15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die(community.webminal.org)
158 pointsby giis7 hours ago19 comments
  • BLKNSLVR2 hours ago
    Old school internet. Internet done right.

    Great work giis.

    I haven't used it, I didn't know it existed until now, but I'm happy it exists and has been providing service to those who need it. There should be more of this.

    • giis2 hours ago
      Thanks, most of these came out restriction, we cant afford to throw money on horizontal scaling (adding more server,load server etc). So we kind of forced to try out new things to keep cost affordable. There are many thing left out on above doc: IIRC, we started with openvz and even today our security relies on SELinux, how we remapped user account creation with pre-existing templates for ext4 quota, we moved to xfs because of flexibility. Mysqldb quota/limits, fork bombs by college/school students bringing out docker environment. Old school internet is right term.
  • arjie5 hours ago
    That's wonderful and I know why it's an Indian founder. Was so hard to get a remote shell back then. Indian debit cards didn't work online reliably and so on. So what's the hardware underneath? Cloud server or on-prem?

    These days the world is amazing. Oracle Cloud gives you a ton for free. But perhaps there's some niche where this is useful. I have to say that this shared screen comms system is outrageously crazy, hahaha.

    • giis5 hours ago
      It began as on-prem, Freston hosted in his house (we shared server cost, some people called it crazy, because I sent money to someone I met in Linuxforums.org and never seen this person, even via internet, I trusted him because I know him for few years on that forum) After 3 years or so we moved on to cloud servers. Mostly switching from one infra and another if we get some credits :D Couple of years we had Linode sponsoring those nodes until its acquisition.

      >shared screen comms system is outrageously crazy,

      Thats Freston idea. I remember our typically chat begins with something like "Hey Laks, Can you see me typing!" ;)

  • mikkupikku2 hours ago
    To be fair. 8GB of ram is huge. I don't know, maybe I'm stuck in the early 00s but even 2 GB of ram still seems extravagant; I remember when that was an exotic amount of RAM for dedicated gamers to play extremely high fidelity games, so for a mere web server 8 GB of ram almost seems like absurd overkill. I still feel a tinge of shame whenever I see any software of my own using more than a few hundred megabytes. What a waste.
    • aduty2 hours ago
      I remember when 16 MB was considered a lot. Then again, I also remember when graphics acceleration was considered optional.
    • giis2 hours ago
      Until few days server ago was using 8GB and I did a cost cutting measure and its running on 4GB server for last week or so. :)
    • seethishatan hour ago
      The major difference, here, is this is intended for multiple users (not one person). Imaging 5,000 users all using the device at the same time. The amount of memory, open file handles, network connections, etc. for many users at once adds up.
    • andrewstuart11 minutes ago
      64K was huge when the Commodore 64 came along.
  • caijia4 hours ago
    UML is a smart call, and reminds me when I built an inventory and shift scheduling system on wordpress in 2017.

    somtimes the "wrong" / "old" tool for some job is exactly right for you if you really understand it. UML is old but fits here.

    15 years is long enough to call memory about a lot of things.

  • adamm25532 minutes ago
    The way the stack is described reminded me of this masterpiece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE9W9Ghe4Jk
  • harias6 hours ago
    It's been a while since I've used it but Google cloud shell is a good free platform for learning Linux commands as well

    https://shell.cloud.google.com

  • lvl1556 minutes ago
    You just might break that 10K visit from Spanish tech blog in 2017.
  • heyethan6 hours ago
    Feels like the real value here is zero setup.

    Even spinning up a VM can be enough friction for beginners. A browser shell is kind of “good enough” for that.

    Probably why tools like this keep sticking around. Wanna try.

  • internet_points4 hours ago
    All that on a single Github Sponsor[0].

    [0] https://github.com/sponsors/Lakshmipathi

  • andai5 hours ago
    This is so fascinating, I've never heard of UML!

    How many users can this support simultaneously? It says 256MB RAM per user, 8GB total on server? But it's probably more than 32 simultaneous users?

    • giis4 hours ago
      In past I have seen around 10 process, but I think with current setup, it could support around upto 20 UML. Remember this runs on the same server where others login and get their normal bash account too. So not a dedicated UML server.
  • Fire-Dragon-DoL6 hours ago
    Well that server is worth 1M due to the 8GB RAM now!
    • user342835 hours ago
      I wonder how much money went into the hosting over the years.

      A year ago I bought a Intel N100 Mini PC with 16 GB DDR5 RAM and a 512 GB SSD for $170.

      Maybe it could have hosted the site too. It's certainly a lot faster than Azure VMs with 4 "vCPUs".

      • PunchyHamsteran hour ago
        2x the cost of power is probably reasonable number to use
  • gchamonlive3 hours ago
    Would UML be similar to Incus running unprivileged VMs?
  • sudo_cowsay6 hours ago
    I've never tried Webminal (only used Linode for it's simplicity). But, it seems great. I'll probably try it out.
    • giis6 hours ago
      Sure thanks, Let me know if you have feedback.
      • sudo_cowsay3 hours ago
        I really like the ease of use of the site. It's also very clean. However, when you go into the Linux, there is a bit of latency (very noticeable). I know that it's impossible to remove the latency completely (it is what it is), but is there a way to slightly reduce it?
        • giis30 minutes ago
          There will be little latency if you access from different region. Server located at Singapore. From India, I checked right now directly via this link https://www.webminal.org/terminal/proxy/index/ I dont see much issue. I use firefox/chrome on Debian. May be try with different browser?
      • sudo_cowsay3 hours ago
        How does it only work on 8gb of RAM if it serves 500k users (albeit not all 500k at once)?
        • giis23 minutes ago
          Only UML is the resource consuming part kept as option available on request. Rest of them all shared Shellinabox, nginx,Flask and each active user session consumes little RAM since its a shared terminal. Simple `ls /home` shows all other users on that server!
  • actionfromafar5 hours ago
    User mode linux is so cool.
    • giis5 hours ago
      Yes, User mode linux pretty cool project. If I'm not wrong, UML is kind of predecessor to gvisor or firecracker from a different era.
  • kevinbaiv6 hours ago
    This is a good reminder that good enough + zero setup often beats more powerful solutions.
  • tuananh6 hours ago
    iximuiz also give you 1 hour per day free i think.

    very easy to use. almost instant.

  • fleroviumnaan hour ago
    [dead]
  • treysu6 hours ago
    [dead]
  • ramon1566 hours ago
    blegh, the content is interesting but i've grown numb towards AI speak. It's so generic that I lose interest halfway through.
    • andai5 hours ago
      Yeah, the content itself is amazing but the AI writing detracts from that. I'd much rather read broken English than GPT output.

      That being said I really enjoyed reading this, and I'm looking forward to trying it out.