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Policies & Guidelines | Hardware
& Account Info | Creating Your Web Site
Posting Your Web Site | E-Mail | Additional Features
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The Ten Commandments of Computer
Ethics
AlterCom Hardware and General Account
Information
AlterCom Server Configuration
AlterCom offers both public and
private access to the files located in your domain directory. We also offer storage space
for web pages with global public access to those pages over the Internet and a limited
form of program execution known as "cgi-bin." Most of our computers are
Sun Microsystems Sparc machines running Solaris 2.6 with the #1 web server in the
world - Apache. Apache is responsible for responding to web page requests from remote
browsers while Solaris (one of the pure forms of UNIX operating system,) provides the
platform to integrate your web site programs. AlterCom' servers are closely linked to the
Internet backbone.
Every AlterCom customer receives a
unique password protected user-id. By logging in with your user-id, you are able to gain
access to your particular web storage space. The "root" of this structure is the
"home" directory, found at path "/data/sites/<yourdomain.com/" Note
that this is somewhat similar to the MS-DOS directory structure, except that there is no
drive letter and forward slashes are used instead of backward slashes. The path referred
to above, however is in relation to our own servers. When you FTP to your account
(transfer web pages from your computer to the AlterCom server,) after providing your
domain name and user-id, you won't need to put in "home/userid." You will
automatically be taken there.
The Index
Page
Inside your home directory are many
files and other directories. The most important directory is named "www". Files
placed in the "www" directory are visible to remote browsers over the Internet,
so this is the directory where you place all of your html documents, graphics, sounds,
files, etc. which people will be able to access from the world wide web. For example, when
a browser asks for URL http://yourdomain.com/page.html, Apache looks for the file:
/data/sites/yourdomain.com/htdocs/page.html and sends it out to the viewer.
The home page filename options of your
home page should be home.htm, index.htm, index.php, index.php3, index.stm, index.shtml,
default.html, default.htm,or Default.html... The webserver will automatically send the
file at path /data/sites/yourdomain.com/home.htm when a browser specifies
http://www.yourdomain.com. When your account is set up, there will be an home.htm page
already installed. This just tells anyone accessing your domain that your site is under
construction and will be available soon. You will replace this file in the www directory
with one of your own creation. If you wish to use any of the cgi features we provide that
use Server Side Includes (SSI), you must name your page with the .sht or .shtml extension.
You can also put an home.htm file in any subdirectory that you
wish, and it will be the default page served in case you want to put sections of your web
pages in subdirectories.
FTP
Access
Now that you know where the files have
to be located in order to be visible from the Internet, just how do you put the files
there? There are several ways, depending on your computer system. For the Macintosh, a
program called "Fetch" is used. Microsoft Windows systems use
"WS_FTP." Look further in this manual for detailed instructions on each of these
programs.
Secure Shell
PuTTY is a free (MIT-licensed) Win32 Telnet
and SSH client. This manual documents PuTTY, and its companion utilities PSCP, Plink,
Pageant and PuTTYgen. Docs Download
Setting up Your Own "404:File
Not Found" Error Page
A file already exists in the www
directory of your server. It's called missing.html. You can edit it to your liking, or
create your own. As long as it's called 404.html and it's in your root www directory, the
server will display it whenever someone tries to access a page on your domain that does
not exist.
Anonymous
FTP Setup
Your anonymous ftp site is completely
different from your web site. When people ftp to your domain anonymously, they will see
the following directories:
bin/ dev/ etc/ incoming/ lib/ pub/
"pub" is where you should put all your
anonymously accessible files. "incoming" is for the anonymous users to upload
files.
For security, the following applies:
Only the incoming directory can be written to
anonymously
Subdirectories are not creatable
The incoming directory is not readable by people
dropping files there
You are responsible for any
"pirated" software uploaded by the anonymous users. The anonymous ftp sites will
be periodically monitored for any abuses. You may ignore the other directories.
To access the anonymous FTP site via
the web, use the following address:
ftp://yourdomain.com/pub/
Your HTML to download a file called
mirc511s.exe from a webpage would look like this:
<A
HREF="ftp://yourdomain.com/pub/mirc511s.exe">Download Mirc Now</A>
You should tell your visitors that
they may need to right-click on the link if they are PC users, or if they use a Macintosh,
they need to hold down the mouse button on the link, then select the appropriate option
from the Pop-up menu.
Please note it's possible during peak
hours to receive a "too many anonymous users error", We must restrict the number
of simultaneous anonymous users to keep the webserver and normal FTP performance within
normal limits. If you receive this error often you may want to put you downloadable files
in your main web directory and link to them with an http call.
Example:
http://yourdomain.com/files.zip
This assumes the zip files are in the main web directory.
Note - if your customer experiences slow download performance
chances are it's a problem on the internet. We maintain a large margin of available
bandwidth so bottlenecks never occur within our network. Please feel free to send an
inquiry to be sure all the servers are operating properly, if you include there ISP's IP#
we will run traceroutes to see where the delays are occuring.
Password Protected Web
Directory
To password protect different directories on your
domain you can use the Virtual Publisher Security System (for qualifying accounts). If you
have this on your account, the administrator's page with directions and forms for entering
new directories and users is found at:
Using Netscape or Internet Explorer, you can
create secure directories and add users and passwords. The admin page is very simple to
use. Just avoid adding groups or users with spaces in their names; this produces errors.
Note for Front Page users: The password
administration script works poorly on front page sites. You will still receive it install
by default but we cannot provide any support if you choose to use it. Below are some
guidlines you should follow. It is very important that any directory you are trying to
protect be world readable and Writable. This is done by the following Unix command: chmod
777 directory-name. The main directory and any subdirectories will need to be changed in
this way. Also make the /password directory chmod -R 777.
Better Docs:
http://linux.lk.net/pages/htaccess.html
(simple directions/method)
http://www.apacheweek.com/features/userauth
http://www.apacheweek.com/features/dbmauth
Telnet
Access
A telnet account is just another name for
Unix/Linux userid. When you sign up with us, you get a userid and password. You may ask
for more than one such userid. Please see the Fee Schedule for pricing. Each telnet
account for your domain has its own separate home directory, but shares the same www and
FTP directories.
You need a telnet program to access your telnet
account. Simply put in yourdomain.com as the host, and connect to the server. When you are
connected, you will be prompted for your userid and password.
Some of the programs available at the shell
prompt are:
- mail - a primitive email program
- pine - a more powerful email program
- ftp (or ncftp) - to FTP onto other sites
- telnet and/or SSH (Secure Shell) - to telnet to
other sites
- pico - an easy to use text editor
- vi - a not so easy to use (but standard) text editor
- lynx - a text-based world wide web browser.
You access these programs by typing in their names
and then following commands relevant to each program. If you need help with any of the
programs, at the shell prompt, type man and the name of the program to get instructions
for that program online. If you can't remember the name of the program, try apropos
subject (i.e. apropos mail). It is important to remember that Unix is case-sensitive, and
that "home.htm" is not the same as "home.htm."
Note:
If you experience problems with your telnet program when accessing
the above programs you will need to make a entry in your login directories .bash_profile
file. Just add the following to the last line export TERM=vt100. This will allow
you to access all shell programs properly.
9+
Character Names
A name of anywhere from 3-16 letters is legal for email
accounts, FTP accounts, and telnet accounts are up to 8 letters. There is no limitation
for file names on the server.
Policies
& Guidelines | Hardware & Account Info | Creating
Your Web Site
Posting Your Web Site | E-Mail | Additional Features
| CGI-BIN
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