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jesse

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Posts posted by jesse

    Some Way To Change Default Email Address?

    in Questions

    Posted

     

     

    I never had to empty mine in the 5 years I had a Stevie account, so it's unlikely to ever hog a massive amount of space. My Tommy account has 48 emails in there currently.

    So I assume the emails in that account count towards the overall server disk quota just like any other email account?

    The reason why I'm worried about spam is because I'm hoping to explode on social media eventually. :D

     

    They do. On cPanel systems, mail is just another file. Take a look in <homedir>/mail/cur/. You'll see a bunch of really strangely named files that each represent a single email. As long as you don't give out that email address, which is typically in the form cpanel_username@tommy.heliohost.org, you should be fine. Nobody uses the default account, and cP recommends you don't for exactly this reason.

     

    The problem is my cpanel username is very short, simple, and somewhat common. I shouldn't have picked one so simple when I created the account, but I didn't know I'd have an open email address with the same name afterwards. I'm assuming it's very difficult to change the account username since there's no option for it in the UI.

     

    All the domains that regular people will actually visit/send mail to (such as your main domain) don't have any default accounts, and can be fully managed through cPanel. If you don't want any email to be accepted, just don't create an account or forwarder. The server will reject mail sent to non-existent recipients.

     

    If spam does become an issue down the road, we have SpamAssassin available too. :)

    Yeah, I saw those options. Grateful for SA.

     

     

     

    The default email account username is the same name of the cpanel login. Is there any way to change that?

    Long version:

    These default mail accounts actually predate the internet itself. Even at the beginning of computing in the early 70s unix was designed to be a multi-user system, and before computers could even really communicate with each other users on these old systems could send messages to each other. Bob might send Steve a message "Hey, I installed pine!" and the next time Steve logged in the command line would tell him that he had mail. Eventually clever people began forming networks of computers and the internet rolled into existence. Mail from these early computers was adapted to not only be able to send mail locally, as it had originally been designed on the same physical machine, but send the mails out over the network to another computer.

     

    TLDR:

    The default mail address is part of linux not cpanel.

     

     

    OH, now it all makes sense. So you'd have to change my linux account name. Has it been attempted before w/having cpanel installed? Did it break all the things?

    Some Way To Change Default Email Address?

    in Questions

    Posted

    It's mostly there for logs and internal results reporting. Cron output (and IIRC metrics reports if you turn them on) are sent to it for instance, so if you wish to see these, this mailbox is where you look.

     

    Other than that, yeah, it mostly collects spam. I have 3 spam emails and 45 messages full of cron results in mine right now. :rolleyes:

     

    If you're really worried about it, you can probably code a script that connects the mailbox and deletes all the mail.

    That sounds potentially useful, but it means I can't just ignore all email sent to the address either. Argggggg

    I wanted to set a filter with "Fail with Message" action. Is there a list of addresses I can whitelist on the account from cron et al?

     

    I never had to empty mine in the 5 years I had a Stevie account, so it's unlikely to ever hog a massive amount of space. My Tommy account has 48 emails in there currently.

    So I assume the emails in that account count towards the overall server disk quota just like any other email account?

    The reason why I'm worried about spam is because I'm hoping to explode on social media eventually. :D

    Some Way To Change Default Email Address?

    in Questions

    Posted · Edited by jesse

    The default email account username is the same name of the cpanel login. Is there any way to change that? (For security, and to avoid future spam.) Thanks.

    EDIT

     

    Well, I think I found my own answer buried in the cpanel docs:

     

    You cannot rename, delete, or place a quota on the default account. We recommend that you create a separate email account for daily use.

     

    So... what good is this email account? Its only use seems to be to hold undesired spam, and there's no way to set a quota. Probably an artifact from a different era? I'd be interested to know the best solution for this.

