User Info

The following is information you need to know in order to access your account. Accounts on gregn.net are not available to the general public.

Please note, as of Dec. 1st, 2010, any accounts which have not been used for 1 year will be backed up, and removed from the system. This applies to both shell accounts, as well as to mail-only accounts. This policy change is retroactive, meaning that accounts which have not been accessed as of Dec. 1, 2009 and earlier will be removed on Dec. 1st, 2010. I will attempt to keep backups of any removed accounts for at least 1 year, however, I make no promises or guarantees; it is ultimately your responsibility to make a backup of any data on this system that you want to keep.

If you have a shell account, you may access your account via ssh protocol version 2. Telnet, and ssh protocol version 1 access are disabled for security reasons. If you use Windows, you may download a windows ssh2 client called teraterm pro. To log in, point your ssh client to host "vserver.gregn.net". If you wish to transfer files to or from your account, you may use sftp or scp on Unix systems, or download winscp for windows. Please do not abuse the fact that you have unlimited storage space without quotas, and upload obscene amounts of data to your account. If I feel that you have used more then your fair share of storage space, I will e-mail or call you. If you fail to remove some of your data with in a week of my doing so, I will be forced to remove it for you, (something which I would rather let you do yourself).

I trust I don't need to ask anyone with an account here to please behave yourself. However, I will post some basics, just so we're all on the same page, and there are no surprises.

If you have a shell account, at this time, you are limited to using mutt as your e-mail client. To find out more about mutt, type "man mutt" once you are logged into your account. You are limited to the use of mutt, as it is the only MUA on the system currently. If you would like another MUA installed, and there is a debian package for it, please let me know. If you know how to use procmail or maildrop, you may also have your mail piped through either of these programs, via the standard $HOME/.forward mechanism. This is described in the aliases manual page.

If you have a mail only account, or a shell account, when you log in for the first time, please take the time to change your temporary password by using the "passwd" command (shell account only). Alternatively, you may also change your password using the webmail interface.

You may also access your mail via pop3 over ssl, via imap over ssl, and via the web.

If you plan to read your mail through pop3 or imap, you will need to send it using smtp auth on port 587, since I use SPF. In order to do this, you will need a user name and password to connect to the smtp service. This user name and password is separate from the one you use for pop3/imap. They can be the same as the credentials you already use, or they can be different. Please note however that you are not able to change your password for smtp auth at this time by yourself; I will need to create and change it for you. So, ideally, you don't want your pop3/imap/smtp password to be the same. Please let me know if you would like me to setup smtp auth for you.

You may also forward your mail to another address, (for example to your regular e-mail account). To do this, log into your account via ssh (shell accounts only), and follow the steps below. If you ever decide to not forward your e-mail to somewhere else, simply remove the .forward file you are about to create below, and rename forward.orig (if your account has spam filtering) to .forward. The lines below should be typed exactly as they appear, at the shell prompt. The shell prompt is something like "user@vserver:~$". Replace you@example.com with the address you'd like to forward your e-mail to.

mv .forward forward.orig

If the above line results in a message like .forward no such file or directory, you do not have spam filtering enabled on your account, and will not end up with a forward.orig file. To reverse mail forwarding in this case, just delete the .forward file.

echo "you@example.com" >.forward

That's it. You may go ahead and test it out to make sure your mail is being forwarded properly. Please note that your account will not have spam filtering enabled at this point. All mail sent to your address will be forwarded. How to forward mail while retaining spam filtering will not be covered here.

If your account is mail only, and you would like your mail forwarded somewhere else, I can set that up for you.

If you would like to be notified of any important system changes (such as planned times when the server will be down for maintenance), visit the accounts list page, and subscribe to it, by following the instructions for doing so.

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Last updated on 17 June, 2016.