<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">All the cool kids have a cloud, so we should have one too!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Announcing <a href="http://LARRIKIN.ORG" class="">LARRIKIN.ORG</a> - the Self cloud (tada!)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">NBAQ: (Never Before Asked Questions)</div><div class="">------------------------------------</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* What is it?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">A cluster of Linux images which you can run Self snapshots on. When I say cluster, I mean two, currently small instances on Digital Ocean. Each Linux instance can run multiple Self worlds. A coodinator at <a href="https://manager.larrikin.org" class="">https://manager.larrikin.org</a> keeps track of stuff. It is much simpler than the big clouds but also has obvious drawbacks. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* How does it work?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You go to <a href="https://manager.larrikin.org" class="">https://manager.larrikin.org</a> and sign up, then you can upload, download, wake, sleep, delete etc snapshots. You will need the secret Self mailing list invitation: "ourselves"</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* How do I interact with my running Self world?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">You can interact with the stdin/stdout of your Self world through the manager. Also, if you run a webserver in your Self world on port 8000 then it will be exposed the web on port 80 of <a href="http://worldname.username.larrikin.org" class="">http://worldname.username.larrikin.org</a> I’m working on allowing people to point other domain names to their worlds. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* Why didn't you just use OpenStack/Docker/Puppet/CoreOS/Mesos/Vagrant/Zookeeper</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I don't even know what these things are but they sound fiendlishly complex. Seriously though, cluster of two machines, remember? Some of these might become relevant if I end up trying to run many many snapshots over many instances. I am a bear of very little brain and long words bother me, so I've tried to keep moving parts to a minimum. Current moving parts are: Self, Centos 7, DigitalOcean, Amazon Route 53, nginx, FireJail and a very little python.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* <a href="http://Larrikin.org" class="">Larrikin.org</a>?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Shug. I happened to have the domain name. I'll move it to something better in due course.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">* For the love of all that is good and holy, why?</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">To meet the large un-met demand for cloud hosting of Self snapshots, of course!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Ground Rules:</div><div class="">-------------</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I. Your running worlds are in a sandbox and shouldn't be able to do anything harmful. Please try and let me know if you succeed in breaking anything!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">II. The system may restart your running worlds at any time without warning, so if you are running, for example, a webserver make sure it starts up when the snapshot starts.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">III. If you save your snapshot the system should keep track of the change. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">IV. If you look around you will see your snapshot is able to read and write files to disk. These files will disappear every snapshot restart so don't rely on them.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">V. Even with very small TTL values, DNS sometimes takes time to propogate so if your webserver isn’t immediately available that is probably why. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">VI. This is just for fun! Don't do anything which you care too much about without talking to me first because as far as I know the code has a bug which will send all your data to the NSA, eat all your snapshots, then burn down the data centre.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">VIII. Please please USE A UNIQUE PASSWORD to access the system. That way when the hackers break in they won't be able to use that password on your Top Secret Important Account.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">:) Russell</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>