    Ssh On Tommy

    in Website Management and Coding

    Posted

    I couldn't find any documentation on the folder, although it's very hard to search for. I tried making a script to automatically do it:

     

    1. I initially used cpanel UI to install key and cert. This made 2 files in the ~/ssl/key and ~/ssl/cert folders with unique/hashed filenames. It also added entries to ~/ssl/ssl.db, which is just a plain text file (not sqlite or anything like that).
    2. I created a script to generate new key and cert files, simulating a renewal. It uploads those new files into the respective folders, using the same filenames that were generated by cpanel for the previous files.
    3. Unfortunately, changes did not automatically take effect - the old files were still in use.
    4. Went to CPanel -> "SSL/TLS" -> "Update Certificate" -> "Autofill by Domain". Magically, the new cert appeared, but not the new key!! (I have no idea on that one.)
    5. However, if you go to "SSL/TLS" -> "Manage SSL" -> "Private Keys" -> "Edit" existing, the new key is already showing. I just don't know why the autofill doesn't pick it up. But, you can copy the encoded key from that page and paste it into the autofill page, and it works.

     

    That process really sucks. My conclusion is that if the cpanel/WHM/whatever API is unavailable, then a custom script would need to be written to bypass/not use the whole ~/ssl folder and therefore the cpanel "SSL/TLS" module. The script invokes certbot, which automatically applies the SSL changes to apache. Users could opt-in to that and just be forewarned that SSL won't be manageable under the cpanel module from that point forward. The questionable part (to me) is getting the list of domains to apply Let's Encrypt SSL to.

     

    The only other possibility that I can think of is to automatically update ~/ssl/ssl.db with each renewal and see if cpanel likes that any better, but I'm betting cpanel is copying the key and cert elsewhere, similar to how certbot would, in order to make them active, in which case updating ssl.db would not help.

     

    So testing and setup would go something like:

    1. (Easy) Add heliohost.org to https://publicsuffix.org/
    2. (Easy) Install certbot following official directions
    3. (Hard?) Maintain a list of domains for Let's Encrypt SSL. Get the list via a script somehow.
    4. (Easy) When someone opts-in, pass new domain to certbot to generate and install initial cert automatically.
    5. (Easy) Make a renewal script on cron that renews all domains every 80 days, for example.

    Ssh On Tommy

    in Website Management and Coding

    Posted · Edited by jesse

    Oh, I see. I had no idea.

     

    I did some research but didn't find anything like you were describing, a Let's Encrypt plugin that doesn't require WHM (only mildly confusing...), and I don't have any experience with writing plugins for cpanel. Calling the Let's Encrypt script itself and checking for successful output shouldn't be too hard, though.

     

    Let's Encrypt doesn't issue wildcard certs, but it's possible to give their issuing script a list of all domains/subdomains of everyone wanting to opt-in to Let's Encrypt. That would overcome the rate limit, and also avoid not everyone wanting to enable SSL for their site (although I don't understand that one). So, cpanel frontend could have an opt-in checkbox with a note about how long it will take for changes to go into effect, and a script in the background could be run on cron to automatically renew the cert for everyone. But then, everyone could see everyone else's domain name because they're all on the same cert.

     

    [EDITED]

     

    Researching further, there's also a limit of 100 domains per cert. It looks like the proper solution is to get added to the "public suffix list", basically a list of all shared hosting providers, by submitting a pull request on github using the second link here. This nullifies the 20/week rate limit, aka "Certificates per Registered Domain".

     

    https://letsencrypt.org/docs/rate-limits/

    https://publicsuffix.org/

     

    Meanwhile, I've simply got my own .com added to my Heliohost site, so the rate limit isn't posing a problem for me. The problem part is the automatic renewal.

    A Plea: Signing Up For A Free Account Is Basically Impossible. Change The Front Page To Reflect That.

    in Questions

    Posted

    Thanks for the great post. I'm sure there are others who are thinking the same as you.

