Rejoice! MetalVPS accounts might still be available!

Hello again from MetalVPS.com a/k/a Tom Miller a/k/a @Not_Oles a/k/a the clueless™ guy!

Our wonderful piece of shite antique server, Darkstar, might have a few accounts still available.

Almost all Darkstar neighbors are and have been either computer professionals or diligent students.

We especially are looking for new Darkstar neighbors who know vastly more than @Not_Oles and who are willing to pay for the privilege of trying to teach a clueless™ guy. If you are qualified for and enthusiastic about this exceedingly difficult task, please send an email to the address on @Not_Oles‘ LET profile. Alternatively, a PM is okay too.

If you are a student or a beginning beginner, you’re still definitely welcome! MetalVPS tries to pay it forward.

Free or lower priced accounts sometimes are available for advanced users, students, and others unable or reluctant to allocate the full $20.22 monthly fee. No payment is due from new neighbors until their accounts are fully set up and they are 100% satisfied. Payments may be made via Paypal or Stripe.

Please keep in mind:

• MetalVPS is White Hat!

• Delivery might take awhile!

• No warranty, to the extent permitted by applicable law. No service level agreement. Not for business use. Intended especially for computer learning and fun!

• MetalVPS has no onboarding, no knowledge base, no customer management system, and no VPS install hypervisor.

• Today, Darkstar is running the full “everything” version of Slackware64-current.

• Slackware64-current requires reboots at least every week or ten days for kernel updates.

• Darkstar accounts are traditional shell accounts with a command line prompt on the node. From your shell you can set up a GUI and whatever else you want. If requested, and in addition to your shell account, Darkstar accounts can be delivered with a Debian sid VPS already set up and running.

• Darkstar has additional toys ready for you to use (and @Not_Oles would love for you to add more):

root@darkstar:~# ls /usr/local/src
expect/  gforth/  mtr/  netcat/  oksh/  qemu/  qemu-obj/  riscv-gnu-toolchain/  rlwrap/
root@darkstar:~# ls /opt
containerd/  docker/  docker-20.10.16.tgz
root@darkstar:~# 

• The riscv-gnu-toolchain was installed for MIT’s Operating Systems course. Darkstar can run Xv6.

• Darkstar has a separate 100G /altroot primary partition just begging for debootstrap, LinuxFromScratch, and friends.

• Darkstar neighbors often (but not always) get full root access. iLO access can be arranged. Other MetalVPSians can see your account name, some or all of the processes you are running, and much other information, maybe even everything. So, please do not put confidential information on Darkstar.

• Darkstar neighbors do their own backups . . . frequently, because . . . Darkstar is ephemeral!

• Darkstar node specs:

  — Server: HP BL460c G6

  — CPU: 2 x Xeon L5630 4-Core = 8 cores = 16 threads

  — RAM: 48 GB DDR3 ECC

  — Hard Drive: 2 x 400GB SAS SSD, Hardware RAID 1

  — IP Addresses: IPv4/29, IPv6/64

  — Connection: 1 GBit/s port

  — Bandwidth: 10 TB

  — Datacenter: Colocated with Level One Servers inside Carrier-1, Dallas, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

• Please check MetalVPS.com or comment here if you need additional information!

Thanks very much!