ninthfloor.org: access for all

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers

General questions

Is it really free? Will it remain so forever?

It's free to join, not to maintain, that's why users are asked to contribute to the project with donations. Donations are not enforced, but no or too few donations with bring the project to certain death. The project is not financed by other means.
To answer the second part of the question, remember that nothing lasts forever, but we will work hard to keep the whole thing up and running. We do not preclude the introduction of a premium (paid) membership status someday.
Who is behind all this? Where is my money going?

Currently, a very small group of people that like to make cool stuff happen and love to share their creations with others. There's no formal entity behind ninthfloor.org (the project is still too small to think about founding one), so donations are handled with personal PayPal or bank accounts.
Why did you create ninthfloor.org?

There are several reasons: it's an experiment, a challenge, a way to learn a lot of things and to manage high-end resources while keeping the budget low. Last but not least, we like the idea of sharing our work with the community.
Beside donating, how can I help?

At the moment no technical help is needed. If you're a native English speaker (we're not), you can help us by checking these pages for spelling and grammar errors. Thank you!
How old is the project?

It started in mid-2009.
Why is it called ninthfloor?

MIT hosted its early laboratory for computer sciences (Project MAC) in a building called Tech Square. The ninth floor of this building, where the computer were, would be home to the first generation of computer hackers.

Technical questions

Can I publish a website?

Yes, just create a public_html folder in your home directory and drop your files there; you'll find them at http://users.ninthfloor.org/~username. At the moment only static HTML pages are supported (see also the relevant question).
I'm behind a firewall and/or I don't have access to an SSH client.
Can I access my shell anyway?

Just try the web ssh client. It works via HTTPS connections to port 443 have to be allowed from your side.
I can't connect to your SMTP server.

Many providers block the connections to SMTP port (i.e. port 25) so the zombie computers in their network can't be used to send spam. Usually the ISPs don't tell their users about this limitation. You should be able to use the submission protocol anyway: the setup is the same as for SMTP, but the port is 587 and authentication is mandatory even for local connections.

More technical stuff

How do you deal with spam?

Incoming mail passes through a complex chain of tests before reaching your mailbox. First of all, connections from clients that do not respect the RFCs are rejected. If an email is accepted, the sender domain is checked for SPF and DKIM entries, and headers are consequently added. Mail coming from suspicious clients (e.g. from dialup connections) is even more thoroughly investigated, verifying the validity of the sender (From:) address and greylisted. Finally, incoming mail is parsed by SpamAssassin, that implements a wide range of spam-detection techniques.
We never discard mail, we only add spam status headers to it. Treat mail marked as spam as you wish.
Where are your servers located?

In London, United Kingdom, Europe.
Do you support procmail and/or maildrop?

No, and the feature is not planned, just use Sieve. We want all mail to be delivered by the default delivery agent which automatically upgrades the indexes used by the IMAP server, giving a big performance boost. There are also security reasons.
Can I run an IRC bot or bouncer?

No, it's clearly stated in the policy. Try that and you'll lose your account.
Why aren't common services like telnet or ftp provided?

They're insecure, and we don't want passwords to transit in cleartext.
Why don't you provide <packagename>?

Ask us, if the request is reasonable, we will install it.
How do you monitor the activities of your users (if you do)?

As stated in the policy, we don't intercept, read, store or give to others your data or the content of your communications. Nevertheless, enough logs are kept to track down policy violations.
Will you host my domain?

No, that's beyond the scope of the project.
Why don't you offer PHP? Nowdays it's fundamental!

First of all, this project focuses on shell account hosting, not on web hosting, so PHP is out of scope. Another reason is that setting up a secure system where many (possibly untrusted) users have access to PHP is a challenging and delicate task. This is against the low-maintenance philosophy of ninthfloor.org.