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Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

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Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All you need to store this kind of data is a simple file. You mostly likely need a WAL Mode SQLite database. Most of the time, it's way simpler that handling state handling in concurrent situations yourself. (also, bindings are often available - if not outright bundled by default - under most common languages) The "easy" way is all fun and games until your file is accessed in a concurrent fashion, and then your opt…

It can be much simpler if you're willing to write a couple lines of assembler: use an 8-byte file that contains one 64-bit counter, mmap() it, mlock() it, and use atomic CPU instructions to increment and read it.

Genuine question: Does it have to be mlocked for this to work?

Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#92
post #34

24 years is not actually THAT old... The cpu (AMD K6-2 300 MHz) is a lot faster than a raspberry pi 1 for many things, it has 512mb of ram, so for running a simple webpage, it should still work good enough. edit: especially with cloudflare infront of it...

Yes, around that time (circa 1999) there was the matchbox web server ar Stanford with much lower capabilities (as hardware): https://web.archive.org/web/19991128033948/http://wearables.... >The Matchbox Webserver, which is serving this and the other web pages to you, is a single-board AMD 486-SX computer with a 66 MHz CPU, 16 MB RAM, and 16 MB flash ROM, big enough to hold a useful amount of RedHat 5.2 Linux includin…

There were micro Linux released on floppies such as basic Linux and mulinux.

Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All you need to store this kind of data is a simple file. You mostly likely need a WAL Mode SQLite database. Most of the time, it's way simpler that handling state handling in concurrent situations yourself. (also, bindings are often available - if not outright bundled by default - under most common languages) The "easy" way is all fun and games until your file is accessed in a concurrent fashion, and then your opt…

> b) just write blindly to file and pretend concurrecy doesn't exist This is likely what was done. Nobody really cares if a hit counter on a web page loses a few updates.

Given it's a single-threaded CPU, there's a fair chance the web server isn't concurrent anyway.

Linux got proper POSIX thread support with NPTL only in 2002.

Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder if kids today have similar thoughts I'm sure that some do, and most don't. Most kids 30 years ago didn't have similar thoughts either. Few people are meant to be programmers, engineers, etc. Were you not shunned as a nerd for having an interest in how computers worked?

> Were you not shunned as a nerd for having an interest in how computers worked? I certainly wasn’t in the 10s. Usually people would come to me and my nerd buddies for PC building advice, smartphone advice, and of course the occasional “can you pirate this for me” request ;)

I think the early-00s was when it started to shift from something stigmatized to something that a person could be into and still be cool—or, at least, not regarded as automatically weird. By 2010 the shift was basically done, and The Great Techbro Wave was washing over the industry.

It's been super weird to watch the common idea of a computer person shift from someone with bad skin and shit posture in a pit-stained button-up and thick-rimmed glasses and who rarely sees the sun, to a trim, decent-looking person who's into rock climbing and wears lots of new, clean clothes from Patagonia. It was a really fast transition, in hindsight.

Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#96

* Guestbook: check * Animated gif: check * View counter: check * Repeating background image: check * Mobile? What's that? : check Those were the days.

* Asking to bookmark because search engines weren't great

("We recommend that you bookmark this site so that it is easy to access in the future.")

check

Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#97

I remember how magical and mysterious a view counter used to feel when I was a kid. How did the website know when someone visited it? Where was the count stored? And how on earth could a website update its own HTML to show the new count? Geocities days were magical. I wonder if kids today have similar thoughts about Twitter profiles and such. It’s probably much easier to pick up the knowledge — back then, it was balk…

[dead]

Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing this in modern times would be so complicated. No, it wouldn't. All you need to store this kind of data is a simple file. Most people would probably use PHP for something like that due to its ubiquity, but it could even be a few lines of bash, or Python, or Go, or whatever...

> All you need to store this kind of data is a simple file. You mostly likely need a WAL Mode SQLite database. Most of the time, it's way simpler that handling state handling in concurrent situations yourself. (also, bindings are often available - if not outright bundled by default - under most common languages) The "easy" way is all fun and games until your file is accessed in a concurrent fashion, and then your opt…

You can do (c) in python with flock

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.flock.php

Re: Website hosted on a 24 year old Linux server

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Were you not shunned as a nerd for having an interest in how computers worked? I certainly wasn’t in the 10s. Usually people would come to me and my nerd buddies for PC building advice, smartphone advice, and of course the occasional “can you pirate this for me” request ;)

I think the early-00s was when it started to shift from something stigmatized to something that a person could be into and still be cool—or, at least, not regarded as automatically weird. By 2010 the shift was basically done, and The Great Techbro Wave was washing over the industry. It's been super weird to watch the common idea of a computer person shift from someone with bad skin and shit posture in a pit-stained b…

Back when I was in college in the mid-00s and TheFacebook was cool, because it was still limited to people with .edu email addresses from top-tier and Boston-area schools, I remember a group named "I'm a Computer Science Major and I Shower Regularly." I joined it even though I probably didn't shower regularly enough.

(For those who didn't have access to TheFacebook in those days, joining groups was part of how we expressed our political views, interests, sense of humor, etc. Groups had a name and a photo and a list of members and often served little other purpose.)

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