smarticus-blog: It’s ok Dreamhost, we didn’t like you much anyways.
AkitaOnRails
· 1 year ago
Yeah, what can we say? Dreamhost is a commercial company that gets paid to deliver. DHH, Rails Core are all volunteer programmers that delivers without demanding. Now, for a company to start ranting like that it only shows their incompetence. There are several other hostings doing well enough and not complaining like a big baby. You're right: if someone needs really good support, go get a VPS (want something done right, do it yourself). Dreamhost has just shot itself in the foot with this unprofessional post.
Anonymous Coward
· 1 year ago
Isn't it a little hypocritical to criticize a host for complaining about Rails not playing nice with shared hosting only to assert with such hubris that you need to be running on a VPS to use Rails? Let's not get too kneejerk about defending Rails that we overlook actual problems. Not that there's a Rails problem here but actually an Apache + Ruby problem. Before you kids get on yr high-horses and state that Rails demands some flavor-of-the-month leet web server, let me point out that we are one of the few communities that thinks Apache is _always_ the wrong answer. [And yet we wonder why they think we're nuts sometimes!] The Dreamhost post _never_ says Rails sucks, or is broken, or is a bad thing at all. It raised valid points about how difficult Rails is to manage on shared hosting. Our "outrage" and inability to see these points makes us look stupid. I agree with DHH's post that this isn't Rails fault or even responsibility to fix but our reluctance to accept that there _is_ an issue here is asinine. And in the current maelstrom of criticism surrounding our precious niche language, we could stand to not bring further criticism on ourselves.
Johannes Holzer
· 1 year ago
Props for your screencasts. Not so many props for the attitude.
The thing that the "rails community" has in abundance right now is an arrogant defensiveness. Criticism, any criticism these days is answered by ignoring any valid points made, spewing a few loads of smugness and pretending the bug is a feature. "Dreamhost and rails don't mix"; shouldn't that really be "hosting and rails don't mix", seeing as the only alternatives you recommend are VPS providers?
Alright, lets go there - it's the thing cool kids do these days. VPS is hot. Flexible. You want that.
What "we" don't say is that the flexibility a VPS offers comes with a price, and a serious one at that - system administration. Root access on an Internet-facing server doesn't just mean you get control of a shiny new toy, but that you're responsible for what it's doing. Watching your "smarticast" I stumbled across this gem:
"People think this [allowing sudo access to the user the webserver is running under without a password] might not be very secure, but for our little demo this'll do."
Right. One remote exploit in mongrel and your server is free for the taking.
You also didn't say anything else about securing that server - installing a IDS, checking logs, making sure exim can't spew spam into the world, subscribing to security mailing lists, making sure you regularly update your gems and packages -- you mentioned none of those fun little tidbits that you need to take care of. And you need to care; it's your server, your responsibility.
So, in essence, your "blog in 15 minutes" now takes a few hours to setup and a part-time job as admin. Go rails.
(btw, i hang out in #rubyonrails as eljo if you'd like to rant back :)
bryanl
· 1 year ago
@the coward
They say they support rails. I say they aren’t doing a very good job at it. Also, I will never say that Apache is the wrong answer, I’ll just say it isn’t quite the right answer for our domain.
@johannes Read what I said again. I will make no excuses for anyone who tries to stand up an Internet facing server without at least understand the implications of doing so. My primer was a quick demo to get some contestants started… not “How to be a Unix admin in 15 minutes”
And to everyone else… If you are standing up a new site, do yourself a favor and go find someone who understands networking or security or unix, and either work with them or have them do the heavy lifting for you. The simple ability to code doesn’t mean you could or should be doing everything yourself. Kudos to the ones that want to learn and change things to make their dev environment fit their scenario. Shame on the ones who think that everything must fit all the time.
Anonymous Coward
· 1 year ago
@ bryanl, by “isn’t quite the right answer for our domain” you mean the domain of making web applications? Which Apache serves up handily for most other languages. In fact, I’ve never heard this “Apache isn’t a valid solution” in any other language but Ruby but I’m willing to chalk that up to my lack of experience in those languages.
Also, “Shame on the ones who think that everything must fit all the time.” I’d think that people who think <span class="caps">VPS</span> is the fit for Rails every time must garner the same amount of shame, right? Right?
bryanl
· 1 year ago
@AC
Yes, a <span class="caps">VPS</span> isn’t always the best option. I’m suggesting it because it is a nice cheap solution to get started.
Anonymous Coward
· 1 year ago
If you think a <span class="caps">VPS</span> is a cheap solution for starting out... maybe you are as blind as your arguments would lead one to believe. Rails isn’t rocket science. [Isn’t that one of the biggest hypes for it? That it makes everything simpler?] So suggesting that top-tier hosting solutions are the first steps for hosting doesn’t make sense.
bryanl
· 1 year ago
@AC
I guess thats where our thought pattern differs. I think a <span class="caps">VPS</span> is the lowest form of Internet presence for any project I would work on.
