As promised; We have our own dedicated Urban Terror Server up (this was not free) & rocking the house, thanks to finetuch. He will be accepting donations to help absorb the costs involved. You will be able to read his official announcement on his website http://ultimateurbanterror.info in a few days. I have administered the sites to split the server load (7 servers will handle the load overall) to keep ping time down on the gaming server. You can read about that on our forum, you can also learn how to connect to it from there it is fast & would like to give some credit to psybergaming.net

A few things I have learned testing the gaming server… Xfire really has crawled under my skin with their lack of Linux support. 4 years of it, read all 17 pages from there. I won’t leave our gaming users out in the cold. On a lighter note, I have created a newer urban-terror-extra-maps version 0.0.3 those using Ultimate Edition 2.4 Gamers it will automatically be upgraded, it is huge, bigger then the game itself & covers a vast majority of Urban Terror users.

Just so you do not think all I have been doing is playing games, in which I have enjoyed. I have dropped Ultimate Edition 2.6 Alpha to admin, mods and beta testers. It has received a warm welcome. I have also been doing a bunch of hardware work, including upgrading / building (undecided currently) the PC that will eventually build Ultimate Edition 2.6 final, both are fast.

USB 3.0 / Sata III is new technology, while first available for Linux is not w/o issue. With this upgrade allows me to be more productive. I really do not want to get into the details, however the same mainboard / cpu that previously built Ultimate Edition will be auctioned on ebay. Sorry for the amount, Quad Core & Quad Crossfire it is no slouch & quite the gaming rig. Worth $300 probably not; sentimental priceless. Still works like a champ.

I hope to see you on our gaming server.

TheeMahn,

Ultimate Edition 2.5

 

• Ultimate Edition 2.5?
• Ultimate Edition 2.5 thread
• Screenshots
• Download Links
• Ultimate Edition 2.5 Theme pack

 

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Ultimate Edition 2.5?

    What is Ultimate Edition 2.5? Ultimate Edition 2.5 was built off Ultimate Edition 2.4 (Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 based) all upgrades pre-installed as of current. It has KDE, XFCE, and Gnome user selectable at login, 3 new themes and tons of apps. This release is huge obviously bigger then UE 2.4 I am not going to spend my time writing a webpage, but just a post. Even though it is a very worthy release and deserves a webpage. I have alot on my plate in programming and other activities & I do mean alot. It has been out about a week, forum users have been grabbing it left and right.

It took me about a week to get the time to write this post albeit a webpage for it.

Screenshots can be viewed on the forum as well as additional download links. I am going to provide only one dowload link (25 mirrors) on this post from sourceforge; perhaps our bandwidth issues are now a thing of the past & maybe, just maybe I can do my job

Enjoy,

TheeMahn

 

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Downloads

Release Name: Ultimate Edition 2.5
Environments: Gnome, KDE, XFCE
Architecture: x64
Filesize: 3,205,941,248 (3.1 GB)
MD5SUM: 72699b8b11c7ebe8ce6e7e5071269079

DOWNLOAD: Sourceforge

Release Name: Ultimate Edition 2.5
Environments: Gnome, KDE, XFCE
Architecture: x86
Filesize: 3,187,867,648 (3.1 GB)
MD5SUM: cf13b6229a2094658c64cf815bc606ff

DOWNLOAD: Sourceforge

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PLEASE SEE Forum Thread for details.

Thanks to: ekoice, JonaLinux, unixheads, University of Maryland, l337buntu, Cavedog for mirrors & Admin / mods / beta testers.

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Before we get into what we just endured & got partially shut down for. I would like to offer you a Halloween treat, please don’t Digg my theme. I gave the treat don’t give me the trick… lol

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Description:
Theme pack for Halloween. Theme includes GTK2 theme, Metacity theme, GDM Login, Cursor, Emerald Theme, Icon set, and 6 wallpapers.

