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Frequently Asked Technical Questions - Email Accounts - Shell Accounts - Web Hosting - Disk Space Email Accounts Q1: What protocol and mail server should I use? A1: For retrieving your PrivateDomainData email, use the POP3 protocol and mail.PrivateDomainData.net. For sending mail, either use your dialup provider's protocol and mail server, or contact us though our web form to make other arrangements. Q2: How do I change my password? A2: Use a telnet or SSH client to connect to shell.PrivateDomainData.net. You will be prompted for your username (the part of your email address before the @ sign) and password. Then you will be prompted to reenter your old password and enter a new one. You will be asked to enter the new password twice, to guard against typing mistakes. Also, you must give a reasonably secure password; the system will reject passwords that are too short or otherwise insecure. [There is a telnet client included with Windows, and we have links to the home pages of several other clients on our software page.] Alternatively, if you're really stuck, you can contact us and have us change your password for you. Please DO NOT send your desired new password by email or via the web form; you must give us a phone number at which to contact you, and tell us the password on the phone. We will not keep any record of the phone number or of the password. Q3: Can I automatically forward or copy my email to another address? A3: Sure. Just email us and we'll set it up. Shell Accounts Q1: How do I connect to the shell server? A1: Use a telnet or SSH client (see our software page) to connect to shell.PrivateDomainData.net. Note that you should also use this hostname for FTP connections; ftp.PrivateDomainData.net may point elsewhere soon. The SSH key fingerprints are: SSH1 (RSA): b4:4f:13:7a:71:f0:41:ab:0f:04:96:0e:7c:59:27:0f SSH2 (DSA): af:c6:30:2f:19:d8:7b:17:7a:fc:f4:c4:60:4e:1f:16 SSH2 (RSA): 1b:5d:1f:5c:1c:4c:37:9b:20:c3:c5:2d:ff:01:42:d1 Q2: How do I change my password? A2: Log in to the shell server, and type 'passwd' (without the quotes). You will be prompted to reenter your old password and enter a new one. You will be asked to enter the new password twice, to guard against typing mistakes. Also, you must give a reasonably secure password; the system will reject passwords that are too short or otherwise insecure. Q3: How do I set up automatic email forwarding or copying? A3: The standard .forward mechanism works, but the preferred, and more powerful, method is to use the .qmail file. See dot-qmail(5) and dot-forward(1). (Type 'man 5 dot-qmail' and 'man 1 dot-forward', without the quotes, at the shell prompt.) Note that the .qmail file must be mode 600 ('chmod 600 ~/.qmail'), and that if a .forward file exists, .qmail will not be used. Another useful program to look into is procmail(1), which allows complex filtering of incoming email. Q4: How do I set up my personal web pages? A4: First, you must enter the 'setupweb' command at the shell prompt (without the quotes). This will prepare your web directory, which is ~/public_html (that is, the public_html directory in your home directory). Then, any files you put in your web directory will be visible on the Web as http://www.PrivateDomainData.net/~username/filename, where username is your username and filename is the name of the file. Also, if you have a file named index.html, index.htm, index.txt, or index.php in your web directory, it will appear on the Web as http://www.PrivateDomainData.net/~username/. If your have more than one of these, the first one from the list will be used. Note that only files with the proper permissions will be visible on the Web. The 'fixweb' command will set up the permissions on ALL files in your web directory. If you have files in your web directory which you do not want to be visible, either 1) use the 'fixweb' command and then 'chmod 600 ~/public_html/filename' for each non-visible file, or 2) use 'chmod 644 ~/public_html/filename' on each visible file, after copying in or creating the non-visible ones. IMPORTANT EXCEPTION: For CGI scripts and other executables - but not for PHP scripts - you MUST use 'chmod 755 ~/public_html/filename' on each script for them to be visible and work properly. If you run 'fixweb', you will have to do this again. (Be aware that you can save some typing by doing 'cd ~/public_html' first; then you can use chmod with just the filename in place of the full path. When you're done, 'cd' will return you to your home directory. See the Unix tutorials listed on our links page for more information.) If you ever want to suspend Web access to your pages, use the 'suspendweb' command. When you want to resume access, use the 'setupweb' command again. Neither command will change or delete the files in your web directory; they work by changing the permissions on your home and web directories themselves. Finally, be sure to read the questions in the web hosting section for more information; note, however, that some questions and/or details (those involving web directory locations, for example) do not apply. [Note for the technically-inclined reader: 'setupweb' is an alias to 'mkdir -p ~/public_html ; chmod 711 ~ ~/public_html', 'fixweb' is an alias to 'find ~/public_html \! -type d -exec chmod 644 {} \; ; find ~/public_html -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;', and 'suspendweb' is an alias to 'chmod 700 ~ ~/public_html'.] Q5: What changes have been made to system utilities to ensure users' privacy? A5: The most significant changes from the user perspective are:
