Forum OpenACS Development: Why not TclHttpd which is lighter than OpenNSD?

Hi there,

I wonder which problems I will face with a Sun Cobalt RaQ4 (Linux
kernel 2.2)when installing another webserver than Apache ?

The server will be managed from a remote location.

Are there plans to support another webserver like TclHttpd or
http://tcl.apache.org ?

Quoted from http://tcl.activestate.com

..." interpreted nature of Tcl allows dynamic reconfiguration of the
server. Once the core interface between the web server and the
hosting application is defined, it is possible to manage the web
server, upload Safe-Tcl control scripts, download logging
information, and otherwise debug the Tcl part of the application
without restarting the hosting application"

Thanks.

Nes

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Posted by Don Baccus on
OpenNSD provides much more than a running Tcl interpreter.  It provides a rich API that's heavily used by the toolkit.  In order to use something like TclHttpd you'd have to replicate the nsd API, i.e. every procedure called "ns_something" used by OpenACS.

That's in essence what mod_aolserver for Apache does - it runs a Tcl interpreter and implements the API, which lets the ACS run under Apache.

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Posted by Nestor Loyola on
Thanks Don for your response.

I appreciate that.

After looking around searching by aolserver + hosting, I only found www.am.net which has 1999 prices info (and expensive compared to the average Linux/Apache market today)

Primehost.com doesn't longer exists unless as an public IP.

Where are going mere mortals for Aolserver hosting, ACS , openACS or openNSD hosting ?

Is it only for companies or individuals having in-house, dedicated or colocated servers ?

Otherwise it would be expected a highly growth rate of broadband "always on" installments as long mostly residential DSL is having wide coverage.

Does somebody shared (virtual) accountsin the same way as Apache has populated the hosting market mostly with robust, redundant and safe network facilities ?

Thanks.

Nes

Formerly question was
Why not TclHttpd which is lighter than OpenNSD?

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Posted by Don Baccus on
There aren't many who are offering AOLserver+PostgreSQL hosting, and those seem to be targetting "serious" users, i.e. those who are developing and intend to host a commercial service.

When I first ported the bboard module to Postgres, I ran a demo on an old Pentium 200 hooked up to my home DSL line.  It was enough to attract the curious and played a fairly large role in the establishment of the OpenACS project.

The current openacs.org site would run quite nicely on the same set-up, other than downloads where the relatively low bandwidth (256kbs up the line in my case) would be a pain.  But for neighborhood  community sites, small non-profits, etc a DSL line would work quite well.  Mine's very reliable.

Roberto runs his site on an old P166 or something like that.  It runs on University of Utah's network connection and that's a luxury, but the box itself is hardly an expensive one.

A step-up is co-location with a local ISP.  My main OpenACS-backed site sits at a local ISP and costs me $100/month.  That's not really all that bad.

So I guess the answer is that no, there's not much available in the way of low-end AOLserver+PostgreSQL hosting but that it's not really all that expensive to roll your own, either.

Nestor,

You might want to contact the folks at Furfly.

http://www.furfly.com/old/services.adp

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Posted by Mario P. Bontempi on
Hi Nestor,

if you take care of the AOLserver installation and help me out,
installing OpenACS for us too to test, I would give you free
hosting on our server for at leat one year.

Our hosting company is at http://www.igb.net.

Our server is a FreeBSD 4.2 box, co-located with
http://www.hopone.net/, double 1 Ghz cpus, 2 Gb memory, 5x36
Gb Raid disks.

We currently use Zeus as Web Server, and Communigate Pro as
Mail Server.

Let me know if you are interested.

Mario P. Bontempi
igb.net

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Posted by Steve Crossan on
Hi Nestor, everyone

We (Runtime Collective) are offering OpenACS hosting starting at $70/month (100MbHD space/50Mb PostgreSQL space/2.5Gb/month download burstable to 10Mb/sec) based at cybercon in St. Louis. Includes db level and ACS level maintenance - but not upgrades.

Hope this helps

Steve

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8: OpenACS hosting (response to 1)
Posted by Erik Rogneby on
I personally feel that OpenForce probably offers the highest quality OpenACS hosting on the market. Unless something has changed lately, they do application level managed hosting at a tier 1 provider.

Civilution (the company I am a part of) offers OpenACS hosting and support for it's clients.

I believe Furfly offers a sandbox type OpenACS hosting for developers. (someone please correct me if that is an inaccurate description)

As for the Cobalt RaQ servers, I think they are pretty much designed around Apache and to try to use them for something else is probably a mistake.

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Posted by Don Baccus on
That's an accurate description of furfly's development OpenACS hosting  service.  They're also willing to host productions sites on shared or dedicated servers, either PG or Oracle based.