How to configure a private proxy on your VPS
Note committed on 15 November 2007, tagged hosting, proxy, vps
VPS hosting is very configurable. One can do things that were not imaginable before. One of such cool things is your own private proxy server.
Whether you need to do some things anonymously in internet, or you want to see how does a landing page looks, of an affiliate marketing offer, accessible only from a country you are not living in, but your VPS server is...
This is exactly the situation a felt myself in last couple of weeks, I was using internet proxy web pages, like hacksurfing.com or any other, but they are not always working correctly. Imagine, that the affiliate redirect link contains a little more complicated redirecting link done in javascript, which is far too much for hacksurfing to parse, and there is completely nothing you can do about that. (If you don't have a VPS, of course)
Lately I've been trying to find out how to configure a proxy on my JaguarPC VPS.
I have found some articles on internet but they were too common for me.
Here is a complete solution for you...
Configuration of apache private proxy on VPS
On JaguarPC VPS we have apache httpd service, and I think this private proxy configuration will work for anyone with apache. I have a plesk configuration, but I guess that doesn't matter, the private proxy is configured at apache level.
vi your apache configuration file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
find the proxy section which starts with ‹IfModule mod_proxy.c›. If you are reading this article, then probably that whole section in that file is commented out. Uncomment it. That's it, for a first step.
But...
It might not be wise to leave this proxy open to everyone, because it will be immediately used by hackers to hide their identity and do their evil plans :). Who will be guilty in this case? You, of course!
So we have to add this code: "Allow from 127.0.0.1" into that section. Meaning that traffic is allowed from local host only.
restart the httpd deamon: "apachectl -k restart"
Here is how that private proxy configuration section should look at the end:
ProxyRequests On
‹Proxy *›
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
‹/Proxy›
ProxyVia Block
‹/IfModule›
note that I used ProxyVia Block, which tells the private proxy server not to tell anyone that it is a proxy. I don't really know whether it's really important, but I like things look real :)
We are going to access the proxy via ssh tunnel, using a ssh program that supports tunnels. I always recommend putty, it really has everything!
So, open PuTTY, type your vps server's name in the host and go to tunnels section of putty's interface. Configure the tunnel so it maps your local port, let's say 8080, to remote http port: 80.
it should read:
source port: 8080
destination: localhost:80
When you connect to your VPS server with these settings, it will create a secure data tunnel, which we will use to access our private proxy configured at our VPS.
In your web browser, go to proxy servers configuration and type localhost:8080 as the proxy server name.
That's it!
When you visit some page, your browser goes through the secure tunnel made between putty and vps, then the data comes out of the tunnel at remote port 80, which is then correctly handled by the private proxy we've configured before!
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Choosing the right VPS plan: Jaguar PC hosting, VPS review (VPS discovery plan)
Note committed on 24 September 2007, tagged hosting, vps
A few words about hosting again, this time about JaguarPC
During last two years I have been jumping from one hosting company to another and actually I've got pretty tired of that. Through all this time my own personal development in the field of internet money making was actively progressing especially during last half a year, resulting in a very comfortable state, when the sites I am dealing with are finally able to pay for themselves, so I have decided that these sites can afford themselves something better.
Cyber Ultra Network was the best hosting so far and still is, their price/performance level was superb, so I am still recommending them to everybody who is searching for a good shared inexpensive hosting... It has a lot of features and still not expensive (3.95$/month)
As I needed more control and also perfect uptime (say, 99.99% a year), the idea of some good VPS hosting was always flying above me, so during last three months I was actively researching this area of internet.
That wasn't an easy task - the market is full of VPS hosting providers!
Another thing is that I had no idea what kind of difficulties I could ran into after I would transfer my sites to VPS, but man, sooner or later it had to happen! So after a lot of research there was a winner
And the winner was the JaguarPC Hosting Company and their VPS discovery plan.
They are affordable, they had mostly good recommendations and what I liked the most, they have their own helping community! This is the only web hosting company I have seen, that has this feature.
The last drop for me was the promotion they had for the last week of august, which I almost missed, there was only two days left but yes, that has really made the final drop.
Originally for the price 19.97$ per month you get fully managed service, 10Gb of space on hard drive, 150Gb bandwidth, 128Mb RAM and 100% uptime guarantee.
The promotional package was a "little" better: 192Mb RAM, 20 Gb HDD and two free months. Impressive? I thought so too, so I decided to try and if something goes wrong they have 30 days moneyback guarantee.
First two weeks I was playing a bit here and there, trying the shiny new VPS, exploring plesk panel and checking whether I could do at least the same I could do in my shared hosting account.
The overall impression is like you own your own server somewhere there on the other side of the world (I live in Europe). You can do whatever you like and nobody on the same physical server hosted together with your account can influence you either by memory, bandwidth or even processor. The response time comparing with shared hosting is superb. Database speed is unbelievable. I am hosting a number of Drupal sites including this one and I can say they are flying now!
