College Student Looking for a Dirt-Cheap VPS to Learn & Experiment

Not_Oles

FOSSVPS still has 8 free VPSes available in

Chisinau (Thanks Alexhost! )

• 5 x dedicated IPv4, 4 vCore. 4 GB RAM, 100 GB hardware RAID disk

and in

London (Thanks OnlyServers! )

• 3 x NAT IPv4, 2 vCore, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD

mwt

@VicVega said:

@mwt said:
When I was a student looking for dirt cheap VPS, I could get $1.50/year NAT offers from DeepNetSolutions. A great era for this.

There are a few efforts on this form to provide free servers in this situation, but they require more engagement on the form to prevent abuse.

I wouldn't worry about privacy on Oracle's product if you're just messing around. Are you really looking to store something sensitive on your cheap VPS?

At most, I’ll be hosting my own email, a simple personal website, and maybe a small project or two. Nothing sensitive like business data, this is mainly just for me to learn how all the pieces fit together (mail setup, DNS, SSL, firewalls, etc.)

I’m not too worried about providers snooping, but I do find most of the free tiers offered by these big tech firms a bit suspicious. They ask for a lot of personal info, and since nothing in the world is truly free, I figure they probably make it back by selling data to advertisers or similar.

I think they are just willing to bide their time until you work for a big company and can decide to spend millions of dollars on their services because you know it so well.

The hyperscaler is clever and sly and to its greed a hundred years is like the blink of an eye.

DediRock

I can hook it up man.

DediRock

@atroxz said:
flip burgers and pay the bill.

I bagged groceries for a bit in college.

Not_Oles

@VicVega

Here's an idea that you might want to consider.

When people haven't installed a VPS before, it's always challenging. They focus on the nitty gritty of the installation, work hard, and eventually get something great going.

But often, new VPS users fail to think aout backups! When something happens to their VPS, they are out of luck.

So, perhaps consider getting at least two VPSes with different providers, and mirror them. rsync is one good tool to keep multiple VPSes in sync. Maybe also keep a downloaded, local backup.

Another important item is to keep good notes about how you install your VPS. One simple way to keep good install notes is to put all your install commands into a shell script with lots of comments. With the shell script you sometimes can be able reinstall all your software and restore all your data very quickly just by running your script on a new, clean VPS. Of course there also are lots of install programs and platforms to consider. These days a lot of people use one click web-based installers rather than command line. Maybe one still needs tweaks, and to make good notes for when you come back a year later.

I wish you the best with your VPS adventures!

s0n1c

@atroxz said:
flip burgers and pay the bill.

if you can even land the job. where i live, its basically impossible to get minimum wage jobs without any connections.

Riccardo

Oracle provides free VPSes if you got a credit card. Signing up can be a bit challenging so make sure to look up some tutorials or ask in their subreddit.

Riccardo

@Not_Oles said:
These days a lot of people use one click web-based installers rather than command line.

Can you please point me towards some of the popular ones?

I have been maintaining notes but not as scripts because I tend to go into details of how I set something up and including these in comments would make it messy. This has the downside of taking too long to set-up new servers but the upside is I learn something new everytime I manually set-up a server. However, eventually I want to learn how to automatically setup new servers. So of you have any other suggestions do let me know. I'd be happy to learn.

Not_Oles

@Riccardo

Hi! Nice to meet you!

This is from a couple years ago, and maybe it has fallen behind, but you could take a look at a post I wrote in 2022 for LEB about CapRover.

A lot of people like ansible so maybe take a look at ansible too.

Best!

Tom

VicVega

@DediRock said:

@atroxz said:
flip burgers and pay the bill.

I bagged groceries for a bit in college.

I have a construction gig as of right now, but hope to replace it with something more stable soon.

VicVega

@Not_Oles said:
FOSSVPS still has 8 free VPSes available in

Chisinau (Thanks Alexhost! )

• 5 x dedicated IPv4, 4 vCore. 4 GB RAM, 100 GB hardware RAID disk

and in

London (Thanks OnlyServers! )

• 3 x NAT IPv4, 2 vCore, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD

I don't think I qualify, it looks like the terms state that I need an aged account, (LET/LES account must be 3 months or older to qualify - FreeVPS), however I'm not sure if the three projects function under the same rules, or if they are mutually exclusive.

VicVega

@Not_Oles said:
@VicVega

Here's an idea that you might want to consider.

When people haven't installed a VPS before, it's always challenging. They focus on the nitty gritty of the installation, work hard, and eventually get something great going.

But often, new VPS users fail to think aout backups! When something happens to their VPS, they are out of luck.

So, perhaps consider getting at least two VPSes with different providers, and mirror them. rsync is one good tool to keep multiple VPSes in sync. Maybe also keep a downloaded, local backup.

Another important item is to keep good notes about how you install your VPS. One simple way to keep good install notes is to put all your install commands into a shell script with lots of comments. With the shell script you sometimes can be able reinstall all your software and restore all your data very quickly just by running your script on a new, clean VPS. Of course there also are lots of install programs and platforms to consider. These days a lot of people use one click web-based installers rather than command line. Maybe one still needs tweaks, and to make good notes for when you come back a year later.

I wish you the best with your VPS adventures!

Thanks for the advice, I didn't even think about backups. As for the install, if the process isn't too different from Arch Linux, I think I should be fine with command line. I'll look into scripts/programs though, if you say they are more popular.

Not_Oles

@VicVega said:

@Not_Oles said:
FOSSVPS still has 8 free VPSes available in

Chisinau (Thanks Alexhost! )

• 5 x dedicated IPv4, 4 vCore. 4 GB RAM, 100 GB hardware RAID disk

and in

London (Thanks OnlyServers! )

• 3 x NAT IPv4, 2 vCore, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD

I don't think I qualify, it looks like the terms state that I need an aged account, (LET/LES account must be 3 months or older to qualify - FreeVPS), however I'm not sure if the three projects function under the same rules, or if they are mutually exclusive.

The FreeVPS rules do not apply to FOSSVPS. The two projects are independent.

I would be delighted to have you join one of the FOSSVPS servers mentioned above. Just let me know which location you want, and it's yours. Probably tomorrow, though, because I am going to sleep soon.

If you pick Chisinau, I need your ed25519 ssh public key.

beanman109

@Not_Oles said: But often, new VPS users fail to think aout backups! When something happens to their VPS, they are out of luck.

Thanks @Not_Oles this is great advice for when your system administrator accidentally logs into the wrong node and rolls back your VPS to the fresh install state

Not_Oles

@beanman109 said:

@Not_Oles said: But often, new VPS users fail to think aout backups! When something happens to their VPS, they are out of luck.

Thanks @Not_Oles this is great advice for when your system administrator accidentally logs into the wrong node and rolls back your VPS to the fresh install state

@VicVega

I make a lot of mistakes. So @beanman109 definitely is right that you especially need backups if you hang out on one of my servers. Being a Clueless™ Administrator! is my trademark. Please check the Rules and Warnings section on FOSSVPS.org. And in most of my threads, such as:

@Not_Oles said:

Clueless™ Administrator!

ralf

@emgh said:

@VicVega said:

@ehab said:
u need approval from Dr. @emgh ---- he has to test your balls then from @yoursunny to test your study grades and makes sure your not retarded.

Haha, I’m starting my first year this fall, majoring in Econ with a CS minor (so yeah, probably a bit retarded until I figure things out). Hopefully I pass both tests eventually, though I have to ask what, what exactly does the ‘ball test’ entail?

Can't be put into words.

And no matter how much soap you use, they'll never feel clean again.