Virtual private servers running the new 2026 "Magic LAMP" release of Gales Linux are now available to clients of the hosting service.
Preloaded software weighs in just around 1 GB of storage and includes:
- Most of the basic recommended gports for a comfortable and functional working environment such as less, vim, tmux, openssh, man pages and development tools ;
- Gales repository including gports tree in /var/build ;
- Full distribution source collection in /gales/dist/src so any and all gports are ready to build on demand ;
- Linux kernel base release (4.9) and active patch also in /gales/dist/src so users can customize the configuration and rebuild at will ;
- Basic addons including the latest keksum and an rngnet receiver continuously enriching the /dev/urandom entropy pool with host-provided packets.
The new release includes improved timekeeping tools which are now deployed in production on the host, and thereby benefit all guests without further action on their part. We are using Network Time Protocol to mitigate long-term clock drift, though not in the usual trusting, subservient way. The system clock is pre-calibrated and periodically re-disciplined from an NTP reference under human supervision, with smooth adjustment. The current target is to stay reliably within 1.5 seconds of UT1,(i) while the plan is to tighten this bound while increasing holdover time with further investments in hardware and process.
I'll most likely be my own first customer on this, so expect Fixpoint and other JWRD web properties to be moving to 62.72.189.10 fairly soon now.
- In current practice it's more like +-100 ms of UTC. [^]