate and are generally nice to each other? Isn’t everyone tired of a society where people don’t do anything unless they get money or power in return?

Thanks Joost and other bona fide developers for your great work.

4 Comments »

Last week a new power failure affected the Campus. At least the PCs at the DIPC were reseted around midnight. So, here goes the updated list of blackouts I have been able to compile, with comments if any:

1. 2008-Mar-05
2. 2007-Dec-10 (I used the reboot of my computer to install kernel 2.6.22-3)
3. 2007-Oct-16
4. 2007-Aug-27 (at least three short power failures, 5-10 minutes apart)
5. 2007-May-19
6. 2006-Oct-21 (they warned beforehand)
7. 2006-Sep-14 (Orpheus fell, the DNSs fell, the DHCP servers fell)
8. 2006-Jul-04 (Orpheus didn’t fall)
9. 2006-Jun-16
10. 2006-Jun-13
11. 2006-Jun-08
12. 2006-Jun-04
13. 2006-May-26 (The card-based automated access to the Faculty broke down)
14. 2005-Dec-21
15. 2005-Dec-13

Summary: 15 blackouts in 813 days, or 54.2 dpb (days per blackout). 86 days since last blackout. Average dpb went up by 2.2.

First post in the series: here

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