Develop Bugs

ROM Hosting! ROMn****.info

Hi All.
I got a server with unlimited bandwidth and Storage so i thought i could start hosting all custom ROMs.
Just wanted to know what you all would think about it?
All ROMs at one location without the need for Rapidshare and such.
Upload account for developers and such.
UPDATE!
ROMn****.info will be the address
Working on design and functionality now, help is welcome
Developers send me a pm for ftp account
UPDATE Again!
Its up and running, beta design comeing up soon and developers starting to get accounts.
If you are a developer and interested, send me a pm

No one liked the idea? :O

l1nuxfre4k said:
Hi All.
I got a server with unlimited bandwidth and Storage so i thought i could start hosting all custom ROMs.
Just wanted to know what you all would think about it?
All ROMs at one location without the need for Rapidshare and such.
Upload account for developers and such.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll be first then... I think it's a good idea!
Lots of people have trouble accessing Rapidshare (which some people seem to forget, or don't care about).
Well done you for offering to help people out!

Nice enough to offer but I don't think it's a good idea. Certain dev's normally host on RapidShare and/or another mirror that you don't have to wait to download.

You might get better responses if you post this in the dev forum. Or post a link in there pointing to this post.

Nice idea, try sending PM's to few most-known developers

Could you host me some roms for me for OpenRUU? See the link in my sig.

42turkeys said:
Could you host me some roms for me for OpenRUU? See the link in my sig.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sure no problem
I'l arrange something for you.
MSN
[email protected]
I would also love if someone thats good with design would help out a little.
i want to make it look good also ^^

also, domain names tips?
what to call the site?

l1nuxfre4k said:
also, domain names tips?
what to call the site?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
romdroid
droidroms
youporn<- favorite. not taken

youporn might attract to many people looking for porn?
more suggestions?
name dont have to do with roms just a good name.
Would maybe be better if not had anything to do with ROMs in the name

i can offer you free hosting & unlimited bandwidth

sashajovicic said:
i can offer you free hosting & unlimited bandwidth
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
are you blind?
I already have that ...
and i have unlimited Storage....

Bump/Update!

Not to put a damper on your parade but...
I don't think you'll be able to pull off a ROM hosting site on shared hosting. It's impossible.
Take me for example, I started a ROM hosting and indexing service about two weeks ago and it lasted three days before my costs skyrocketed and I was forced to close it down.
It took three weeks of development and four servers all with 2Gb combined uplink speed and in the end I paid out over €100 in three days because of the sheer popularity of the site.
Compare that with a shared hosting package on dreamhost and you'll see that bandwidth costs are prohibitively high to be usable. Dreamhost may advertise unlimited space and bandwidth but that is an utter lie. Ever hear of a fair usage policy?

abc27 said:
Not to put a damper on your parade but...
I don't think you'll be able to pull off a ROM hosting site on shared hosting. It's impossible.
Take me for example, I started a ROM hosting and indexing service about two weeks ago and it lasted three days before my costs skyrocketed and I was forced to close it down.
It took three weeks of development and four servers all with 2Gb combined uplink speed and in the end I paid out over €100 in three days because of the sheer popularity of the site.
Compare that with a shared hosting package on dreamhost and you'll see that bandwidth costs are prohibitively high to be usable. Dreamhost may advertise unlimited space and bandwidth but that is an utter lie. Ever hear of a fair usage policy?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ofc i heard of it, same thing with mobile broadband...
Already double checked with my hosting.
AND its not shared hosting..
who sad it was?

