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New! MIT's Xv6 Operating System Now Available At MetalVPS Labs! (March 18, 2022)
Originally published at https://lowendspirit.com/discussion/3912/new-mits-xv6-teaching-operating-system-now-available-at-metalvps-labs/p1 on March 18, 2022
Republished here on July 12, 2022 because this might have been the source for @yoursunny's plagiarized /s additional disclaimer suggestions for @FlorinMarian
Thanks to @yoursunny for his wonderful sense of humor and kindness to everyone.
Thanks yet again to @jbiloh for Freedom of Speech here on Low End Talk.
May we please say that MetalVPS base pricing continues at $20.22 per month? But people who cannot afford the base price are welcome to send their own discounted offers via LET PM or via the email on my LET profile. Even free accounts are not impossible. (@Not_Oles is retired from LES.)
Friendly greetings to all! 🗽🇺🇸🇲🇽🏜️🌎🌍
MetalVPS Labs continues! You are invited to join us!
Our Antique Server, Darkstar
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 🇺🇸
Node OS: Slackware64-current! 🤩
VM OS: Whatever you want via KVM or LXC!
KVM: Bleeding edge Qemu is sometimes updated, recompiled, and reinstalled on Darkstar. It's been tested with the latest Debian daily sid "nocloud" images. Debian seems to work well with additional IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for each VPS. We still haven't yet figured out why NetBSD and OpenBSD start, but do not complete, booting. If you are a BSD freak and a Qemu ace, please do stop by and give your neighbors a clue.
LXC: Comes built-in on Slackware64-current, so LXC is expected to be available, but hasn't yet been tested on Darkstar. 😎
Darkstar was installed with a separate 100 GB /altroot primary partition. /altroot is great for Linux from Scratch, Slackware from Scratch, debootstrap, and more. Of course, just running something in a Slackware chroot environment is equally fine.
What You Get
sshto shell account or VNC to GUI (KDE, Xfce, more) on Darkstar. You probably can spin up a few KVM VPSes or LXC containers. We have extra IPv4s and IPv6s waiting for you. Plus you can run MIT's Xv6 Teaching Operating System. Please see "Current Project," below.Reasonable access to all resources. No arbitrary limits. Reasonable access without arbitrary limits means, for example, that a single MetalVPSian could run more than one VPS, could use more than one IPv4 and IPv6, etc.
Currently there are four MetalVPSians including @Not_Oles. 🤩 As of this writing nobody is running any continuous services.
YABS
Posted here.
Upcoming Projects
Try to install Software for Open Networking in the Cloud (SONiC). Thanks to @yoursunny for suggesting this project.
Read a little more of Low-Level Programming by Igor Zhirkov.
Current Project
Darkstar already has Qemu to run VPSes. Here's Darkstar compiling the RISC-V GNU toolchain also needed for Xv6:
And here's Xv6 ready to go:
Pricing and How to Join
Please craft and send your own LES Exclusive custom discount offer. Offers sent together with coupon code "please" are more likely to be accepted.
Accounts may be requested by active members of the LES community and by others whose web presence or references are deemed sufficient by MetalVPS.
To request an account, please post here, PM @Not_Oles, or use the email on @Not_Oles' LES profile.
When and How to Pay
No payment is due until after your account is set up and you are 100% satisfied.
Payments available via Paypal or Stripe.
Warnings!
Clueless™ administrator! 😀 @Not_Oles frequently messes up! 😱
Hey! Darkstar runs Slackware64-current! 🤩
Sometimes trusted MetalVPSians might or might not get sudo. 🙈🙉🙊
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! 🤑
White Hat stuff only, please! No copyright violations, please. 👍
@Not_Oles tries to keep the system updated. Frequent maintenance reboots are guaranteed! It's horrifying 😱 or amazing ✨💖✨ how up-to-date Slackware64-current is! @Not_Oles has been updating almost every day for months, first on a VM on the former MetalVPS Hetzner node and now on Darkstar in Texas. Upstream issues an update, and -- within a day or two -- that update scrolls past while
slackpkg updateis running.Please make your own redundant, offsite backups! It's easy to download or sync or clone your backup to a safe place. Please also make sure that you actually can restore from your backups! Please think of your MetalVPS account as ephemeral! 🤦♂️
MetalVPS.com is an indie project of @Not_Oles a/k/a Tom Miller with help from the MetalVPSians. MetalVPS.com is neither a lowendspirit.com nor a leveloneservers.com project. 👨💻
Other MetalVPSians can see your account name, some of the processes you are running, and much other information. So, please do not put confidential information on the server. 🤔
What People Are Saying
- About MetalVPS
"MetalVPS used to be a high end provider, but it's becoming a sorority now."
"fun stuff indeed, appreciating the comfortable computing experience!"
"Nice trial and results! Very interesting 
"
"Wow pretty nice ! Congrats excellent options thanks for being a part of the community"
"the terms seemed exceptionally fair"
"Kernel Linux 5.11 is now in much better shape for AMD 
"
"Yes, please. I’ll take that."
"it's really quite dedicated. not all dedicated are the same."
"MetalVPS-AX101 has a reasonable price"
"really need a testing ground badly now especially with dedicated core"
"I've been using this one from him. Highly recommend! His support is really amazing!"
"Grab it while the hotel still has vacant rooms."
- About Not_Oles
"Really, you're the best person I've known on the internet."
"Thanks again to @Not_Oles for valiant testing."
"you've brought a smile on my face countless times "
"Good luck with your new project! 
Happy to have you around here!"
"I always love how you come up with new ideas Good luck, mate!
"May you continue to learn and inspire others."
"he is the sweetest guy in LES .."
