Overview

Started in 1999, the VHFFS project was developped by the TuxFamily administrator team. A first version was released on 2000. There was no third version and the last version, the fourth, was started in 2004. This new version has a common API (written in Perl language) for all components. The main goal of VHFFS : managing users and all services simply, with a GUI or console-tools. Currently, VHFFS4 offers some console-tools and a web-based interface.

• Website hosting (users upload their files through FTP).
• Download repositories (repositories for large files)
• Statistics for each website
• MySQL database support
• PostgreSQL database support
• CVS and Subversion hosting
• DNS hosting.
• Quota support
• Mail hosting. Users can host mail accounts on their own domains
• Mailing-list hosting. Users can create a mailing-list on a default domain (i.e lists.yourhosting.com) or on their own domains
• Antispam and antivirus support for mail accounts
• Internationalisation. No modules required, the platform is fully internationalised in the main package.
• All VHFFS data are stored in a database. You can have several webservers and load-balance web trafic.
• Avatar support : users can upload an avatar which is displayed on the public area.

Here are some screenshots :

Some hosting services uses VHFFS, here is an (incomplete) list :

• Tuxfamily. Tuxfamily uses VHFFS4 for more than one year. This platform manage more than 2000 users and 500 groups. VHFFS4 runs on 5 machines and works perfectly.
• Lost-Oasis. Lost-Oasis is a great hosting service in France. They use a modified version of VHFFS2 and manage many websites.
• Ouvaton. Ouvaton uses since 2000 a modified version of VHFFS2. This association manage more than 5000 users and is very famous in France.
• Africa Computing. Africa Computing begin to use VHFFS since the first version. They upgraded on second version and runs now a modified version of VHFFS4. They use the same backend than the original version.

VHFFS uses some third-party softwares to provide services. Here is the list :

• Run websites : Apache2. If you needs PHP, VHFFS uses suphp
• Receive user’s files : pure-ftpd
• Send and receive mails (for mail and mailing-list) : exim4
• Hosting databases : mysql and postgresql
• Hosting subversion and cvs : subversion and cvs programs
• Store VHFFS database (needed) : postgresql
• User and Group login : libnss-pgsql
• Spam protection : spamassassin or dspam
• Statistics for websites : awstats

VHFFS uses third-party softwares, who are not under our control. When an exploit is discovered, software is patched and most of distributions are updated. So, the third-party software used for your hosting platform must be provided by your distribution, it’s dangerous to compile the software yourself. On the other hand, the main VHFFS software is updated as soon as an exploit is discover. A mail on mailing-lists is sent and a new archive is uploaded on this website.