Free web hosting for firearms-related + Pro-RKBA organizations ? my idea...

The Walrus · May 16, 2002, 05:09 AM

Okay guys... Here's a thought that popped into my head today, please bear with me while I explain the details.

I'm owner of a fairly successful computer business, and would like to give something back to the firearms community. So much of my practical "book" knowledge has come from right here at The Firing Line, by lurking for months and reading everyone's posts. Also, sites such as Oleg Volk's and similar are a great source of moral support and inspiration.

Gathering dust, serving no useful purpose, I have the following rackmount server:

Intel SC450NX chassis and motherboard
Triple-redundant 900W 2+1 120V power supply
Redundant hot-swappable ventilation system
Four Xeon 450MHz/1MB cache CPUs
1GB ECC Registered SDRAM, max 4GB
Six Ultra2/LVD 80-pin SCA hot-swap SCSI HDD bays
Two 100BaseT 32-bit/33MHz PCI Intel Ethernet interfaces
a plain vanilla server-class VGA video card
Adaptec or LSI (not decided yet) Ultra2/LVD 80MB/sec RAID controller
An undetermined amount of HDD space (hard drives yet to be purchased, probably two or four 18GB 10K rpm U2/LVD units at $85 each)

The unit itself is a 7U rackmount system, designed for standard 19" racks. It weighs about 95 pounds and will mount in any standard colocation cabinet. The SC450NX ( http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...NQAz&q=sc450nx ) is a real beast of a server.

I would like to offer free web hosting for a wide range of reputeable firearms businesses and organizations, but I'm lacking one very important thing: BANDWIDTH. Colocation of this server on a 1Mbps connection (100KB/second constant, each direction) would be a rather expensive proposition to purchase commercially. I know some of you have jobs very similar to mine in the computer industry, and thought that somebody might be able to help out with this project. From the "Photo of you and your gun" thread, I recall seeing somebody with their pistol and six or eight racks full of gear in the background.

So here's the proposition:

I can permanently loan the server (it has no other purpose and is excess inventory) and software setup (Secured FreeBSD 4.x-STABLE + Apache + mod_php + misc), plus remote administration and general "customer service" time... But only if I can find somebody reputeable with bandwidth to donate. Even a 50KB/sec constant connection in a decently fast colocation facility costs upwards of $300/month. If one of you (for example) happens to be a network administrator in an office with a unrestricted T1 mostly used for downstream traffic, it may be possible to host the system and throttle it to a fixed upstream speed limit. There's tons of spare bandwidth out there to be had, judging by the number of geeks secretly running 10Mbps "warez" sites and similar shady things off their company's network without knowledge. This would, of course, have to be completely above-board and legit, so I'd like to avoid hiding the server and hoping that nobody notices its traffic. Particularly considering the politically sensitive content that would be hosted on it...

The actual content hosting rules would be similar to these (extremely rough draft, suggestions welcomed)

Content must support the RKBA and 2A
Content may be either commercial in nature, charity, or hobby
Content must not advocate any racist sociopolitical viewpoints, including but not limited to neo-naziism etc.
Content should advocate the responsible and mature ownership and handling of all firearms and other weapons.
Content must not be pornographic or grossly obscene
Resources of the server should not be monopolized excessively by one account to the detriment of other hosted organizations.
Content should remain largely firearms related, at the discretion of the three people with root access to the server.

I would like this last "guns-related, please" content rule to be very flexible dependent on how heavily loaded the server becomes, bandwidth available, and general demand. Obviously in a high-traffic situation we would stick to purely firearms related content. But if excess resources exist and are plentiful, hosting of content which strays a bit from the core purpose could be OK too.

Basically, all very common sense stuff. Root passwords to the unit would be held by three people. Myself, my chief software engineer (who would set up Apache + PHP + MySQL), and whoever we can find to donate a network connection. Web hosting will be handled in the standard way, by an FTP account for site file access/uploads and vhosts for TLD domain access). Depending on server load we could also set up POP3/SMTP daemons and similar services. The sort of sites I would like to host (on the non-profit side) would be similar to JPFO or Oleg. On the for-profit side, websites similar to Hans Vang's are perfect for this sort of thing. Mr. Vang's web site (just as an example) isn't full of large multimedia content, won't occupy much disk space, doesn't require weird Apache extensions, and can be easily managed. Private individuals would, hopefully (depending on how much bandwidth we can get) be welcome as well, providing that their content is directly related to firearms in some way.

If a site ever became extremely successful and high-traffic, we might have to arrange for alternative low-cost commercial hosting in order to maintain and balance overall server speed for others hosted.