A VPS, A Dedicated server... In the end it's on what it's hosted on that matters the most.
Unless your paying for an unmetered port your going to be charged quite a bit for the bandwidth no matter what they say about "unlimited bandwidth". Just a heads up.

l1nuxfre4k said:
ofc i heard of it, same thing with mobile broadband...
Already double checked with my hosting.
AND its not shared hosting..
who sad it was?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The simple fact you said unlimited bandwidth and storage means you don't have a dedicated server. If you think you have a dedicated server with unlimited hard drives, then this conversation ends here.
Therefore, by conclusion, abc27 is correct as you are sharing resources with someone else and will bottleneck the system (shared/reseller/VPS/VDS/cloud) or face severe throttling yourself.
Edit: DreamHost? Good luck! I genuinely hope it works out for you, but please please take offsite backups as soon as it goes live. If we're right, it won't be around for long.

No need to worry about that
I will always keep a backup and i got a Dedicated server comeing up within the next month.
and the current server will stay up.
already double/tripple checked with support
Working on a good deal for one with lots of storage and bandwidth

BUMP/Update

[Q] Implement Reputation System?

Hey guys (mostly the senior/mod/admin folks, but anyone feel free to chime in). Could XDA implement vBulletin's (I think there is an official plugin/option... I may be wrong about this though; I cannot say for sure since I am not an admin on any site that uses vBulletin, $user = phpbbWhore reputation system? If it's not built into the latest version of the code, I'm sure there is a 3rd party plugin available from VBulletin's official site (I know of at least a few of those that exist and would help if needed).
My thought behind this is that sometimes someone posts some really useful information and adding a reply that says something like "+1 thanks!" almost seems like a waste of a post to me (I really dislike "filler"/OT threads, but I still want to give the person credit). However if I was able to give a person a point (+) or if someone was just being a jerk for no reason (-), I think more people would take the time to think before they posted. Plus, since we know "post count" mean nothing in terms of someone being a helpful person or not, this would allow new users to spot trustworthy/reliable folks.
My only qualm is that I don't know if XDA as a whole is mature enough to use this kind of system responsibly, but I have faith that any real abusers could be weeded out fairly quickly. I think it would be cool to at least trial run this. Thanks for your time .

Hi DeeBG,
Yeah, it's good idea generally, thou i'd prolly advocate XDA going a step further right off the bat, and implementing a point trading system as a supplement to the donate buttons, especially for those without easy access to paypal credit.
Reputation has issues when someone on the fringe of the group is battered down for being different. Like imagine someone says "Let's make an iPhone section!". They might lose a years reputation in like a day. At least with a point trading system you're dealing with actual assistance or virtual services, rather than base emotional responses or crowd bullying.
I'm still learning about XDA's donate system, which seems fairly arbitrary or opaque. Maybe someone can explain how well that system is working out so far.
Cheers.

Reputation is built into vB, looks like they opted to turn it off. Good thing, every forum I've been a part of / admin'd, it's been abused.

I7redd said:
Reputation has issues when someone on the fringe of the group is battered down for being different. Like imagine someone says "Let's make an iPhone section!". They might lose a years reputation in like a day. At least with a point trading system you're dealing with actual assistance or virtual services, rather than base emotional responses or crowd bullying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The reputation system only works through "thanks", doesn't it? So your reputation cannot get worse, but only better.
I7redd said:
I'm still learning about XDA's donate system, which seems fairly arbitrary or opaque. Maybe someone can explain how well that system is working out so far.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not much of a system - you can donate directly to xda, which will help cover costs of running the servers, or you can donate to individuals (like me ) whose work you like.

Well there are really two types of systems. One is where you can give a thumbs up or thumbs down on a comment (sometimes represented by a [+] or [-] sign), and then there is the "Thanks" system, as seen on such sites as http://androidforums.com.
I agree that the first system can and sadly usually is abused (I think I saw it work well on one private torrent site I used to belong to a long time ago). There is a somewhat "pack mentality" that some users can fall into, whether someone is "outed" (falsely or not) for being an abuser of the forums or sometimes members are found "guilty by association".
I would like to see at least a "Thanks" system in place, again the folks at androidforums.com (which I'm sure at least some of you are also members at or at least have been directed to a post there before) have this successfully working within their vBulletin-powered site and would happy to help XDA admins if needed (not that I don't have faith in the XDA site owners/coders, you guys are pretty awesome yourselves =p). Of course I would be happy to lend my ~10 years of PHP/MySQL/etc experience to the process if it'd help.
I would start a public poll, but I think it's really in the interests of the site owners (also they can probably setup a more wide-spread poll than I can if they want public opinion).
Your friend in code,
DeeBG =)