Download: Ultimate Edition Halloween Theme


Those using our repository can enter the following in a terminal to ensure you get the newest version:

sudo apt-get install ultimate-edition-halloween-theme

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On to what happened:

Cloud based hosting is not impervious to the “Digg” effect, I now know that first hand thanks for the 100,000+ users sent to me in a day, but not from “Digg”. By the way 42 or 43 thousand in a day on the old host when "Dugg" before Godaddy suspended my site, the most I had previously seen in a day. That record has now been shattered. Distrowatch’s homepage and Softpedia’s Linux homepage together evidently make “Digg” look like a joke, or is it just plain Godaddy sucks? After all Michael Jackson’s passing put the hammer to Google right?

Let’s look a little further into this:

Hello,

This message is to advise you of a temporary block placed on a file or folder under your account. The account referenced above was found to be consuming an inordinate amount of system resources , to the point of degrading overall system performance.

While we do limit each account to no more than 25% of a system’s resources in our terms of service, we do not actively disable accounts until they greatly exceed that number, which is what happened in this case. Fortunately, we were able to isolate the cause to a small set of files/folders. Rather than disabling the entire account, we were able to disable just those files/folders.

It was necessary to disable these items to maintain a minimum level of proper service for everyone else. From this point, the following options are available:

a) Block heavy users of your site, if any, that may be causing excessive load.
b) Optimize scripts (php, etc) that may be consuming a large amount of cpu and/or RAM.
c) Upgrade to a dedicated server; your site may have outgrown a shared environment.

Please let us know if you have a solution you feel would resolve this issue. Should a solution not be forthcoming, we are happy to assist you with an upgrade to dedicated services, where your site will have room to grow without affecting other customers. I appreciate your attention to this matter. Thank you.

Load: 1.27, 1.25, 1.46 at 2009-09-22 00:09 (33.5% SQL)
14.98/usr 0.54/ni 4.47/sys 3.43/wa 0.00/id

Apache: 29 requests/sec – 202.0 MB/second – 7.0 MB/request
154 requests currently being processed, 96 idle workers
Apache Uptime 20 hours 55 minutes 24 seconds

Top: 136: downloadue.info (74: /ISO/ultimate-edition-2.3-gamers-x86.i

136 downloadue.info
34 ultimateedition.downloadue.info

Johnathan Sa.
Network Security

While this may upset a normal user, I emailed them back encouraging Hostgator to suspend the ISO’s folder until I could further review the situation. It is then I realized I was not only on Distrowatch’s homepage, but Softpedia’s linux homepage as well. This happened while I slept. To think I said I do not want to make a big deal of the releasing of Ultimate Edition 2.3 Gamers. Imagine Ultimate Edition 2.4 period. One of 2 things that grabs me on the email posted above is this:

Apache: 29 requests/sec – 202.0 MB/second – 7.0 MB/request
154 requests currently being processed, 96 idle workers

What does this all mean please correct me if I am wrong. 29 people trying to download Ultimate Edition Gamers every sec perhaps a webpage one could only wish. How about this sending out 202 Megabytes a second, not megabit per sec. that is MB not mb right? 154 people downloading that second, seems very logical to me, you? Petabytes now become a reality for you non-believers. One of their suggestions block users? I want only to expand and I am not talking Windows. Be it ours be it Linux Mint or otherwise; I do not care. Free to you is my #1 goal, all software should be period & I am a programmer.

What is the other then?

Lets re-approach this situation again, why did the ISO server really go down? Yet the main website & all the rest has remained up?

Load: 1.27, 1.25, 1.46 at 2009-09-22 00:09 (33.5% SQL)

This was the “true” culprit, I am bad about analyzing situations, traffic is no exception. I used a plugin in wordpress called wassup a true CPU Hog on a high traffic website. It stores your IP, page you viewed, where you came from, country of origin etc. in a mysql database. Store a 100 of them a sec. what is the results? I have a AMD Quad Core I bet my machine to be incapable to just do that let alone send out 202MB a sec. I do not hold Hostgator responsible, they are better then Godaddy, at least they did not hammer me in it’s entirety (remember I host 8 domains through them).

I have since removed the “wassup” plugin and enabled wp-supercache, I feel we should now be safe with up to 500,000 users in a day. Hopefully we never have to witness this again, once again sorry for the inconvenience.

