Design/Architecture

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

Saturn has several virtual servers, of witch one is the one 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 users webpage, then it's the webserver on Titan thats 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.

• attachment:blinkenshell_design.png

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.