I think it would be good to show appreciation to other users but It would be abused knowing that you can knock down someone's reputation (last thing we need is more flaming)

Captainkrtek said:
I think it would be good to show appreciation to other users but It would be abused knowing that you can knock down someone's reputation (last thing we need is more flaming)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, that's why I think a system where you can ONLY give thanks would be cool. Again, forum admins, let me know if you need any assistance getting it up and working (it shouldn't add a performance performance hit to the backend database/system... the php code would be very light and the mysql db would maybe grow a few hundred kB since users without thanks wouldn't have any data).

Developer Bidding...
Livven said:
The reputation system only works through "thanks", doesn't it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Still open to cheating using multiple accounts to "Thank" themselves here and there and everywhere.
It's perhaps harder to gain anything with requests from yourself, and gifting points to yourself, while offering up public solutions. Thou i wouldn't put it past someone to try.
It's not much of a system - you can donate directly to xda, which will help cover costs of running the servers, or you can donate to individuals (like me ) whose work you like.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm... There seems to be a growing trend on XDA towards "donation requests" or "developer bidding" in certain forums. (see Xperia x10 Froyo request topic for example).
It involves people collectively posting that they will each donate a small amount to their favorite cause. (Android on Samsung Wave being another good example)
The current running tallies of offered donations is also interesting idea, thou there is some concern that those who have offered to donate $10 or $20 dollars will actually do so once the developers have done their magic.
Again, the opaque or arbitrary nature of hidden donations is a problem here.
Without going as far as escrow payments system (for requests that could likely need time limits and a refund), a basic "pre-paid" point system should work pretty well. For instance, once a task is completed the points could then be traded back for paypal dollars, completing the "circle of trust".
Any other ideas on this?
(or is there already an active "services" marketplace here somewhere that i've perhaps overlooked?)

Dedicated File Sharing Website for XDA

Hello All,
I am a regular visitor of the XDA and found it the most resourceful website on the planet. It gives me a sense that I have come to my people place.
After browsing on to various posts and topics I felt that I should also do something for this community and decided to create file sharing website where most powerful brains (XDA members) can put there hard work and share with the world without any difficulty as I have seen many of you people uses (4shared.com, rapidshare, megaupload, etc) but they all not so easy place to download the files. I want to give you people a beautiful place to upload and download files.
I firmly believe that we can grow high with each others support and can always take a further step even in those directions for which people says "Its Blocked".
I want that this place (XDA should be called as one stop mobile solution place) because where peoples thought ends we start working from that place.
But I want to know that do you people really require this service, because only after that I will be able to work upon it.
Please give my your feedback.

vikas_vtcm said:
Hello All,
I am a regular visitor of the XDA and found it the most resourceful website on the planet. It gives me a sense that I have come to my people place.
After browsing on to various posts and topics I felt that I should also do something for this community and decided to create file sharing website where most powerful brains (XDA members) can put there hard work and share with the world without any difficulty as I have seen many of you people uses (4shared.com, rapidshare, megaupload, etc) but they all not so easy place to download the files. I want to give you people a beautiful place to upload and download files.
I firmly believe that we can grow high with each others support and can always take a further step even in those directions for which people says "Its Blocked".
I want that this place (XDA should be called as one stop mobile solution place) because where peoples thought ends we start working from that place.
But I want to know that do you people really require this service, because only after that I will be able to work upon it.
Please give my your feedback.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Many people have tried this before, but the bandwidth needed usually puts paid to them, as cost of running is HUGE. One month, I used 3TB bandwidth just for one ROM. If our team has 5 ROMs just now, that could be a lot of bandwidth (not necessarily 15 TB, but lots)... Multiply that by number of devs, you could have issues with finding a data center...
And storage space. Each ROM for android is 100 to 200 MB, multiplied by all the devs, that would be a hell of a lot of storage space... And where would you back it up to?
It would be a mammoth task... Just saying

