Hosting FAQ
From OPU Wiki
This page is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for OPU web hosting. Feel free to post any questions you would like to see answered in the discussion part of the page.
General Questions
What services are offered?
We offer free web hosting on a Linux server, with PHP support.
All users get the following:
- Hosting on a reliable Linux server
- No ads of any sort
- No bandwidth limits
- 50 MB of storage space (although this can be increased if you really need it!)
- PHP scripting
- Web File Manager
- http://users.opu.org.uk/username and http://users.outpost-universe.net/username URLs to access personal web space
- And more coming in the future...
How do I get an account?
Talk to op2hacker(OPU|hacker) or zigzagjoe(OPU|ZigZagJoe) on the forums or IRC to get an account set up. Additionally, we may be able to help you transfer your files from an existing webhost during setup.
What can I do with my account?
Anything you can do with PHP access - for example, you can run a web discussion forum (provided the forum uses a flat file database), a wiki, a blog, ... the list goes on. As long as it doesn't violate our TOS, you can do it.
What can't I do with my account?
Read our TOS (http://users.opu.org.uk/tos.php) for a full description of what you can't use your hosting for. For example, using your hosting to promote illegal activities, host porn, send spam e-mail, or using it primarily as a 'file storage', among other things, is not permitted.
Who do I go to if there is a problem with my account?
Talk to op2hacker or zigzagjoe if there is a problem with your hosting. We will do our best to try and help you.
File Manager / Web-related Questions
How can I access the files in my account?
You can login to the web based file manager with the username and password assigned to you at http://users.opu.org.uk/filemgr/. This will allow you to do general file operations on your account.
To access your files from the web use http://users.opu.org.uk/username or http://users.outpost-universe.net/username, replacing username with your account username (all file names and account names are case sensitive).
Where can I see how much of my disk quota I've used?
In the file manager, once logged in, you can see your disk usage and limit at the bottom of the directory list. If you are running low on space and need more, talk to op2hacker or zigzagjoe and we may increase it for you. (Provided that you explain what you need the extra space for).
Can I access my account via FTP?
Unfortunately, we can no longer offer FTP, as the company we use for site hosting has asked us to stop running our own server for user accounts (and there is no way for us to provide user account access through the system FTP server).
A script that I'm installing says I need to chmod a file to 777. What does that mean?
Well, in typical web hosting situations, web scripts are run by the user ID of the webserver, not of the user that actually owns the file. Because of this, files that the webserver needs to be able to write to (for example, file upload directories, or configuration files that can be updated while the script is running) must be chmod'ed 777, which gives the webserver permission to write to the file. It's also a large security risk on most systems, because that means any other user on the system could potentially overwrite the file (not to mention read it), which would allow them to read or change your passwords, or edit other script settings.
Our server does not act like this however: our system uses a method called suexec which causes scripts and files to be loaded and run by the user that actually owns them. This makes chmod'ing certain files to allow the system to write to them unnecessary, as the owner user can do anything they want to their own files. It also eliminates the security hazard of other users accessing / changing your data (although users are insulated from each other in other ways, here). Because of this we do not even have a chmod function in our filemanager.
However, some scripts might refuse to run because they explicitly check the permissions on the file. If this happens, let one of us know and we can change its permissions for you.
When I go to a directory in my webspace, I want a default webpage to show up, rather than a 404 error, and I don't want people have to type username/home.html to access it. What do I do?
Place a file named index.* (the extension can be anything, generally it's .html or .php) in the directory. If you have more than one 'index' file in the directory it tends to arbitrarily pick one of the files to show, so you should only have one 'index' file.
The 404 errors are ugly. Can I change them?
Currently there is no support for custom error pages. We hope to add this support very soon however.
Can I password protect directories or files, by using .htaccess files or anything like that?
There is no support for this as of yet. We hope to add it sometime however. If you really want protection, you might be able to use a PHP script that does the same thing. Search the web for scripts like these.
I want a hostname myusername.outpost-universe.net! Can I have it?
Talk to one of us and we'll see about getting you a hostname that redirects to your space on users.opu.org.uk.
PHP / Scripting Questions
What is PHP?
Quoting from http://www.php.net/, the homepage for PHP, PHP is "a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML." You can check out their website for more information about PHP, including links to learn PHP.
What version of PHP do you run?
Currently we use PHP 4.4.2. PHP 5 is available, however lots of web software that is currently in use requires large modifications in order to work under PHP5 We may add PHP 5 as an option in the future, and then allow you to select which version you want to use.
Why has MySQL stopped working?
We have had to stop supplying MySQL for the same reason up above, in "Can I access my account via FTP?"
How do I get a PHP script to run on my account?
First of all, write the script into a new file. Your code must go between <? and ?> tags. Be sure that the file is named something.php. The .php extension makes it get parsed by the PHP scripting engine.
When I try to open a file in PHP, an error message comes up saying "open_basedir" restriction in effect! What's the deal with that?
Your PHP scripts may only access files inside your account directory. This is a security precaution to protect the accounts of other users on the system.
system() / shell_exec() / etc. doesn't work! Why not?
This is a security precaution to prevent scripts from gaining unauthorized access to other parts of the system. In the future we may allow other programs to be executed (for example, MediaWiki uses texml for it's math symbols) but currently it is not possible to execute programs.
Socket support / FTP / http://... in an fopen() call / etc. doesn't work!
Sockets and other types of remote connections are disabled because they use extra system resources and are generally unnecessary for most users.
Is PEAR installed?
Not currently, however if you really need PEAR we can install it. See http://pear.php.net/ for more information on PEAR.
I named a file ending in .pl / .py / .tcl / etc but instead of running the proper scripting engine and outputting the result, I just get the source code back!
Sorry, Perl / Python / Tcl / whatever scripting language you're trying to use is not enabled. Currently the only scripting language that is supported is PHP. However, if enough people seem to need it, we might install one or more of these in the future.
Miscellaneous Questions
I want to see 'insert feature here'.
Talk to one of us, and we'll try to get a feature like it into the system, if it's reasonable. The more people that ask for it, the more likely it is to be added.
I forgot my password. What do I do?
Ask one of us, and we will reset your password (we cannot retrieve your existing password because all passwords are one-way encrypted, we can only reset it). The password reset will change your database password as well.
My question wasn't answered in this FAQ.
You can use the discussion part of this page to ask new questions that should be added to this FAQ. If you need immediate answers talk to one of us on IRC or via forum PM.
