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In case anyone is at all interested, here's the technology behind rainton.com:

Hardware

Erm... this is interesting as rainton.com currently runs on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) under UML (User Mode Linux).

What does this mean? Well, basically, we have full root access to what looks like our own Linux box, with which we can do as we like.

Actually, the underlying machine is somewhere in the realm of a 2.4Ghz P4 with a couple of GB of RAM. And this is what's great about a VPS - although we only ever get 112MB of that memory (plus 64MB swap - which doesn't sound a lot but is fine for web serving and mail hosting) we're guaranteed a small percentage of the CPU, but in reality can 'burst' up to almost the full speed of the host machine. Of course, when other VPS' on the same box aren't maxing it out.

Supplied by RimuHosting and sat in an EZZI.net datacentre BTW... Cool, huh?

OS

Well, seeing as we're running UML the OS on our VPS is obviously Linux. This originally started life as RedHat 9, kernal 2.41 but a lot of the packages have been removed (sorry RedHat, but RPMs still don't work so well).

Software

The following are essential to running of this site:
  • Various 'base' RedHat packages (OK - so I take it back, the package system is useful for run of the mill stuff, like compilers, shells, etc. that need no tweaking).
  • Custom compiled mail software: Cyrus IMAP, Sendmail (with milter-spamc), SpamAssassin.
  • In addition, we utilise various Windoze boxes with Cygwin based Exim MTA for backup MX.
  • Custom compiled Apache HTTPD. What else? You suckers out there running MS IIS should be ashamed of yourselves!

      Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April of 1996. The August 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey found that 63% of the web sites on the Internet are using Apache, thus making it more widely used than all other web servers combined.

  • We use Webalizer to keep tabs on web server usage, and Cricket to monitor other system stats.
  • PHP server side scripting.
  • Squirrelmail webmail.
  • Some funky page building software developed in house to make this site of course.

      Originally just used in my Travel Diary pages, this excellent scripting language is now responsible for generating every page you'll see on this site! It's easy to learn with a syntax similar to 'C' or Perl. Has it's own garbage collection, nice associative arrays and a whole heap of other features that make this great for producing quick and clean code.

  • Many thanks to Fabio Ciucci for the excellent Java applet used on my Travel Diary page. See www.anfyteam.com for a whole heap of groovy (and free!) applets.

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