MARP hosting - UPDATE 2020-03-14

[mahlemiut]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but MARP will soon need to get new hosting, or at least find someone who wishes to take over the Dreamhost account from seymour.

Seymour contacted me yesterday, saying that he no longer has the time to make use of the hosting (ie: Real Life Syndrome), and has decided to cancel it. It is expected that the service would end around July or August at the latest.

So now, the call goes out to those who may be able to host or to take over the hosting account for MARP and these forums. Please reply here, for any ideas or offers.

Update (2020-03-14): See Seymour's post at the end of this thread. (edit by seymour)

[seymour]

I wanted to contact Barry before saying anything here so it wasn't a complete surprise I have a beautiful little 3 month old girl, and otherwise busy with real life these days.

I'm sure you've noticed I haven't exactly been active here in some time, but I kept things going with hosting because of the enjoyment I've had here in the past. Trying to limit extra expenses these days for obvious reasons now though, I hope something can get figured out for hosting before my current year of hosting runs out.

[wolfman24]

congrats on the girl seymour, I am certain someone will take over on the hosting

[seymour]

Thanks Wolfman

I just noticed that Dreamhost has a sale on, for about half price, if that's an option anyone is considering. Cheaper than my hosting... Expires on Monday though.

http://www.dreamhost.com/promo/hostingpromo495/

[Zhorik]

I just noticed that Dreamhost has a sale on, for about half price, if that's an option anyone is considering. Cheaper than my hosting... Expires on Monday though.

Chris,

Thanks for all your help with MARP over the years, and congratulations on the baby girl!

With regard to hosting, can you give a bit more detail on what is involved? I'd be more than happy to help cover hosting costs, but I wasn't sure how much else was involved on the technical side around recurring hosting maintenance you've been doing. I'm assuming it would be technically easier to keep things where they are hosted now if that is an option and we'd be less likely to break anything then if we migrated everything to a new environment. What have you been needing to do on the technical side in terms of maintenance or troubleshooting? Just want to make sure anybody volunteering understands what is involved.

Thanks,
George

[seymour]

I've actually been a bit lax in keeping things maintained... Updating the forum software isn't too difficult, for the most part it's a one button update sort of thing. The actual replay site I don't touch at all other than setting up the account to host the files and database. Barry (or someone else) is quite capable of keeping things running, can probably even set it up to handle things on the hosting account directly.

I'm pretty sure its easy enough to move whole sites to a different Dreamhost account without losing anything or being a pain to change - I'd have to check on that at home to be sure (I'm on my phone right now). I do have some personal domain names hosted on my account so just having some take over the account isn't really an option.

I can get a more detailed idea of the yearly cost for keeping the account open. That's my main reason for this - cutting costs where I can. I certainly don't want the site to die, it's been great.

[seymour]

Also, I haven't checked around to see what other hosting options there are for the resources that marp uses. There could be cheaper or easier options which could make it worth it to switch.

I'll help as much as I can in any sort of changes that end up being done, with my limited free time.

[Barthax]

Congratulations on the baby girl, Chris. Real Life in this form will take pleasure from some areas in your life and transform into other pleasures (as well as sleepless nights, etc.).

[seymour]

Here's some stats from the marp sites:

Disk Usage:

Code: Select all

 34.60 MB gameboy9.marpirc.net
 61.04 MB weehawk.marpirc.net
133.83 MB users.marpirc.net
160.04 MB forums.marpirc.net
406.21 MB bbh.marpirc.net
417.05 MB mahlemiut.marpirc.net
  1.38 GB wolfmame.marpirc.net
 19.28 GB replay.marpirc.net

Bandwidth Usage (Mar is partial, obviously):

Code: Select all

Domain                     Dec       Jan       Feb       Mar
marpirc.net            1164 MB   1369 MB    849 MB    661 MB
bbh.marpirc.net        2286 MB   2106 MB   1642 MB   1306 MB
forums.marpirc.net     1276 MB   1488 MB   1199 MB    824 MB
mahlemiut.marpirc.net   231 MB    228 MB    219 MB    164 MB
replay.marpirc.net     6882 MB   7110 MB  12469 MB   4681 MB
wolfmame.marpirc.net  16183 MB  28830 MB  18542 MB  13896 MB

MySQL Usage:
196 MB disk usage, cycle estimate of Conueries 8.72 MCn

Any other information you're curious about, please let me know.

[Barthax]

In Twin Galaxies' "State of the Galaxies" Jace Hall made an offer to host MARP and a request to get the news to someone that could act upon the offer...

http://www.twingalaxies.com/content.php ... es-4-10-15

[Jace Hall]

Would love to help support MARP... I sent seymour a PM, but no response.

Please contact me at jace@twingalaxies.com

Thanks,
Jace

[Zhorik]

A quick update for folks. We've secured donations from MARP members to cover hosting costs going forward and other folks, including mahlemiut and myself, are going to help out with technical maintenance.

-George

[MJS]

A quick update for folks. We've secured donations from MARP members to cover hosting costs going forward and other folks, including mahlemiut and myself, are going to help out with technical maintenance.

-George

Huge thanks in the first place to seymour, for all these years of help, and also to you Zhorik and mahlemiut for taking over.

Long live MARP!!!

[TRB_MetroidTeam]

Seymour...
Related to MARP: THANK YOU VERY MUCH! (Also to Zwaxy!)
Related to baby: Congratulations!

Yeah... long life to MARP!
If I can help...

[seymour]

Another heads up...

The current MARP hosting expires on 2020-04-18, after the current 5-year plan. I have no idea if there is any interest in extending this by anyone, I haven't contacted anybody yet. Many thanks to the previous help on extending the life of the site!

In addition to my first daughter (now 5), I now also have a 3 year old son I've actually gotten them interested in playing a little bit of MAME lately, even if they aren't any good at it. They still mostly have fun. Financially, I don't have the resources to help out anymore (for 2 obvious reasons), but I'd rather not see the site die either.

Comments, suggestions, conversations, questions, etc welcomed!