"resplendent as the Sonoran Sun"
"every time I visit les and see that profile picture, it brightens up my day."
"As for the new administrator, I nominate @Not_Oles."
"I would love to see @Not_Oles as a moderator or a bigger role."
"I would also support @Not_Oles as admin "
Thanks
Thanks again and best wishes! 🇺🇸🗽🇲🇽🏜️🇩🇪👨💻
Comments
This is permitted because? @Not_Oles is a "Nice Guy"?
Coincidentally, I took a LevelOneServers storage server last week.
We are only a few meters away.
Touching Taint ™
That's nice! Welcome to the Neighborhood!
Heads up, people should expect an annual price increase.
Guaranteed!
Still no idea where this offer fits within the rules. Beside the whole moderator / advertising conflict of interest. Etc.
@Not_Oles - few discrepancies you may wish to clean up:
then, references to LES in the remainder of the post (?)
He is also a patron provider. I am also a member (as he is as well, and you of course). Having multiple roles is part of life when mods are volunteering their time in addition to being members, providers, etc...
If you see any conflict with the rules, please let me know, or feel free to contact any other admin/mod
Hi @bdl!
Above all, @bdl, I appreciate your stepping up with specific, positive suggestions. Thank you so much!
What's in the OP is an unchanged post which originally was published on LES on March 18, 2022.
The whole thing is a joke based on @yoursunny's "plagiarizing" my March 18 LES ad. @yoursunny offered a modified version of the warnings from this ad in his suggestion to @FlorinMarian that Forin's ads should contain similar warnings.
I think the whole thing is very amusing. I like @FlorinMarian. I think he's a great guy! I like @yoursunny too!
I admit that all this might be way too confusing for people who might not be familiar with either my past at LES or the "brotherly warfare concern" between @yoursunny and @FlorinMarian. So, apologies to you @bdl, and to anybody else who had trouble understanding.
The bottom line is:
MetalVPS still lives!
MetalVPS accounts are $20.22/month or cheaper or free.
People here can follow the links at the bottom of the reprinted LES ad to see the nice things folks over at LES said about me.
Thanks to @jbiloh we have free speech here at LET.
Happy Friday! Have a great weekend!
Thanks again, @bdl!
Tom
Just curious why anyone would actually want to run Xv6. I thought it was only intended as a teaching tool in how to write an OS.
One of the projects people do at the end of Xv6 is adding networking. I haven't looked for some years, but I remember there was a particular network stack which was popular for embedded systems. Folks were adding that networking stack to Xv6 and actually running it.
Probably you heard of another teaching operating system, Minix, which ended up being used inside a lot of Intel processors.
I always wanted to go through Xv6 very carefully and also learn some C. Somehow that hasn't happened. But hope remains. And now, Xv6 is all set up, ready to go on Darkstar.
Friendly greetings!
Having multiple roles may well be part of life, but conflicts of interest are usually avoided, particularly when commercial interests are involved.
Regarding conflict with the rules, in no way can the offer be perceived as a dedicated server, so the pricing is well above what is permitted.
If simply stating it is possible to propose a lower price and it may be agreed is sufficient to bypass the rules, then surely every provider can start doing this and have list prices as whatever they want.
I don't myself see the usefulness of this service, but one way to recuse such projects from the provider tag requirements would be to have a new tag such as "community project maintainer," and allow such services to be provided at any price starting from $0, with the community contributions being baselined at Not_Oles' current stats (2.5+ years of community involvement, 450 posts, 200 thanks.)
This would also allow Neoon to continue with their MicroLXC/NanoKVM projects and open up threads related to it, though I believe he'd want to do those on OGF. As far as scams are concerned, there's no way to prevent it without imposing more stringent requirements without disqualifying Not_Oles' project at the current price. But that has been a problem with the regular provider tag, FWIW.
Good afternoon!
You may have noticed additional servers mentioned in previous MetalVPS ad threads, for example, an E3-1275v5 and a Ryzen AX41-NVMe. These servers were available to MetalVPSians while I had them.
Just today, I received login credentials for another server inside Hurricane Electric's Fremont 2 datacenter. This one, a Dual E5-2630Lv2, will be fmt.metalvps.com. More after it's set up and working. Might take awhile.
Would people like adding an EX100 from Hetzner?
Best wishes! Thank you! 🚵
Tom
So, $20.22/month covers four server accounts?
In this case, this would count as a bundle deal of 4x VPS, and haters who cry and PMS over the price limit should shut up.
Last week, MetalVPSians had access to three servers: Darkstar, and the E3-127v5 plus the Ryzen 5 3600 AX41 from Hetzner. The E3 was nice. It was the cheapest auction server with dual NVMe disks. The AX41 had the ECC RAM option.
Today, the two Hetzner servers are recovered by Hetzner, but a new server has been added just today, and another -- the EX100 -- is being considered.
So, last week, 3 servers. Today, 1 server. In a day or two, 2 servers. I am just trying different servers. If people were using them I might not switch around so fast. I enjoy setting up the servers. But, if nobody is using them, there's no reason to let them idle.
Not everybody is paying $20.22 either. If somebody well qualified comes along and makes a reasonable proposal, I usually accept it. I enjoy sharing what I have with my friends.
It is all just for fun. Low End LOLs. Best wishes!
Fuck off, we complain when we want to 👅💦👢
This is LET, not China/North Korea.
Who?
I might have a look, PM me.
It isn’t even a ‘hater’ issue. It’s an equality issue exacerbated by @Not_Oles blatant disregard of the rules. Often, despite being a ‘nice guy’, frankly taking steps to ‘rub it in’.
More generally, @jbiloh where does this offer fit within the rules?