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Experiments with AI: get started with LLMs using Ollama
This post will explore setting up Ollama to run a text based chat on one of our new GPU backed VPSs. Ollama is a free, open-source tool that simplifies running large language models (LLMs) locally on your computer. What is an LLM An LLM is a complex neural network trained on massive datasets of text…
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Worried about privacy on public meeting apps? Try Big Blue Button
Recently its come to light that Zoom were keeping video footage of meetings in their T&C. The Software Freedom Conservency calls on its members to eschew Zoom and instead use Open Source (and self-hosted) alternatives. If you are a company and want something a little more secure, that works easily with a nice web interface,…
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Text prompt AI image creation using Stable Diffusion and an NVIDIA A10 GPU on a RimuHosting VM
First, order a RimuHosting VM with a GPU. When prompted you would register or login to complete the order. For most GPU applications you will need a good amount of memory (10GB+) and disk (30GB+). We recommend the Debian 12 (bookworm) distro. At the time of writing only the Dallas data center has GPU-enabled hosts.…
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Case study: Nextcloud to the rescue for unhappy tradies using Office365
Providing effective IT solutions to franchisees is crucial for optimizing operations and streamlining business processes. In this case study, we explore how Paul, an IT support specialist at a master franchisor, successfully implemented a self-hosted alternative to Office 365 using Nextcloud on a RimuHosting VM. By doing so, he enabled franchisees, primarily tradespeople such as…
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Dedicated Bakop storage server instances
We had been running a Bakop storage server in most of the data centers in which we operate. We are just completing a project to upgrade the Bakop service stack software to the most recent versions. As part of this project we switched to using our RimuHosting API. The service now automatically spins up a…
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Wireguard VPN setup
Wireguard is a modern, easy to setup, VPN. It has clients for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android, and other OSes. In this post we are following the guide at https://serversideup.net/how-to-set-up-wireguard-vpn-server-on-ubuntu-20-04/ First, Order a VM. This will be the ‘server’ for the VPN. You don’t need a lot of memory or disk to run a VPN…
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VM backup and download
The following code snippet uses our https://github.com/pbkwee/s2i project to let you create a backup image of a Linux server, encrypt it, and then make it available for download (or transfer it directly to a remote server). s2i requires PHP, and can make use of PHP’s built in HTTP server. You will need sufficient disk space…
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Reboot-less Xen patching
Recently there have been two sets of Xen vulnerabilities. One being disclosed in September, the other earlier today. Historically we have had to organize host updates which required downtime to reboot VMs. For these last sets of vulnerabilities we have been able to use a recently introduced live patching feature in Xen to mitigate the…
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Using Ansible to manage your VPSs – Part Two
In this post I’m going to introduce playbooks, and show you how to customise the /etc/resolv.conf file on each server. I assume you have followed Part One of this series and have created a hosts file and files in ~/myansible/host_vars/. Tasks, playbooks, groups and roles A note on terminology. A task is something done on…
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Using Ansible to manage your VPSs – Part One
Ansible is a system to automate the updating of server configurations and other administration tasks. In this post I’ll explain what’s necessary to get started with Ansible, creating a configuration structure, telling Ansble about your hosts and running ad-hock commands on multiple hosts. Ansible is useful when you have 3 or more VPSs and need…