Hacker News: giis

New comment by giis in "Copy Fail"

giis — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 01:24:32 +0000

As soon as I read this

>Shared dev boxes, shell-as-a-service, jump hosts, build servers — anywhere multiple users share a kernel. any user becomes root

jumped out of bed and went straight into webminal.org servers as local user and ran the python code. It says permission denied on sock() call.

Then I tested with local laptop with it:

```

$ uname -a

Linux debian 6.12.43+deb12-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.43-1~bpo12+1 (2025-09-06) x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ python3 copy_fail_exp.py

# cd /root && ls

bluetooth_fix_log.txt dead.letter overcommit_memorx~ overcommit_memory~ overcommit_memorz~ resize.txt snap

```

It does provide the root access!

New comment by giis in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

giis — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:15:35 +0000

Yes, GIF in PR is really nice in my view too :) Our reproduction runs in a sandboxed per-repo environment that we re-verify the fix in before opening the PR. Would love to have your thoughts on beta and to see how it goes on real world apps. I'm reachable on support AT neverbreak.ai

New comment by giis in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

giis — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 01:49:38 +0000

https://neverbreak.ai that fixes failing CI and opens a PR with _proof_. Most "AI CI fix" tools read the error log and guess a patch. We actually reproduce the failure, fix it then re-run the test in a fresh environment to confirm it passes before opening the PR. Each PR includes a short GIF of the fix working. If the test doesn't actually pass, no PR gets opened. Works with C, Python, Go, Node.js, Java on GitHub Actions and GitLab CI. Currently working with few beta users.

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:09:04 +0000

Sure. We had quite a lot of universities and schools used this platform for their classes. I'll be away from system for next 48hrs though.Drop us a mail,will respond.

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:39:28 +0000

Actually I opened up GitHub Sponsor just few weeks ago. Few tims i received enquiry from users (professors) who wanted to contribute back.only now i have proper channel to redirect such requests.

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:32:21 +0000

Only UML is the resource consuming part kept as option available on request. Rest of them all shared Shellinabox, nginx,Flask and each active user session consumes little RAM since its a shared terminal. Simple `ls /home` shows all other users on that server!

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:25:31 +0000

There will be little latency if you access from different region. Server located at Singapore. From India, I checked right now directly via this link https://www.webminal.org/terminal/proxy/index/ I dont see much issue. I use firefox/chrome on Debian. May be try with different browser?

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:05:57 +0000

Thanks, most of these came out restriction, we cant afford to throw money on horizontal scaling (adding more server,load server etc). So we kind of forced to try out new things to keep cost affordable. There are many thing left out on above doc: IIRC, we started with openvz and even today our security relies on SELinux, how we remapped user account creation with pre-existing templates for ext4 quota, we moved to xfs because of flexibility. Mysqldb quota/limits, fork bombs by college/school students bringing out docker environment. Old school internet is right term.

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:55:46 +0000

Until few days server ago was using 8GB and I did a cost cutting measure and its running on 4GB server for last week or so. :)

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:25:56 +0000

In past I have seen around 10 process, but I think with current setup, it could support around upto 20 UML. Remember this runs on the same server where others login and get their normal bash account too. So not a dedicated UML server.

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:20:09 +0000

It began as on-prem, Freston hosted in his house (we shared server cost, some people called it crazy, because I sent money to someone I met in Linuxforums.org and never seen this person, even via internet, I trusted him because I know him for few years on that forum) After 3 years or so we moved on to cloud servers. Mostly switching from one infra and another if we get some credits :D Couple of years we had Linode sponsoring those nodes until its acquisition.

>shared screen comms system is outrageously crazy,

Thats Freston idea. I remember our typically chat begins with something like "Hey Laks, Can you see me typing!" ;)

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 07:47:27 +0000

Yes, User mode linux pretty cool project. If I'm not wrong, UML is kind of predecessor to gvisor or firecracker from a different era.

New comment by giis in "15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die"

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:43:12 +0000

Sure thanks, Let me know if you have feedback.

15 years, one server, 8GB RAM and 500k users – how Webminal refuses to die

giis — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:08:53 +0000

Article URL: https://community.webminal.org/t/15-years-one-server-8gb-ram-and-500k-users-how-webminal-refuses-to-die/8803

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570940

Points: 304

# Comments: 53

Show HN: PostgreSQL backup manager with BTRFS block-level deduplication

giis — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:21:40 +0000

I wrote BTRFS block level de-duplication sometime in 2020 as use-case for a patch sent in 2015 https://stackoverflow.com/a/34163236 and now after 6 more years created an use-case for dduper via pgdedup!

How it works? Consecutive pg_basebackup snapshots share most of their blocks. Store them uncompressed on BTRFS and let dduper deduplicate it.

Interestingly: - gzip completely breaks block-level dedup. Two pg_basebackup -z runs of the same database produce < 1% matching blocks. - Chunk size matters hugely. dduper's default 128KB chunks only found 19% savings. Lowering to 8KB (PostgreSQL's page size) jumped to 68%.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497042

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

This Linux FS was supposed to change everything–here's the dark reason it failed

giis — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 06:45:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.howtogeek.com/this-linux-filesystem-was-supposed-to-change-everything-heres-the-dark-reason-it-failed/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47486148

Points: 7

# Comments: 2

New comment by giis in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2025)"

giis — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 13:09:59 +0000

Yes, I know the risk involved. Just 1 or 2 trades per day not more. Always used the amount that I can afford to lose. No gambling.

New comment by giis in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2025)"

giis — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 05:40:59 +0000

Quantitative Trading Co-Founder | US https://0dte.tech/

Seeking US-based co-founder with _strong_ FOSS credentials to establish and operate quantitative trading firm. Prior Trading experience desired.

email me: lakshmipathi [dot] g [at] gmail [dot] com

New comment by giis in "Ask HN: Have you ever regretted open-sourcing something?"

giis — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 10:11:15 +0000

To be honest, I do regret it. After 20 years of working on FOSS projects, I've invested enormous amounts of time, effort, and money into these and other free/open-source initiatives. It was enjoyable initially - there's something addictive about receiving praise from strangers and unknown communities. You keep going because it feels good and you develop a sense of moral superiority. But years later, when the people closest to you are no longer around - you pause and reflect on how much energy you devoted to random strangers instead of those who shared your life. If I had invested even 1% of the time and effort I put into FOSS projects into my relationships with loved ones, they would have been so much happier. Now I'm left wondering what the hell I was doing all those years https://giis.co.in/foss.html

Mind-Blowing:PostgreSQL Meets ScyllaDB Lightning Speed and Monstrous Scalability

giis — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 14:25:43 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/@abdurohman/mind-blowing-postgresql-meets-scylladbs-lightning-speed-and-monstrous-scalability-7dcda1eb1cea

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42502094

Points: 1

# Comments: 0