Callandor

Linode

So for my personal Virtual Private Server, I chose Linode. I’ve had previous experience with them; LucidChat is hosted on a Linode in Dallas, Texas, and I’ve been root@lucidchat for the past 7 months. Linode is very price competetive, not too big, and offers great support. Debian is my Linux of choice, and that’s one of the many distributions Linode offers.

Signup for Linode is easy, but depending on time of day it may not be quick due to the manual steps involved on their end. How to sign up:

• Fill out sign up form
• Wait for e-mail, click link in e-mail (auto)
• Fill out personal information including payment details
• Wait for payment confirmation (auto)
• Wait for account activation (manual)
• Log in, choose datacenter. I chose the new Newark, NJ datacenter because it is less crowded (it literally opened today), isn’t Atlanta, and is closer than Texas.
• Go through the Distro Wizard.

I ordered at about 5:30 PM on a Saturday and was into my account by 6:00.

Background

I will be taking my existing server at home and moving most of its functions to the Linode. I’ll be moving my main Web, mail, etc to it. So I have config files already set up, but instead of blindly copying over I’ll be manually copying config lines over. I want to see what the defaults are again and what I’ve changed from them. I’ve already learned these config files once, but that was years ago and it can’t hurt to be reminded.

Linode Distribution Wizard

• Pick Debian. It’s the smallest sized install.
• I set a 128MB swap image, half the default. If the server is swapping it’s doing too much anyway.
• Deploy Linode!
• Wait for disk images to be created.

Next up: Getting the system usable.