pulser_g2 said:
Many people have tried this before, but the bandwidth needed usually puts paid to them, as cost of running is HUGE. One month, I used 3TB bandwidth just for one ROM. If our team has 5 ROMs just now, that could be a lot of bandwidth (not necessarily 15 TB, but lots)... Multiply that by number of devs, you could have issues with finding a data center...
And storage space. Each ROM for android is 100 to 200 MB, multiplied by all the devs, that would be a hell of a lot of storage space... And where would you back it up to?
It would be a mammoth task... Just saying
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your quick response,
Bandwidth and the data space will not be a problem with me ...
As i can arrange an Unlimited data space and bandwidth for this service. With a real high speed connectivity...
But I need your support .... Are you with my me???

Hello all,
I need feedback please...
Is this services really required???

As Pulser said, bandwidth can be a huge issue. However the even larger issue would be with the software companies taking issue with a central repository like what you propose.
Generally, rapidshare and the others offer a certain degree of anonymity, which came in handy whenever Microsoft got a bug up its butt.
Sent from my rooted Droid X, powered by Froyo and Big Red.

As NATF said, the issue of hosting the files would put you in shaky legal waters (regardless of where you live or hold the server, since something like this could reach international scales pretty quickly)...
Even with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited space, I can assure you there will be a limit, where the datacenter would not allow a dedicated server to operate at (I presume you are talking dedicated server, as anything less than full dedicated would have you kicked off the package faster than you could say XDA
But as for bandwidth, I have saturated out 5x100Mbps mirrors with one ROM release, so I honestly think you would be facing an immense task.
Coupled with the fact that even the tiniest slip up would result in almost all the ROMs available being offline while maintenance occurred (making your service lose credibility), if there was data loss, it could be catastrophic if nobody had backups. (Data loss could be due to police raid and seizure warrant, or hack attempts)
Personally, I will always release ROMs from either servers I own, or using space kindly donated by users of our ROMs who have servers operating below capacity.
Mediafire/multiupload etc are also so popular that it would be hard to persuade people to move across. And being able to upload there keeps people further from Microsoft etc, rather than directly uploading...
Imagine if you got subpoenaed for ftpd logs (the logs of all uploads to the server), or worse, the apache access ogs (the details of everyone who downloaded from it)
Whilst it's a very kind and generous offer, I think the logistics and legal issues would prevent it being feasible. A central repository is a good link in the chain to burst, hence why the scattergun approach is much more effective

pulser_g2 said:
As NATF said, the issue of hosting the files would put you in shaky legal waters (regardless of where you live or hold the server, since something like this could reach international scales pretty quickly)...
Even with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited space, I can assure you there will be a limit, where the datacenter would not allow a dedicated server to operate at (I presume you are talking dedicated server, as anything less than full dedicated would have you kicked off the package faster than you could say XDA
But as for bandwidth, I have saturated out 5x100Mbps mirrors with one ROM release, so I honestly think you would be facing an immense task.
Coupled with the fact that even the tiniest slip up would result in almost all the ROMs available being offline while maintenance occurred (making your service lose credibility), if there was data loss, it could be catastrophic if nobody had backups. (Data loss could be due to police raid and seizure warrant, or hack attempts)
Personally, I will always release ROMs from either servers I own, or using space kindly donated by users of our ROMs who have servers operating below capacity.
Mediafire/multiupload etc are also so popular that it would be hard to persuade people to move across. And being able to upload there keeps people further from Microsoft etc, rather than directly uploading...
Imagine if you got subpoenaed for ftpd logs (the logs of all uploads to the server), or worse, the apache access ogs (the details of everyone who downloaded from it)
Whilst it's a very kind and generous offer, I think the logistics and legal issues would prevent it being feasible. A central repository is a good link in the chain to burst, hence why the scattergun approach is much more effective
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your credible feedback..
Is there some solution to overcome all theses legal and other kind of issues... and on my side I will look in the matter and get back to you guys...
I really appreciate that you guys took pain in putting some light in this matter.