To learn more about these commands, type 'man command' (without the quotes) at the shell prompt, where command is the command on which you want information. If you have any questions, or come across another utility which you feel should be restricted, please email us. Web Hosting Q1: How do I upload my pages? A1: The first thing to know is who owns your web directory. Web hosting comes with a shell account, and the name of this account must be reserved and specified on the signup page. Unless you purchase additional shell accounts and specify otherwise, your web directory will be owned by the shell account you list when you sign up for web hosting. The initial password for this account must also be specified on the signup page. (Note: if you want to change the ownership of your web directory, email us. To learn how to change the password on your shell account, see above.) Armed with this username and password, you can upload pages in two ways. From the shell account, you can move or copy files directly to your web directory, and work directly with the files that are already there. Or, from another machine, you can FTP files to and from your web directory. For FTP, connect to ftp.PrivateDomainData.net. (See our software page for links to the home pages of several FTP clients.) In either case, your web directory is /usr/local/www/vhost/domain/, where domain is your domainname, without 'www'. For example, /usr/local/www/vhost/yourname.com/. Note that you must set the permissions properly on any files you place in your web directory for them to be visible from the Web. From the shell account, the proper command is 'chmod 644 /usr/local/www/vhost/domain/filename', where domain is your domainname without 'www', and filename is the name of the file. To make a file invisible again, use the same command but with 600 in place of 644. IMPORTANT EXCEPTION: For CGI scripts and other executables - but not for PHP scripts - you MUST use 755 in place of 644 in the chmod command on each script for them to be visible and work properly. That is, 'chmod 755 /usr/local/www/vhost/domain/filename'. (Be aware that you can save some typing by doing 'cd /usr/local/www/vhost/domain' first; then you can use chmod with just the filename in place of the full path. When you're done, 'cd' will return you to the shell account's home directory. See the Unix tutorials listed on our links page for more information.) You may or may not be able to set the permissions from an FTP client; consult the documentation on your particular client. If you can, use the numbers given above. If you can't, use the shell account, or email us and we will do it for you. Note that once you have set the permissions on a file, you will most likely (depending on your FTP client) not need to set them again if you upload a changed version, as long as the filename is the same. Disk Space Q1: How do quotas work? What happens if I use more disk space than I'm allotted? A1: The numbers given for disk space are "soft quotas". This means that you can temporarily use more space than you are allotted, without penalty. If you exceed your quota, you'll see a warning message, and you'll receive an email notice every night that you're still above the limit. One week from the moment the soft quota is exceeded, it becomes a hard quota. This means that you will be unable to take up any more disk space until your usage goes below your soft quota. Note that this may interfere with your ability to receive email. There is also a preset hard quota, which is 75 MB above your soft quota. This is intended to allow for temporary file storage while protecting against both accidental and deliberate overuse of space. Exceeding it will produce the results described above. Q2: Does the limit on the number of files I can have work the same way? A2: No. The number-of-files limit is a hard quota. If you need to have more files, you must either pay for more space, or use the temporary storage areas. See the other questions in this section for more information. Q3: What if I need more space than is available to me, even with the provisions for temporary storage? A3: If you know in advance that you'll need large amounts of additional storage on a regular basis, you can increase your quota at the prices listed on the services page. You will be billed immediately for the remainder of the current billing period, and thereafter the charges will be added to your monthly bill. The increase and its associated charges will apply until you tell us to return your quota to its previous size. Note that charges for disk space will NOT be refunded based on the date on which you have us reduce your quota; essentially, there is a one-month minimum. If you only need storage for a short time, you should consider other options, such as storing only part of a large block of data at a time. Also, be sure to read the other questions in this section to help you evaluate your options. Q4: Are there any other storage options available? A4: Yes, there are system-wide temporary storage areas in the /tmp, /var/tmp, and /usr/tmp directories. There are hard quotas (see Q1 for details) of 50 MB and 10000 files in each of the /tmp and /var/tmp directories; files in /usr/tmp count against your regular quota. Note, however, that this is temporary storage; files in these directories may be subject to deletion without warning. Q5: How can I tell how much space I'm using in each of the various storage areas? A5: The 'quota -v' command, entered at a shell prompt (without the quotes), will give you information about your quotas and your current usage. The '/' entry includes /tmp, the '/var' entry includes /var/tmp, the '/usr' entry includes your home and web directories and /usr/tmp, and the '/var/mail' entry includes your mailbox. Note that the numbers this command provides are in kilobytes (KB), not megabytes (MB); divide them by 1024 to get MB. |