By default JaguarPC gives you 3 dedicated IPS, and you can do anything with them! Typically one IP is for hosting and the other two are for your own private name servers. That was something new for me. With the private name servers you can do any DNS operations including setting all DNS records (A, MX, etc) and even changing their life time, very useful when you plan some big change!
That is the power, I personally think that I can not live without anymore!..
I have moved all my sites to this VPS hosting and so far the functionality, quality and also support team were very good. If I exclude the downtime caused by my own lack of DNS knowledge the sites have had 100% uptime.
If you liked this VPS review and want to try yourself in "god mode" :) My recommendations!. You'll definitely like it!
Updated. They have a promotion again! It is even better than the package I currently have. It includes: 25 GB diskspace, 300 MB bandwidth, double guaranteed RAM (256 MB) for -10% of price ($17.97 /month), (I am talking about beginner's package, there are more). The promotion expires pretty soon, so try it now, especially if you're new to VPS! (Use JaguarPC coupon code "VPS10YRS")
Please feel free to ask questions, as the person who has learned something a month ago will answer them more enthusiastically than the one that had been using VPS for years! :)
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Cyber Ultra Positive Hosting Review
Note committed on 24 August 2007, tagged hosting
Since I went away from Servage, I have looked through a lot of different hosting services.
The key points I was looking for:
- relatively cheap hosting: we are a non-profit organization and I am not a guru in web pages building;
- ssh access: that is a must if you want to do something quickly and least painful. Ftp is not ok anymore.
- rich statistics: awstats and alike is OK
- guaranteed uptime: if it is stated to be 99.98%, it should be guaranteed.
I didn't need some overwhelming space and bandwidth (which as you can see, are a big lie at some "nice" hostings, just a reasonable number I can really live with.
I finally found such a company, which doesn't advertise itself too much in the internet and has all the things that I want from the hosting company - it is Cyber Ultra! My projects are living with them for about half a year and I am completely satisfied. With both uptime and price.
Their guaranteed uptime is 99% (which is more or less OK for me) but 1% of probable downtime gets reflected in their price, it is just 3 EUR/month. Their actual uptime was 100% during past two months, and slightly below 100% before.
CyberUltra has SSH, cPanel, and therefore complete control over everything.
This is my third hosting company and I think they are simply the best!
P.S. Pity they don't have affiliate program, this post could bring me some additional credits :)
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Servage hosting review
Note committed on 11 April 2007, tagged hosting
Strange, but I have to start first message in the new blog with some bad words about bad hosting experience I've had. Hopefully someone will read this Servage review and learn on my mistake, saving his nerves and money.
Originally I have posted it in some web hosting reviews, but I guess there is no truly centralized place for that, so one more time...
You will finally regret that you've listened to "servage is great"-kind opinions (probably written by Servage themselves) on the review forums.
I have had a lot of problems with Servage.
First I thought they were just normal time to time issues, but users of our website were complaining the site is unavailable so often, that I have finally subscribed to a website monitoring service.
I found out that their uptime is about 97%. This is outrageous, considering that they claim 99.98% uptime. 3% of downtime is one day per month!
Besides:
- their promised Terabytes of monthly bandwidth is a big LIE! After I’ve transferred my website to another hosting, the daily bandwidth usage changed from 400-1200 mb/day down to normal 30-150 mb/day (looks like Servage’s megabyte contains less bytes or something :)
- which i guess is the reason why they don't use some normal control panel like cpanel, because these lies would appear to everyone immediately
- database is located on other hosts than the web server, which makes the pages load at least 1-5s. Very often the database is just down. One month I myself have experienced such issues seven times (pity it cannot be checked easily by some web monitoring service, I’m sure it would discover even more issues, that are not counted in the 97% of their real uptime)
- other relatively less important issues that are nevertheless making life harder
Their replies for downtime problems were different. Some of them were really ridiculous:
Servage - Allan: “First of all the 99.98% is an average of all our servers. Some have 100% uptime, some may have a little less.”
I was experiencing this “a little less” too much of a time. Besides, when customer comes to a hosting service he sees that the uptime will be no less than 99.98% for their service. That would be the reason why someone would select more expensive Servage over some cheaper hosting companies that guarantee just 99%. But in their case it doesn’t matter, Servage doesn’t have rules to follow.
This one is even better:
Servage - Allan: “We can move your account to another cluster if you are not satisfied with the current cluster, but i do not think it will make a big difference.”
I guess they think it IS helpful.
They have confirmed that their downtime was far from OK, which already breaks the hosting services agreement, but they refused to make moneyback or even at least partial refund. Instead they replied with:
Servage - Steffan: “I have added one free month more - it is really the best I can do..”
Another free month of shame... no, thank you, Servage.
Think twice before going to Servage, don't repeat my mistake!
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