[Q] Information about the nitty gritty of XDA

hey, i recently joined this page on facebook (i've withheld the name of the page as to not seem like i'm here to promote it or such, not that it requires promotion with its 2 million members) and a many of us including the owner of the page there are a free-thinking bunch. The problem is that whenever some user finds something we say offensive, we get reported and are blocked from posting for 10-12 hours, sometimes entire days...
The gracious admin there took it upon himself to finance an entirely new site as a refuge for us. But most of lack the technical know-how of getting a site up and running. We have a few volunteers ready to devote their time and skills to help in the site's construction.
The owner suggested a forum-esque feel to the site rather than something like facebook itself and when anyone mentions forum the only thing my mind thinks is XDA!! This site is the epitome of what a forum should be about!!
So i was hoping if anyone could give me some sort of information as to what the site is based on (HTML, PHP, etc)? what type security measures should we be looking at? we read something about a using social networking engines to enable features like instant messaging...
i was hoping if someone could point me (and by relation, us) in the right direction.
Any help would be much appreciated.

psychocyst said:
hey, i recently joined this page on facebook (i've withheld the name of the page as to not seem like i'm here to promote it or such, not that it requires promotion with its 2 million members) and a many of us including the owner of the page there are a free-thinking bunch. The problem is that whenever some user finds something we say offensive, we get reported and are blocked from posting for 10-12 hours, sometimes entire days...
The gracious admin there took it upon himself to finance an entirely new site as a refuge for us. But most of lack the technical know-how of getting a site up and running. We have a few volunteers ready to devote their time and skills to help in the site's construction.
The owner suggested a forum-esque feel to the site rather than something like facebook itself and when anyone mentions forum the only thing my mind thinks is XDA!! This site is the epitome of what a forum should be about!!
So i was hoping if anyone could give me some sort of information as to what the site is based on (HTML, PHP, etc)? what type security measures should we be looking at? we read something about a using social networking engines to enable features like instant messaging...
i was hoping if someone could point me (and by relation, us) in the right direction.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This site is running on vBulletin 3.8.6 which is commercial software. There are free bulletin boards out there. As for security, this is a massive topic that I don't think anyone can summarise. Obvious things like good password policies (long and random, never re-used, etc) and keeping all software patched up to date are key. Other than that it all depends on the implementation. Also, there are penetration testing tools that you can find off the internet to test your site.
Dave

thanks a million Dave. i'll look into it and pass the message on to our group.

psychocyst said:
thanks a million Dave. i'll look into it and pass the message on to our group.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What Dave said, but beware that your site is only as secure as the system it runs on.
Your system can be the most secure in the world, with lovely nice PHP code, the latest patched vBulletin install, and I might still get into it...
If you are using shared web hosting, and some peon is using an out of date wordpress install, they can likely wreak a fair bit of havock on a poorly setup server.
Unfortunately most shared hosting is poorly setup. If you have 2 million members, you WILL need dedicated server space. I would also suggest you need to seriously consider the undertaking here - 2 million people is A LOT, and I don't know how many simultaneous users you are talking about, but it sounds a big target...
You will need a fairly powerful server from the sounds of it. I would suggest looking at the available forum systems, installing them (free ones), or trying out the demos.
I assist in the running of a number of sites, from single figure numbers of visitors per day, through to hundreds of thousands/millions per day... The requirements for these differ HUGELY. While something free like SMF might be good for a site with 200 folk, it's not likely a good idea on a site with 100,000 visitors per day posting...
Consider backup strategies too, for WHEN the worst happens - not if... Where will you store backups? How will you secure them?
Finally, remember to look to the future. phpBB is pretty poor, I suggest avoiding it. But what will you move to next? Make sure you pick a system that ain't gonna die tomorrow... If it does, you are stuck without security updates, and you might find it hard to migrate to another one... Be sure to go with a system that has good support to migrate further if/when the time comes...

