totalcmd.net

[TW]

he must be very very low on money.

[pplupo]

That's fine, not everybody has money to spare. Why doesn't he accept help, then? It's no shame! He is giving to the community. I'm sure some of us would be willing to join the efforts somehow.

[ghisler(Author)]

I don't understand it either. We offered to pay for his site years ago, but he didn't want it. This offer is still standing.

[petermad]

BTW - totalcmd.net is up again

[hi5]

What would happen if someone reached out to the hosting provider and said we'll pay to cover hosting for the next five years in advance, would they accept it?

[deus-ex]

Not only is that a questionable approach interfering with someone's obligations without their consent. It also could interfere with local laws and/or contract regulations between the host and customer. Furthermore, what if the site owner demands a refund of the advanced payment onto his own bank account?

[Flint]

Actually, when we discussed the issue with Ergo, one of his idea was to pay for a year in advance instead of monthly. Unfortunately, this plan never came to fruition. I don't know why.

But paying for someone else without his consent is definitely not an option. First of all, you need a customer ID or something; then ability to issue payment bills (which is usually impossible without access to the customer control panel). Payment options can be limited too (when I payed for my hosting, for example, I first had to confirm that the plastic card I'm using does belong to me). Not to mention the issues that deus-ex said about.

[ghisler(Author)]

2Flint
Are you still in contact with Ergo? The server outages have become more and more frequent, maybe he would be more willing to accept sponsoring of the site? We will NOT take it over from him, just sponsor it. He can even keep putting ads on it...

[Flint]

2ghisler(Author)
I am, but sporadically; it is very difficult to communicate with him. He just doesn't reply most of the time. When I managed to have a chat session with him (quite a while ago), we talked about possible solutions, and I also suggested to him that I could help financially, if that was the problem (or lend the money, if he didn't want to accept them as a gift), but again, that suggestion remained unanswered. I don't even know how much he pays for it…

As for the outages, I don't believe they became more frequent. It's the same very stable schedule, the 7th day of each month when the payday arrives. The only exception was that big boom when the domain expired, but apart from that I don't remember that many issues.

[PET]

And it's down again

[Flint]

Yes, it's this time of the month.

[speller2]

There are a lot of sponsoring opportunities nowadays. And there's a demand from the community. What's the problem?

[Hacker]

speller2,

What's the problem?

The owner refuses.

Roman

[petermad]

Does anybody but the owner have a local version of totalcmd.net (backup)?

[Flint]

2petermad
I have root access to the server, when it's up and running.
I'm thinking about maybe buying some cheap VPS and starting to make backups there, to make the archives available during these periods. But it requires quite a bit of searching, planning and implementing, and I'm quite short of free time to do this quickly. Also, such a solution would require consent from the owner, and I have not asked him yet.