     

    Storytime! :)

     

    When I created my first account in 2009 there was only one server: Stevie. I stayed up until 2am local time three nights in a row to get my account because Stevie signups filled so quickly. The first night I wasn't paying much attention and didn't check until about ten minutes after. The second night I set some alarms and mashed the F5 button and still didn't manage to get an account. The third night was the charm and I managed to get an account. At the time there was no option to donate to get an invite. Your only option was to stay up until the middle of the night. I had used a lot of free hosts, and over the next few days as I began to use my treasured Stevie account I realized that there was something special about Heliohost. It was like night and day between other free hosts and Heliohost. Based on those first impressions, and my interactions with the admins at the time when I had problems lead me to believe in the Heliohost concept. I saw that the admins were fairly overworked for being volunteers, and I started helping out on the forums. Just simple stuff like posting links for people who couldn't find them on their own, etc. After ~100 or so helpful posts the admins started to notice, and after some internal discussion decided to promote me and give me access to some tools so I could be even more helpful.

     

    Fast forward a bit, and I've basically gone from just a random user who found Heliohost out of the hundreds of other free hosts, to essentially running the whole thing.

     

     

     

    There's a big difference in my opinion between an upsell and a donation. First of all there is nothing special about a donation account versus a free account on Tommy. There is no difference between a free Tommy account, a $1 donation Tommy account or a $100 donation Tommy account. Donations definitely aren't required to have an account on Tommy. We just wanted to express our gratitude for the donations we receive so we think it's fair to give a gift in exchange. A Tommy invitation link is that thank you gift. Anyone who donates any amount gets the same gift.

     

    A parallel to consider here is a free public radio or tv station. They broadcast their signal for free for anyone to listen or watch. We provide free hosting to anyone who signs up and uses it. The radio or television station takes money to continue operation. Our free hosting takes money to continue operation. If people don't donate to free public radio or public tv stations they go out of business. If we don't get enough donations we're going to go out of business too. When you make a donation to a public radio or tv station they may give you a thank you gift like a coffee mug or a shirt. When you make a donation to Heliohost we give you the gift of creating your account a little easier.

     

    If you can't make a donation, that's fine. Enjoy the free service, and hope that enough other people make enough donations to keep your service free. If you can make a donation please know how much we appreciate it, and also know how much all of the people who can't make donations appreciate it. Some of our users are under 18 and can't use paypal. Some of our users live in Iran and can't transfer money to us. We at Heliohost believe in free hosting for everyone. Everyone should be able to have their own website.

     

    <snip>

     

    Some of our users are under 18 and can't use paypal. Some of our users live in Iran and can't transfer money to us. We at Heliohost believe in free hosting for everyone. Everyone should be able to have their own website.

     

    @Krydos @Krydos That is quite a story. I fully understand and share your "server philosophy" and willingness to help out. I started hosting my own apache server over dialup when I was in 3rd grade, without any external help and no money for a proper host. (And even if I was rich or had access to a credit card, I only hosted javascript games and things I thought were "cool" lol. It doesn't take many resources to start to learn.) I myself would help out in the forums, if I had time. But in ~4 weeks, I will most likely be leaving for the remote wilderness for roughly a year with no PC...

     

     

    When I took over as root admin I inherited a Stevie with an abysmal ~65% uptime, and Johnny was even worse. Through seven or so years of experience with free hosting I've come to realize that you can have uptime or you can have unlimited signups. You can't have both on the same server. If you have unlimited signups the server gets overloaded and then everyone complains about how bad the uptime is. If you have 99.9%+ uptime then people start complaining about not being able to create an account.

     

    My solution: Have experimental servers with unlimited signups, and have stable servers with limited signups.

     

    Right now we're having some pretty serious hardware issues on our ancient 8 year old machines. That's why we're asking for donations for the first time in the 12 years that Heliohost has provided hosting for free. Stevie had a hard drive fail completely, and Johnny seems to be having some sort of hardware failure too. We need to repair our servers, and buy new hardware. That takes money. Tommy is an amazing server, but without multiple servers we can't have an experimental server with open signups like you want. If we can raise enough funds to make repairs Stevie and Tommy will be our stable servers with great uptime, and Johnny will be our experimental server with unlimited signups.

