gunnar.cc Hosting

Below please find some info about a user account plus a virtual host with "gunnar.cc Hosting". The price for this basic setup is 5 USD per month or 50 USD per year. The price for additional domains, multiple user accounts and other 'extras' will need to be negotiated.

Overall environment

gunnar.cc is a Linux virtual server provided by OpenHosting, Inc. Please see their web site for some basic technical info.

Nameservers

These are the nameservers to which you should point your domain name:

Log in

Usermin control panel:
https://yourdomain.tld:20000/

Note: Usermin is protected via SSL encryption. To prevent warning messages from appearing, you are advised to import our root certificate into your web browser before entering that login page.

For up- and downloading files, you can use either the Java based File Manager in Usermin or a separate SSH/SCP client (FTP is not enabled). For command line access you need to log in using the SSH protocol (telnet is not enabled).

Paths

Reserved directory names

These are a few names that you should not use for naming directories, since they might clash with special purpose names such as server wide aliases:

    cfstyle
    cgi-bin
    error
    htdocs
    icons
    logs

PHP

For security reasons, PHP has been configured to run in Safe Mode. This restrictive setting has been relaxed by also turning on safe_mode_gid.

CGI and SSI

As another security measure, suEXEC has been enabled for running CGI and SSI programs.

CGI scripts should be placed in (or in a subdirectory to) the cgi-bin directory. Both the executable files and the directories in which they are located should have the file permission 711 or 755. 777 is not allowed.

To have HTML documents parsed for SSI directives you can either use the file extension .shtml or set the permission 744. #exec cmd and #exec cgi in SSI directives are disabled, but #include virtual is normally sufficient.

mod_perl

The mod_perl extension to the Apache web server is enabled, so if you have a well-written Perl program, that it would make sense to run under mod_perl, it may be arranged. Send a note with your request, stating the reason why you think that mod_perl would be suitable.

Web server configuration

You are allowed to use .htaccess files for site specific configuration of the Apache web server. See Usermin ("Apache Options Files") and the Apache documentation for guidance. However, the ability to use the Options directive in .htaccess files has been disabled.

MySQL

Please let us know if you need one or more MySQL databases.

Mail

By default, messages to username@gunnar.cc as well as all incoming emails to @yourdomain.tld end up in the mailbox for your user account. However, certain incoming messages (aka spam) are rejected by the server, and do never end up in anyone's mailbox. Click here for details.

You have the option to further decide what shall be done with your emails:

• The spam identification filter SpamAssassin is available. From Usermin you can for instance control
• whether SpamAssassin shall be enabled for your user account,
• which spam level to be applied for considering a message spam, and
• (via Procmail) what to do with messages identified as spam.
• The mail processing program Procmail lets you e.g. direct messages to special purpose mail folders (or instantly trash them), forward to other email addresses or enable autoresponders, and you can apply basically whichever criteria you wish for doing so.

The Usermin web interface provides guidance when configuring SpamAssassin and Procmail, but you may want to study other information about respective program as well to find out more about their possibilities. As regards Procmail, a page with a few simple examples was written to help you get started. The FAQ and the Quick Reference Guide may also be useful.

You can read your mail from Usermin, or retrieve the messages via POP (port 995) or IMAP (port 993) to an email client such as Mozilla Thunderbird or Windows Mail. Use the server name gunnar.cc, and select a secure connection (SSL), when configuring your email client. Importing our root certificate into your email client may be advisable to avoid warning messages. To do so, you probably first need to save the certificate on the hard disk (right-click and save), and then import it from your email client.

You can send email messages from Usermin. If you want to send emails from a remote email client, please use the mail server of your Internet access provider.

Sending emails via sendmail can be done from a program that has been installed on the server. State localhost if asked about the SMTP server when configuring the program.

Mailing lists

One or more GNU Mailman mailing lists can be created on your behalf. Just send a note.

Mailman's internal archiver (Pipermail) can be used for archiving list messages, but the highly customizable MHonArc Email-to-HTML converter is also installed and available as an alternative.

Contact forms

Considering the extensive spam activities nowadays, with the spammers' robots parsing web sites for email addresses, it's not advisable to put up addresses in mailto: links on web pages. A convenient alternative is to use contact forms. Since the Perl module CGI::ContactForm is installed at gunnar.cc, a basic form can be created via a CGI script like this:

    #!/usr/bin/perl -T
    use CGI::ContactForm;
    contactform (
        recname   => 'John Smith',
        recmail   => 'john.smith@example.com',
        styleurl  => '/cfstyle/ContactForm.css',
    );

The customization possibilities are described in the CGI::ContactForm documentation.

Version control

CVS (Concurrent Versions System) is available. If you want to make one or more CVS repositories publicly available, they can be included in the already installed copy of FreeBSD-CVSweb.

Questions?

Send your questions about available features or inquiries about additional features to the server administrator.