Novylen.net, Features and FAQ:

Available Features:

Email:
- Universal mailbox folders. Whether you use Unix shell programs, webmail, or IMAP to get your mail, it'll all be the same mailbox.
- Aggressive spam filtering. I use multiple DNS blacklists, greylisting, SPF checks, Spamassassin, and finally, dspam to do the final classifying of email into spam folders or your inbox.
- Email archiving. Emails will be "retired" to a permanent IMAP folder ("Archive/2005/Inbox" for instance) after a certain time, not deleted. The default is 90 days, but can be changed to anything; I use 10 days personally.
- Easy spam classification: if you have a spam in your inbox, move it to your Spam folder. It'll be picked up and deleted. If you have a false positive in your Spam folder, move it out of your spam folder into where you want it to go. The system will learn automatically what you consider to be spam or good email. This system will work with all the different ways of looking at your mailbox.
- Unlimited sub-accounts: any email sent to username-whatever@novylen.net will be valid; you can use this facility to fill in Web forms that are "tagged" so that if the email address starts getting spammed, then you can block it in your email program.
- Authenticated-ish SMTP: If you check your mail successfully via IMAP, you will be allowed to send mail with SMTP for three days. This is refreshed every time you check your mail.
- Fetching email from Hotmail and Yahoo: ask me about this. I can take email from Hotmail or Yahoo accounts and forward them on, or deliver them to local accounts. If they are delivered locally, they will be subject to the standard set of spam filters.
Subdomains
- On request, whatever.novylen.net can be optionally created, for any domain that I host (not just novylen.net), e.g. root.novylen.net.
Web pages
- Every user by default has http://www.novylen.net/~username/ for every domain that I host. You can publish Web pages to that link by putting things in the "public_html" directory under your home directory. You can use WinSCP to connect and upload files.
- If you have a subdomain enabled, automatic statistics about your Web site will be generated; see novylen.net statistics for example.
Backups
- Backup snapshots are kept of all files, including emails: 7 days of snapshots, 4 weekly snapshots, and 2 monthly snapshots are stored, and files can be retrieved from them through the ".snapshot" link in your personal home directory. If you delete something, you can retrieve it yourself, or have me do it.
Gallery
- On request, a personal image gallery can be created for you. By default, it will be gallery.yoursubdomain.domain. For example, see gallery.novylen.net.
Forums
- On request, a personal forum can be created for you. For example, see the CSI Azeroth Forum.
Shell accounts
- On request, I can give access to Unix shell accounts to users. If you don't know what this is, then you probably don't want it.
File storage
- Everyone has file storage available limited only by common sense and overall storage space. I don't currently implement quotas, but I do keep an eye on what's being used, and I will send email to people who decide that they feel a need to download a few gigabytes of stuff. :)

FAQ

email section

how do I access my email account?
how do I send email?
how do I filter email?
how can I retrieve email from other accounts?
how can I forward email from my account elsewhere?
how can I create extra email accounts?
how do I enable spam filtering?

web and ftp

How do I store files?
How do I publish web pages?
what about web page statistics?
and web logs?

miscellaneous stuff

How do I change my password?
what if I need a new program/service installed?
I can't download an SSH program. help?
I want to learn Linux. What can I do?

how do I access my email account?
To access email accounts, there are (at least!) three options:

you may log in via webmail (www.novylen.net/webmail)
retrieve your email via IMAP from any recent email client (such as Eudora, Thunderbird, or Evolution)
log in using SSH, to a shell and use the recommended "mutt" email client. Note that most people will not have shell accounts unless they have been explicitly enabled, for security purposes.

how do I send email?
Anyone with an account on this server is permitted to use SMTP for outgoing email, provided that they first authenticate themselves via IMAP. Put more plainly, check your email first; then for three days your IP address will have permission to relay email through mail.novylen.net.

how do I filter email?
This depends on which e-mail program you are using. Every one handles it differently. However, if you want to filter email when it is delivered, rather than when you check it, read up on "procmail" and edit the ".procmailrc" file in your home directory. There are many good tutorials, or you can ask me.

how can I retreive email from other accounts?
It depends on the nature of the account. Ask me about it.

