

Ask HN: Using spare VPS compute for? - squiguy7

I have a VPS on DigitalOcean and I use it just to host my personal website which takes almost no resources. What are some cool (legal) things I can do with the extra compute I have?<p>It is the smallest droplet (512 MB, 1 vCPU), but I figured that&#x27;s enough for something.
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MalcolmDiggs
Maybe you could run a Tor exit node, or setup a public mirror of your favorite
code bundles. Or you could donate the processing power to a large distributed-
computing project like Stanford's Folding-At-Home
([http://folding.stanford.edu/](http://folding.stanford.edu/)).

Or you could always just turn your server into a little bitcoin miner.
Probably won't make any money from it, but it might be fun to do regardless.

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auganov
Digital Ocean will likely ban you for bitcoin mining (and other software that
constantly stresses any resources.) A quick search reveals tat a Tor exit node
is likely to get you banned on there too. Cut-rate cloud providers like
Digital Ocean are basically in the business of getting as many low use
customers and getting rid of the everyone else [as long as it doesn't totally
wreck their reputation/goodwill].

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i0nutzb
Cats! You can always post cats!

Now, on a more serious note: you could host your friend's sites (and probably
can do a split of the payments), use it as a host for various tests (if you
are a developer).

If you are living in a non US country you could make an instance in US then
use it as a proxy to access various services that requires you to be in US
(hulu, netflix, etc)

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mtmail
You can search for alien life or help cancer research.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects)

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ctb_mg
You could host a mumble/vent for a gaming clan/scene you're involved with.

Run a dedicated server for whatever games you could manage with 512 mb ram.

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ing33k
Use can host and use ownCloud [https://owncloud.org/](https://owncloud.org/)

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lfx
You can run your own secure vpn, to access web when browsing in coffee shop
and in similar places.

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jhildings
Which software(linux) would you recommend for this on the server side ?

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lfx
Does not really matter, since majority of solutions will work on all flavors.
I can speculate that most of tutorials will by on Ubuntu.

But you can look here for basically on-liner:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7586775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7586775)
Also there is "full" solutions
[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-
inst...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-
openvpn-access-server-on-ubuntu-12-04)