If any of you would like to discuss this idea further, have suggestions/comments, or just want to chew the fat, please feel free to get in touch with me by e-mail. Here's my address, and web site (more company info on the website)

Eric K.
[email protected]
http://www.fnordsystems.com

May 16, 2002, 05:09 AM	#1
The Walrus Senior Member Join Date: July 23, 2001 Location: North of Seattle, WA Posts: 189	Free web hosting for firearms-related + Pro-RKBA organizations ? my idea... Okay guys... Here's a thought that popped into my head today, please bear with me while I explain the details. I'm owner of a fairly successful computer business, and would like to give something back to the firearms community. So much of my practical "book" knowledge has come from right here at The Firing Line, by lurking for months and reading everyone's posts. Also, sites such as Oleg Volk's and similar are a great source of moral support and inspiration. Gathering dust, serving no useful purpose, I have the following rackmount server: Intel SC450NX chassis and motherboard Triple-redundant 900W 2+1 120V power supply Redundant hot-swappable ventilation system Four Xeon 450MHz/1MB cache CPUs 1GB ECC Registered SDRAM, max 4GB Six Ultra2/LVD 80-pin SCA hot-swap SCSI HDD bays Two 100BaseT 32-bit/33MHz PCI Intel Ethernet interfaces a plain vanilla server-class VGA video card Adaptec or LSI (not decided yet) Ultra2/LVD 80MB/sec RAID controller An undetermined amount of HDD space (hard drives yet to be purchased, probably two or four 18GB 10K rpm U2/LVD units at $85 each) The unit itself is a 7U rackmount system, designed for standard 19" racks. It weighs about 95 pounds and will mount in any standard colocation cabinet. The SC450NX ( http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...NQAz&q=sc450nx ) is a real beast of a server. I would like to offer free web hosting for a wide range of reputeable firearms businesses and organizations, but I'm lacking one very important thing: BANDWIDTH. Colocation of this server on a 1Mbps connection (100KB/second constant, each direction) would be a rather expensive proposition to purchase commercially. I know some of you have jobs very similar to mine in the computer industry, and thought that somebody might be able to help out with this project. From the "Photo of you and your gun" thread, I recall seeing somebody with their pistol and six or eight racks full of gear in the background. So here's the proposition: I can permanently loan the server (it has no other purpose and is excess inventory) and software setup (Secured FreeBSD 4.x-STABLE + Apache + mod_php + misc), plus remote administration and general "customer service" time... But only if I can find somebody reputeable with bandwidth to donate. Even a 50KB/sec constant connection in a decently fast colocation facility costs upwards of $300/month. If one of you (for example) happens to be a network administrator in an office with a unrestricted T1 mostly used for downstream traffic, it may be possible to host the system and throttle it to a fixed upstream speed limit. There's tons of spare bandwidth out there to be had, judging by the number of geeks secretly running 10Mbps "warez" sites and similar shady things off their company's network without knowledge. This would, of course, have to be completely above-board and legit, so I'd like to avoid hiding the server and hoping that nobody notices its traffic. Particularly considering the politically sensitive content that would be hosted on it... The actual content hosting rules would be similar to these (extremely rough draft, suggestions welcomed) Content must support the RKBA and 2A Content may be either commercial in nature, charity, or hobby Content must not advocate any racist sociopolitical viewpoints, including but not limited to neo-naziism etc. Content should advocate the responsible and mature ownership and handling of all firearms and other weapons. Content must not be pornographic or grossly obscene Resources of the server should not be monopolized excessively by one account to the detriment of other hosted organizations. Content should remain largely firearms related, at the discretion of the three people with root access to the server. I would like this last "guns-related, please" content rule to be very flexible dependent on how heavily loaded the server becomes, bandwidth available, and general demand. Obviously in a high-traffic situation we would stick to purely firearms related content. But if excess resources exist and are plentiful, hosting of content which strays a bit from the core purpose could be OK too. Basically, all very common sense stuff. Root passwords to the unit would be held by three people. Myself, my chief software engineer (who would set up Apache + PHP + MySQL), and whoever we can find to donate a network connection. Web hosting will be handled in the standard way, by an FTP account for site file access/uploads and vhosts for TLD domain access). Depending on server load we could also set up POP3/SMTP daemons and similar services. The sort of sites I would like to host (on the non-profit side) would be similar to JPFO or Oleg. On the for-profit side, websites similar to Hans Vang's are perfect for this sort of thing. Mr. Vang's web site (just as an example) isn't full of large multimedia content, won't occupy much disk space, doesn't require weird Apache extensions, and can be easily managed. Private individuals would, hopefully (depending on how much bandwidth we can get) be welcome as well, providing that their content is directly related to firearms in some way. If a site ever became extremely successful and high-traffic, we might have to arrange for alternative low-cost commercial hosting in order to maintain and balance overall server speed for others hosted. If any of you would like to discuss this idea further, have suggestions/comments, or just want to chew the fat, please feel free to get in touch with me by e-mail. Here's my address, and web site (more company info on the website) Eric K. [email protected] http://www.fnordsystems.com