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Excito in bankruptcy

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Gordon
Posts: 1461
Joined: 10 Aug 2011, 03:18

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by Gordon »

In theory I guess it could be possible to have two 'bubbae' act as name servers but in fact only run iproute2 to balance the load across the actual name servers. Synchronizing those other servers could be something of an issue however. I remember a problem not too long ago where ns2 stopped receiving updates and easyfind was crippled - and that's only two servers involved. Responsiveness could be an issue as well: what if the owner of such a bubba is streaming video or music, or is running a p2p daemon? Can the bubba in this case still handle say a thousand DNS requests per minute? Will it actually do so if it was dedicated to this purpose?

Questions questions... How many bubbae are actually around? And how much traffic do they generate on the individual components of the easyfind service?

PS It doesn't have to cost $65 for something like an FTP server on a fixed IP to simulate a DNS server. I own my own domain for just €5-6 per year and use a web form to edit server names and IP addresses in my domain. Someone with enough understanding of python and/or perl could simply write a script to automate updating their IP address, and in fact a name service provider might even provide such a script himself.
DanielM
Posts: 637
Joined: 28 Mar 2008, 06:37
Location: Sweden

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by DanielM »

Gordon wrote:PS It doesn't have to cost $65 for something like an FTP server on a fixed IP to simulate a DNS server. I own my own domain for just €5-6 per year and use a web form to edit server names and IP addresses in my domain. Someone with enough understanding of python and/or perl could simply write a script to automate updating their IP address, and in fact a name service provider might even provide such a script himself.
I also have my own domain (.se) and I'm simply using ddclient to update dns when my IP changes. Costs me 99 SEK per year. It's such a simple solution that I've never really understood the point with easyfind.

/Daniel
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by Ubi »

I think the install base is around 10^4-10^5. The thing was (I guess) that the install base was aimed by excito to be a lot larger, and a solution was needed that was independent on the ISP of the user. Still, 10000 machines updating the same recordset in a DNS *every minute* may be viewed by any ISP as a dos attack. As I mentioned, I don't need easyfind either, but fact is that a lot of other users do seem to use this functionality.

My guess is that copying the infra to a different system could yield a >95% quality for <5% cost. There has been one user that uses easyfind and indicated commitment to maintaining this in the future, I hope there will be more. I can offer infrastructure to host it, but I won't be leaving my Christmas dinner to maintain easyfind when it dies all of a sudden.

In short, I think the commitment to maintain easyfind should come from those that actually use it.
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by johannes »

Just a short notice on the interval, we had reports from some users that ISP's had leased as short as hours (less than 24). We planned a dynamic ping interval (self-adjusting) to keep average load down but never got that far. However, the ping is very efficient, server is responding with a very short json string, so the server load is very low. Heavy server work does not happen until B2/B3 actually detects an IP change.
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by Ubi »

ok

I'm currently working to copy easyfind.excito.org (which is the same as ns1). But I do not understand the current reporrts of easyfind being down. Everything seems to work fine with the caveat that I cannot check production.excito.org and I cant find log files on ns1...
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by Ubi »

ah yes what fun, the production ceritificate expired last week :(. Easy to fix, except there also needs to be a client cert at ns1 which also expired last week.


There is a theoretical possibility that ns1 and production may talk to each other over http as well, but I have no idea how to test this
LarsH
Posts: 16
Joined: 16 May 2013, 10:55

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by LarsH »

If there are 10000 machines running. How many of these would be interested to pay x euro/year for keeping this infrastucture alive?. And another thing B3 needs to be updated, how much will that cost ? Once again 10000 machines.... Could we pay y euro for this ? We need to disguess this before the excelent knowledge from Excito is lost.
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by johannes »

I don't have exact figures, but we sold somewhere around 5000 B3's, and a few less B2's. I would guess (fermat estimation) around 50% of those are still running, and maybe 50% of those runnign easyfind. Which would mean something like 2k depending on Easyfind, and perhaps 5k depending on security updates.

We could perhaps start some common fund, with voluntary pitch-ins? I would certainly pitch in.
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
LarsH
Posts: 16
Joined: 16 May 2013, 10:55

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by LarsH »

I would also be interested to pitch in
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by Ubi »

At this moment I am taking the initiatives to rescue the excito infra and think of a smooth transition. Anyone with skills is very welcome to chip in. Unfortunately there is little time for training and hand holding but I'll do my best to assist anyone trying to help. Pm me or mail joris-at-ideeel.net if you're interested.

As for money, yes, taking over the infra will have a cost, in the very least from non-billable hours to paid work. I may be able to perform the hosting at minimal expenses, but they will not be as rocksolid as the excito solution. But I'm not going to send everyone bills for 1 dollar either. Maybe we can set up a form of micropayments to cover cost at some stage, but again, priority is getting the infrastructure safe.
mmmark
Posts: 3
Joined: 24 Jun 2014, 08:50

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by mmmark »

I just wanted to say thank you for creating the Bubba, and I hope everyone associated with Excito is able to move on to new and exciting projects. I'm sorry that Excito wasn't able to continue as a going concern, I've had nothing but good experiences with your products.
Ubi
Posts: 1549
Joined: 17 Jul 2007, 09:01

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by Ubi »

So here's the idea. Below is the current infra for excito.org. Each green box represents an independent server. Each purple box is a database. The arrows indicate information streams. (for some reason the images may be truncated, but clicking sometimes helps.
Dia1.jpg
Dia1.jpg (22.22 KiB) Viewed 58669 times
That's alot of servers, which IMO is not really required. The idea now is to consolidate into two independent machines, one with the complete easyfind structure, and one with backup DNS and the forum/wiki and repos:
Dia2.jpg
Dia2.jpg (26.17 KiB) Viewed 58669 times
Most of the machines are cPanel or AWS VMs (i.e. the boot is done outside the machine and cannot be copied) so te machines need to be recreated. I have made snapshots of the disks and the databases already.

The real work coms from the inconsistent implementation. In easyfind there is a combination of PHP on nginx and apache with rails (running through passenger). Also there are a web of certificates (which expire and cause outage of easyfind, as we now had at least twice). I don't see a point in running these simple lookups over 3 servers.

Anyway, this is my proposal. I'm looking forward to constructive feedback and suggestions.
LarsH
Posts: 16
Joined: 16 May 2013, 10:55

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by LarsH »

Johannes, the security updates that is neccesary. Who has the skills for this ?
Johannes, can you do this or a previous Excito employed or who ?
MouettE
Site admin
Posts: 341
Joined: 06 Oct 2011, 19:45

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by MouettE »

LarsH wrote:Johannes, the security updates that is neccesary. Who has the skills for this ?
Johannes, can you do this or a previous Excito employed or who ?
Maybe you could learn to do it too... Or offer help on a different subject...
johannes
Posts: 1470
Joined: 31 Dec 2006, 07:12
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: Excito in bankruptcy

Post by johannes »

I would personally not know where to start, and noone at Excito knows how to. They could learn I guess, but right now they have other things to take care about in the bankruptcy, so I'm sorry but there is not much we can do.

Please check: http://wiki.mybubba.org/wiki/index.php?title=Security though, this community is fantastic! :)
/Johannes (Excito co-founder a long time ago, but now I'm just Johannes)
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