Hotmail: The "gotmail" program will retrieve email from a Hotmail account. Once retrieved, the email will be forwarded to a location you specify (usually your account), and optionally filtered for spam. If you have a shell account, you can set this up yourself (cd /usr/share/doc/gotmail/examples; note that you should use the "gotmail-wrapper" script in order to enable spam filtering; please put this in cron and run it no more than four times an hour. Coordinate the times with me so I don't end up with a dozen gotmail instances running simultaneously and causing load spikes). If you haven't had shell access enabled, ask me to set it up.
Yahoo Mail: The "fetchyahoo" program will retrieve email from a Yahoo account. See notes for hotmail.

how can I forward email from my novylen.net account, to another account?
Create a file called ".qmail" in your home directory containing the email address (or addresses) to forward email to. Deleting this file removes the forward. Or ask me.

how can I create extra email accounts?
If you create a file named ".qmail-foo" in your home directory, containing an email address or an email folder, everything sent to "username-foo@novylen.net" will follow those delivery instructions. Examples of delivery instructions:

username@novylen.net: forwards emails to your account for normal delivery (recommended).

the single character '#': deletes the incoming email without looking at it. Popular for subaccounts that have been become popular with spammesr.

~/Maildir/.Spam/: drops the email into your spam folder.

~/Maildir/: drops the email into your regular inbox, ignoring all spam filters.

~/mailbox: drops the email into a plain text file in your home directory called "mailbox".

and so on.

The advantage of this is the ability to create "temporary" email accounts on the fly for various purposes; if one gets choked with spam, simply delete it. You can use this to track who sells your email address this way, as well: if you hand out "username-real@novylen.net" to Real Networks Inc, and at some point in the future receive spam at that address, it's possible that Real sold your email address to spammers.

To catch all subaccounts, create a file called ".qmail-default" with a default delivery instruction. A spam folder is a good place. Any other .qmail-whatever files will take precedence over the default file.

How do I disable spam filtering?
Create a file called ".nodspam" in your home directory; this will make it so that the email classifier does not run. Or ask me.

How do I change my password?
If you have a shell account, type "passwd" at the prompt. If not, go to http://www.novylen.net/mindterm/, connect to "www.novylen.net" as prompted, and you'll be asked for your username, password, confirmation, and asked for a new password. Or ask me.

How do I store files?
Your account gives you quite a lot of storage space; you can use an SSH client (I recommend WinSCP for Windows users, in order to transfer files back and forth. This is quotaless, and I have a very great deal of space free at the time of writing (on the order of 76 gigabytes). Please please don't abuse this, because while my space is effectively unlimited, my bandwidth is not. Accounts that go over a few hundred megabytes will receive polite inquiries and won't be backed biweekly with the rest of the system. I can and will implement account quotas if/when it becomes necessary.

How do I publish web pages?
Every account has a "public_html" directory. Files placed here will become accessable at the URL http://www.novylen.net/~username/. To publish a web page, use "ftp" to place HTML files in the "public_html" directory in your account. Several server extensions are enabled: PHP and Server-Side Includes, along with CGI scripts. On request I can create foo.novylen.net as a web page name, or host a domain that you have purchased (provided that it is not expected to have high traffic).

what about web page statistics?
For any domain or subdomain (not standard ~username accounts), statistics are automatically generated on usage, hits, and history. See /stats/ on your page. This is not passworded by default, but can be, via the ".htaccess" mechanism supported by the web server; see this tutorial.

and web logs?
If you have a subdomain set up (foo.novylen.net, foo.constainia.net, foo.whatever.org, and so on), logs will be kept in the "apachelogs" subdirectory off your home directory. Automatic log rotation will take place.

I can't download an SSH program. help?
http://www.novylen.net/mindterm/. If you are behind a firewall, this will not work. You can only use it to connect to this server.

what if I need a new program/service installed?
Well.. ask me.

I want to learn Linux. What can I do?
install it. play with it. read about it. Make mistakes, ask stupid questions, do stupid things, fix problems. Take a class or two. Above all, have fun. You can do really cool things with Linux, and you can do it in freedom.

Policy:

The sysadmin reserves the right to provide service arbitrarily and in any way he chooses. He is not obligated in any way. Et cetera.