<html><P>That's primarily what I was hoping for...that we could put it to some more full use given that we're paying for it...however, unlike most here, I have no mail via Hcoop, as I have numerous other web based email services for that (Juno/Yahoo/etc) so that wouldn't help me...but having it as some limited backup system would...even if it would only be able to supply a "we're having problems page" for my site instead of a not found error...that has led to some users of mine wondering what happened...so a place to post system status would be my one suggestion for now.<BR><BR>And using it for development might be an option if I were able to use it to try out new CGI scripts for my site...but not sure if that would be possible...I'm mainly a Windows guy..so....<BR> <BR>I realize the need to split costs evenly...just hoping to get some benefit for my cost..<BR>Because, are we as a whole, getting $50 a month value from our fees paid to Xiolink?<BR>That's $600 a year minimum for a system that appears, to my limited knowledge of it, way underutilized... <BR><BR>-- ntk@hcoop.net wrote:<BR>We could put more services on it, perhaps backup MX, which would be very good to prevent bounced mail during<BR>network or other outages. And as Shaun pointed out, right now if fyodor<BR>were to go down altogether, it would be minimally several days before we<BR>rebuilt it from scratch (and hopefully you've backup up your files &<BR>mail!). </P>
<P>But the #1 thing it is useful for is just a generic Linux shell server for<BR>development and whatnot. </P>
<P>But regardless, we have no choice but to split the costs among hcoop users<BR>if we are to keep it online, which leads to...<BR><BR>The problem is that HCOOP has to pay the whole sum for hosting Abu every<BR>month no matter what. It's not like it costs us $1.50 per user to host<BR>Abu, it costs us a flat fee of $50+bandwidth to host it every month. </P>
<P>We can't just carve up HCOOP's overhead expenses piecemeal and ask members<BR>to pick and choose which they want to pay for. </P></html>