Design/Architecture

This is how the Blinkenshell shell account environment works. Behind the domain Blinkenshell.org there is a physical server: the name of this server is Saturn.

Saturn has several virtual servers, one of which is where all the shell accounts live; Titan is the name of that virtual server.

When you surf to Blinkenshell.org firstly Saturn checks what content you are requesting, and then either serves that content directly or sends a request to a virtual server. If you browse the main webpage, you are being served directly by Saturn. If you however request a user's webpage, then it's the webserver on Titan that's serving your request.

This explains some of the behaviours of the environment. And the reason I chose this design/architecture is mostly because of the added security. If someone gets root access on Titan, he will not be able to bring down the whole server.

Between 18-19 December 2006, there were some server problems and what I did then was to replace the previous virtual server Rhea with the new one called Titan.

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