Brian Burridge
· 1 year ago
@Johannes
I’m confused by your statements about cost and difficulty of the hosting alternatives Bryan mentioned. I was attempting to run a Rails app on dreamhost and the spotty uptime, including every time I hit my app getting an error and needing to hit reload, drove me to try slicehost. $20 a month is not what I would call expensive. I followed slicehost’s setup article and had Nginx, Mongrel Clusters, Capistrano, and Mysql with firewalls in place, ssh access, and svn over ssh in two hours. There’s no excuses there for using a shared host when its all that easy.
<span class="caps">BTW</span>, when I did have a few questions that the articles didn’t cover, slicehost guys were always online at their campfire and answered immediately, or I got an answer right away on their forum.
All Comments
The thing that the "rails community" has in abundance right now is an arrogant defensiveness. Criticism, any criticism these days is answered by ignoring any valid points made, spewing a few loads of smugness and pretending the bug is a feature. "Dreamhost and rails don't mix"; shouldn't that really be "hosting and rails don't mix", seeing as the only alternatives you recommend are VPS providers?
Alright, lets go there - it's the thing cool kids do these days. VPS is hot. Flexible. You want that.
What "we" don't say is that the flexibility a VPS offers comes with a price, and a serious one at that - system administration. Root access on an Internet-facing server doesn't just mean you get control of a shiny new toy, but that you're responsible for what it's doing. Watching your "smarticast" I stumbled across this gem:
"People think this [allowing sudo access to the user the webserver is running under without a password] might not be very secure, but for our little demo this'll do."
Right. One remote exploit in mongrel and your server is free for the taking.
You also didn't say anything else about securing that server - installing a IDS, checking logs, making sure exim can't spew spam into the world, subscribing to security mailing lists, making sure you regularly update your gems and packages -- you mentioned none of those fun little tidbits that you need to take care of. And you need to care; it's your server, your responsibility.
So, in essence, your "blog in 15 minutes" now takes a few hours to setup and a part-time job as admin. Go rails.
(btw, i hang out in #rubyonrails as eljo if you'd like to rant back :)
@the coward
They say they support rails. I say they aren’t doing a very good job at it. Also, I will never say that Apache is the wrong answer, I’ll just say it isn’t quite the right answer for our domain.
@johannes Read what I said again. I will make no excuses for anyone who tries to stand up an Internet facing server without at least understand the implications of doing so. My primer was a quick demo to get some contestants started… not “How to be a Unix admin in 15 minutes”
And to everyone else… If you are standing up a new site, do yourself a favor and go find someone who understands networking or security or unix, and either work with them or have them do the heavy lifting for you. The simple ability to code doesn’t mean you could or should be doing everything yourself. Kudos to the ones that want to learn and change things to make their dev environment fit their scenario. Shame on the ones who think that everything must fit all the time.
@ bryanl, by “isn’t quite the right answer for our domain” you mean the domain of making web applications? Which Apache serves up handily for most other languages. In fact, I’ve never heard this “Apache isn’t a valid solution” in any other language but Ruby but I’m willing to chalk that up to my lack of experience in those languages.
Also, “Shame on the ones who think that everything must fit all the time.” I’d think that people who think <span class="caps">VPS</span> is the fit for Rails every time must garner the same amount of shame, right? Right?
@AC
Yes, a <span class="caps">VPS</span> isn’t always the best option. I’m suggesting it because it is a nice cheap solution to get started.
If you think a <span class="caps">VPS</span> is a cheap solution for starting out... maybe you are as blind as your arguments would lead one to believe. Rails isn’t rocket science. [Isn’t that one of the biggest hypes for it? That it makes everything simpler?] So suggesting that top-tier hosting solutions are the first steps for hosting doesn’t make sense.
@AC
I guess thats where our thought pattern differs. I think a <span class="caps">VPS</span> is the lowest form of Internet presence for any project I would work on.
@Johannes
I’m confused by your statements about cost and difficulty of the hosting alternatives Bryan mentioned. I was attempting to run a Rails app on dreamhost and the spotty uptime, including every time I hit my app getting an error and needing to hit reload, drove me to try slicehost. $20 a month is not what I would call expensive. I followed slicehost’s setup article and had Nginx, Mongrel Clusters, Capistrano, and Mysql with firewalls in place, ssh access, and svn over ssh in two hours. There’s no excuses there for using a shared host when its all that easy.
<span class="caps">BTW</span>, when I did have a few questions that the articles didn’t cover, slicehost guys were always online at their campfire and answered immediately, or I got an answer right away on their forum.
My app has yet to go down once since I switched.