woah!! ok, this was a big help...although we have close to 2 million people signed on, only about 30 - 40% of those are regularly active and perhaps 100 or so who're almost always there...
i saw BBCode implementation at linux mint forums and found it a total fail compared to XDA...i had completely forgotten about the back-up portion...
knew i could count on XDA for a lil' help...God i love this site!!

psychocyst said:
woah!! ok, this was a big help...although we have close to 2 million people signed on, only about 30 - 40% of those are regularly active and perhaps 100 or so who're almost always there...
i saw BBCode implementation at linux mint forums and found it a total fail compared to XDA...i had completely forgotten about the back-up portion...
knew i could count on XDA for a lil' help...God i love this site!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Haha no worries.
From those figures I would size the site based on coping with 5000 simultaneous users minimum. I doubt you will get as much tbh, as many people hit the homepage and look at the latest, then go to the next site they visit.
If you can afford, aim to cope with 10k+ simultaneous, to cover you for if you get a bout of publicity...
I'd reckon on a well-run server you would be OK with 8 to 16 GB of RAM, and a few hundred gigabytes of hdd. Bandwidth is hard to gauge without info on the site and content...
But I think it could be run for under $400 per month, and that is a very high estimate to cover things like multiple backup locations.
You will instantly ruin your site reputation if you need to use backups and they don't work...
If nobody is experienced in server management, hire someone to do it. These things are often best left to the experts where you are unsure... It will likely pay for itself in their expertise at least 3 times a month (or at least that's how often some of my clients proclaim I saved their "lives" )

Goo and You

Ok so in case you werent aware, i love goo.im. they are an awesome team of guys helping provide amazing file serving services for free. they created their own app that allows for updates on your phone (should devs make use of it). some of you have complained about when it goes down and some have complained about slower speeds. well such is the way of android, to many people download from them every day and not many give them a second look to click on their ads or to donate.
as many of you know i host the cm9 nightlies thru em, for teh foreseeable future i will continue to as well. now im not gunna name names, but "other" rom downloading apps may cost less to get the "premium" version which only lets you download the official nightlies (assuming your device supports them). thats it, thats all. at goo if you become a sponsor its for life, and the perk? aside from saving the environment and the whales/chickens/sheep etc you get to skip that nasty 10 second wait on ALL downloads via goo manager . this is across all devices and on any roms, not just select ones.
you can read about their current plight at http://goo.im/blog/27 where they have started to ask for donations. sure the goal is a bit on the high side, but cmon if the oatmeal can raise 200k surely we can help get these guys 20k to help the entire android community.

i host all my builds on Goo also... great guys.. they also host my build server which allows me to build the builds i host, Ive donated..

Goo is a great group of people that provide a great service to android developers. They do much much more then just host files. If I wasn't a broke ***** I would donate. As soon as I get a few bucks extra I plan on it. If you're looking or wanting to donate to someone and not sure who to donate too. You can't go wrong with goo. Unlike some other sites they truly use every single penny that is donated to them to do what they say they're going to do. They lay out what they need and how much it is. Some sites aren't so transparent with their intentions. So please. No amount is too small believe me when I say that. Goo appreciates the people that donate a dollar just the same as they appreciate the people who donate 50 bucks. To them you all are equal and they love and thank everyone.
Sent using an AOKP'd ET4G courtesy of Times_Infinity!