     

    So, it sounds like reliability is a major problem. Not much you can do as far as hardware beside closely monitoring logs, and having funds on hand for parts when the time comes. I have some stuff on hand that I have little use for, but it's probably all older than your servers. But I'm wondering whether it's primarily:

    • A hardware reliability problem
    • A software reliability problem
    • Not really either, but because of an unrealistic amount of accounts sharing the same server, putting the server in a precarious state. I wouldn't have enough experience to compare Heliohost to another similar hosting service in order to say how many of these kinds of accounts is too many. I have never had to allocate resources for so many customers.

    There's a big difference in my opinion between an upsell and a donation. First of all there is nothing special about a donation account versus a free account on Tommy. There is no difference between a free Tommy account, a $1 donation Tommy account or a $100 donation Tommy account. Donations definitely aren't required to have an account on Tommy. We just wanted to express our gratitude for the donations we receive so we think it's fair to give a gift in exchange. A Tommy invitation link is that thank you gift. Anyone who donates any amount gets the same gift.

     

    A parallel to consider here is a free public radio or tv station. They broadcast their signal for free for anyone to listen or watch. We provide free hosting to anyone who signs up and uses it. The radio or television station takes money to continue operation. Our free hosting takes money to continue operation. If people don't donate to free public radio or public tv stations they go out of business. If we don't get enough donations we're going to go out of business too. When you make a donation to a public radio or tv station they may give you a thank you gift like a coffee mug or a shirt. When you make a donation to Heliohost we give you the gift of creating your account a little easier.

    I like the public TV station analogy. The difference I'm seeing is that, with a public TV station, everyone gets (partial or full) access to the service. With Heliohost, realistically, our only choice is to make a donation to get any access to any hosting service. When signing up, the other 2 server choices are showing up as full/unavailable. I understand a non-profit has to spend money and therefore has to get money in some way, but for >99.99% of new users looking at Heliohost, there is nothing being offered without a payment besides a lottery with 1 in >1000 probability, while everyone looking on the front page of the site is being told something opposite. I also don't think there's such a thing as a "required donation" for a non-profit in order to get service (excluding customer service, obviously). It's just a business. That is my understanding; however, I'm not a legal expert on such things.

     

    If you can't make a donation, that's fine. Enjoy the free service, and hope that enough other people make enough donations to keep your service free. If you can make a donation please know how much we appreciate it, and also know how much all of the people who can't make donations appreciate it.

     

    Ok, I'll go ahead and make a small donation and get back to you guys if I have any problems. I do appreciate the effort you took in explaining the history and your viewpoint.

    A Plea: Signing Up For A Free Account Is Basically Impossible. Change The Front Page To Reflect That.

    in Questions

    Posted

    I am new to Heliohost. I recently tried to create an account on Tommy, and have went through two separate issues with this. In the most recent, the window for signing up with an account on Tommy was < 2 seconds. In response, admin Krydos suggested I make a donation in order to get hosting.

    (That convo took place this forum thread, but discussing this there would have been a little off-topic, so I'm creating this new thread.)

     

    ....I have considered making a donation. My site will be for a small side hobby/business. Over the course of a year or two, if I make money and if I can successfully run the site on the hardware provided, I was going to basically donate a % of my profit, TBD. Also, you guys do seem to be on top of things as far as service/support which I experienced in the linked topic above, and thanks for that.

     

    On the opposite side, I really do feel deceived, and I believe what has happened to me is a deceptive practice, free or not. The front page says:

    "Community powered free hosting for everyone"

    But in reality, at least at present time, it's:

    "Community powered hosting for those who can hit F5/refresh in one second and win the lottery [and that's kind of ridiculous], or just pay a one time fee to get your account."

     

    It sounds like >99% of everybody looking at Heliohost for hosting is going to experience what I'm experiencing. None of that is explained or experienced until after signup, except for a hint buried in the FAQ under the question "What is a Daily Signup Limit and why is it stopping me from registering?". I really think something should be done about this. If the reality is that everybody should donate a few bucks to get hosting, then just be straightforward about it. Also, Krydos was basically up-selling me an account, after stating on the front page that you won't try to upsell me to a "paid plan". I realize it's not a "plan", but it is an up-sell.

     

    This experience has kind of soured my tongue. If this isn't the group's intent and there is something I can do to help that the admins need, let me know.

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