Category Archives: RootBSD
An Introduction to the RootBSD Knowledgebase
Date published: July 6th, 2009
Posted in Announcements, RootBSD, VPS | No Comments »
For a while now RootBSD has maintained a modest knowledgebase for its customers which is accessible by clicking Support from our website. Here you will find answers to questions that are common in support tickets, as well as information about procedures concerning your VPS. We just recently added a new entry titled Getting started with your VPS which gives some pointers to getting familiar with your new FreeBSD VPS.
We would like to expand our knowledgebase to include more in-depth information as well as new information that could be of use to our customers. We’d love to hear about your thoughts and ideas as to what would be good to have articles about, as well as how we can improve any existing content. Feel free to leave a comment on this post or, if you’d prefer, just open a support ticket with us to share your opinions.
Another look at FreeBSD 8
Date published: June 24th, 2009
Posted in FreeBSD, RootBSD, VPS | No Comments »
A customer recently linked us to a blog post, http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd8.html (link broken as of 02/28/2016), that gives a really good look at what there is to come in the up-and-coming version 8 of the FreeBSD operating system. It looks like the FreeBSD developers have been busy and there are a number of new features which caught our eye.
First, as a company which provides FreeBSD VPSs running on Xen the support for running FreeBSD as a paravirtualized guest in Xen is of major interest to us. We currently run our VPSs using Xen’s support for full virtualization (known as HVM mode in Xen lingo). This mode allows unmodified guest operating systems to run in Xen and is, most familarly, how Windows is support in Xen. Paravirtualized guests however, are ported to run within the Xen hypervisor, and since the guest is designed to operate in Xen and cooperate with the hypervisor the guest can run much more efficiently and quickly. To our customers the greatest boost in performance will be seen in disk and network throughput so we are eagerly anticipating this support in FreeBSD 8.
By the looks of it there will be other improvements in almost every part of FreeBSD. The ULE scheduler which first appeared in FreeBSD 7.0 and became the default with 7.1 has received a number of improvements which will boost performance particularly for the SMP configurations that ULE was designed to handle. The inclusion of stack-smashing protection also gives FreeBSD an edge in security by protecting the system from a number of common exploits used to attack software vulnerabilities. Light weight kernel threads are also to appear in FreeBSD 8 which will mean that kernel threads will consume less resources and be less resource intensive to create and destroy.
Seems like FreeBSD 8 will be another great release for our favorite operating system. For a look at all the other features planned for FreeBSD 8 see the original post at http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd8.html (link broken as of 02/28/2016).
Versions 1.0, the first easy to use Subversion Mac client
Date published: February 3rd, 2009
Posted in Misc, RootBSD | 1 Comment »
One of our customers, Sofa, recently released the first easy to use Subversion client for the Mac, named Versions. Version control is a critical piece to software development projects, and the tools and processes to handle versioning have often been pain points for development teams. The ability to easily visualize commits, notes and changes that Versions offers is a big step forward for Mac developers.
A time-limited demo is available for free download and a single copy sells for 39 euros. Versions has been in public beta since June of 2008. You can view the press release here or read more at the Unofficial Apple Weblog.
The registration system for Versions is hosted on a FreeBSD Virtual Private Server at RootBSD. The flexibility that RootBSD’s VPS service offers allowed administrators to upgrade their VPS in a matter of minutes to handle increased server load at the release date.
Buildasearch lets users build search engines
Date published: September 24th, 2008
Posted in RootBSD | 1 Comment »
Buildasearch.com is a new website that lets anyone quickly build their own customized search engine. By signing up for a free account, users can quickly configure and customize their own search engine that can be used to search a predefined list of websites.
Besides just harvesting the power of big search engines, Buildasearch.com lets users easily customize the look and feel of their search engine. An easy-to-use AJAX web interface allows users to tailor the search engine’s color scheme and logo to blend in with an existing website. When it comes to integrating the search engine, a webmaster can either link to it on Buildasearch.com’s server or use a sample PHP API to include it on a standalone website.
Buildasearch.com is powered by a FreeBSD VPS provided by RootBSD. “The RootBSD service has been excellent, and the Xen-powered VPS has handled our site’s load very well,” said Diego Montalvo, creator of Buildasearch.