Do not think I have not seen traffic as I do today, I have tried Bluehost (at least they refunded my money) and seen Terabytes a day only to be once again shut down. The list just does not end. I will be honest with you the only place I can proceed is Amazon E2C and never worry. Does Google worry? Oh, that’s right Michael Jackson I will have to hit the lottery or similar for that. Do not take this post wrong, Hostgator is the best host I have had to date & I promise you I have had many more then I have posted. Even if you do not have a heavy trafficked website, I would still recommend them. If I could do it all again Hostgator is where I would start.

This is funny at least to me. I would have 1 website, not 8 thanks Godaddy (trying to spread the server load). Godaddy called me wondering why I canceled all my accounts, well now feel me. He was in a hurry to get off the phone when I told him all are hosted off 1 server, his answer dedicated; my answer nope shared. I am glad I got the chance to tell him how much I sent out err Hostgator before he hung up on me. Before it is over Hostgator will be #1, I have read Hostgator’s CEO’s blog, should I suffer? He should not have either. To me it has been one large learning experience.

Lets please get this in perspective, learn as I have. I am sure I am not talking to Google.com. You will arrive here because you most likely have a highly trafficked website. Do a search for "ultimate edition" does Microsoft show up #1? They make a Ultimate Edition right?

This worries me, and is being discussed within admin section of the board. I may not release a Ultimate Edition 2.4, mirrors only & let them go down. It is piss poor when I even have to think that way. The forum will also go down. We have a few days to make decisions. I should not have told you that. I just want you to understand how critical it is.

Happy Halloween,

TheeMahn

This is going to be a relativity large post, please take the time to read it, I want you to know what I have been through in the past and the future of Ultimate Edition.

I have now officially moved all the websites the forum being the last & I really did not want to move it, because I knew there would be alot of growing pains. The data base was too large to import so I did lose a few posts and as I learned today at least one user acct. The admin will help resolve issues or at least point them out to me so I can rectify the situation. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Well as promised a review of the previous hosting company v/s the new one.

We begin Sun Dec 17, 2006:

I only opened the website to help others as a Christmas present then called Ubuntu Christmas Edition & droped off-line due to traffic, thanks digg .

First, the previous hosting company does not deserve a link from me. I am less than happy with Godaddy. I have been paying them up to 8 times for hosting hoping to “spread the server load”. I should also point out I have been a customer with them since the begining. I have seen this site go down multiple times, seeing up to 40,000 pageviews in a day before such happened. The download servers they have seen suspended more then once (unlimited accts by the way, which is upsetting to me):

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has come to our attention that your hosting account for downloadubuntusoftware.info is causing an overload of the shared resources on this server. This, in turn, affects the usage of the server by other customers. To protect the overall health of the server, we have suspended your account.

Due to the constant strain on the Shared Hosting Server you will need to upgrade to a Dedicated Server. Once you have purchased the Dedicated Server please respond to be able to get access to the hosting account to begin moving files to the server. If you have questions about this matter, you may contact us by replying to this email or by calling 480-505-8871.

We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

Regards,

Daniel S.
Hosting Support

It just does not end:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Regarding your shared hosting accounts, downloadultimate.info and downloadubuntusoftware.info.

We have attempted to reach you by phone regarding this issue, however there was no answer at the phone number we have on file. Our administrators have alerted us to a high load issue regarding your two sites. It appears that both of the mentioned sites are serving downloads of a file called, “ultimate-edition-1.8-x86.iso.” These downloads are putting a strain on the server resources and are negatively effecting other customer’s sites. For this reason, we have had no choice but to disable the ultimate-edition-1.8-x86.iso files on both accounts. This is not an issue of bandwidth, but of server performance. If serving this file is crucial to the operation of your sites, you will have to upgrade to a full dedicated server. These files will not be allowed in our shared hosting environment any longer. Please refrain from re-enabling, re-uploading or renaming this file, as doing so will lead to account suspension. If you would like to discuss this situation, we can be reach at 480-505-8871

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you,
Moe F.
Hosting Support
Hosting Operations

Hmm this does not sound like unlimited to me. Just, because I have a file that is popular? Even before they offered unlimited pay this bill ~ $10,000 for the month:

This is to notify you that your hosting account has exceeded
its monthly bandwidth.

As of 10/1/2007, your hosting account has accumulated
9,359,351.65 MB of data transfer. This means that the allowed
250000 MB of monthly data transfer for downloadubuntusoftware.info
has been exceeded by 9,109,351.65 MB.

You will be charged monthly for any bandwidth you use that
is over your allotted amount.

If your bandwidth usage remains at its current level, you
should upgrade your hosting account as a permanent solution.

By the way, even unlimited with Godaddy less than 10 TB of traffic is the most I have seen in any given month. Enough of Godaddy! Don’t think I have not tried other hosting companies only to be shut down, that is until now. This is what really grabs me all 8 hosting accts are running off the same server, you can not imagine how much this has impressed me & is the #1 reason I will endorse them. When I moved this site there, both download servers & repository I expected to be shut down.

Enter the present:

It all turns now, thanks Hostgator.

First lets talk a bit about HostGator and what makes them so much better, they are top 10 in hosting companies & btw the most expensive of the top 10. I now understand why, you get what you pay for. Their motto “We eat up the competition”. HostGator uses a technology they have dubbed “The Planet” aka “Cloud computing” as Amazon calls it. You upload a file to your acct and nearly instantly is mirrored across 6 computers to serve your webpage / file. Ensuring maximum availability / bandwidth. We have had a mirror that mirrored Ultimate Edition in the past using an Amazon E2C server and costed him $14.00+ an hour, hmm 14 X 24 X 30? I told him to quit. He did not have to ask for my permission to quit.

Traffic broke down by TheeMahn:
Unlimited does not exist. Youtube pays greater then a million a month for bandwidth, I am sure Petabytes maybe Exobytes. There are many types of traffic “http” most people are familiar with web pages, a link from a web page to an ISO image is considered http traffic. FTP (file transfer protocol), wget is http, but enters a new category where statistics are generated on a server same with apt (apt-get for the nix types).

I have redirected the 8 servers based on what is expected to be seen for example http://repoubuntusoftware.info/ drops directly to http://downloadue.info/repo/, so the mass traffic you are about to see is based on repo traffic as well as downloading of ISO’s of Ultimate Edition. I like to call it "the gathering of great minds". I almost forgot to mention Ultamatix (also hosted same server) repository traffic draws from there also

Petabytes?
1 Petabyte is 1000 Terabytes. 1000 Gigabytes is 1 Terabyte. No we are not in the Petabyte category yet, but a welcome admission to see anything over 10 Terabytes in a month, I just want people to understand what I am referring to bandwidth wise. Just the download server / repository / Ultamatix server (since stats are combined) has exceeded 1/3 of a Petabyte. This does not include any mirrors.

Don’t think that is combined stats of 8 servers.

Well then how about this very server?

Don’t think that is a month worth I moved it there on the 18th of August:

Remember when I brought up http traffic earlier? What you are seeing is the result of nothing on that server (this server none the less), but web pages. Well this puts a tremendous load on the servers CPU to send you and the next guys web pages simultaneously. Since I have seen as many as 50 on this site the same second. That load is also shared by “The planet”. So it’s not always about bandwidth. Don’t get me into concurrent connections.

The Future?

Do not think I will not move them all again to a cloud, I have no other option. This is the only hosting company that can take the current load. My next step is Amazon, I need to get a job at Nasa to flip the tab for that one. Let me give you a little tip in case you want to try them out, enter "hgcouponblog" and knock $9.94 off your first month.

Thanks again Hostgator.

Nasa, do you need a nix programmer? Will work for bandwidth of my users… Do you see my potential?

TheeMahn

The moving of servers has begun, I have moved 7 of 8 (including this website). Please excuse the 404 errors (file not found) as I try and fix them. I am going to write a review of the previous hosting company as well as the new hosting company, please stand by.

Sorry for the inconvenience,

TheeMahn