[Nanook]

We have a NEW shell server available for your use: shell.eskimo.com

At present, it can only be reached via ssh (version 2) and not via telnet or rlogin though we are working on those.

The new server is using the Aurora 2.99 port of Linux which is a Sparc port of Fedora Core 6. We were not able to do SunOS emulation as originally intended because that capability has been removed from the current Linux kernel and I did not want to lock us into more obsolete software, so instead we are working on recompiling the legacy applications, at least those that are getting used.

Please note that the directory structure is different from the old server and so you will need to change your PATH environmental variable to reflect the new directories. I recommend you use a path something like this: ~/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/games:.

I also welcome your feedback here with respect to applications that you would like to have online on the new server. There are many things already that the old server did not have, such as the ruby scripting language.

Any compiled programs that you have compiled on the existing server will need to be recompiled on the new.

Presently, pine, elm, mutt, and bsd mail are available for reading / sending e-mail. Tin and slrn are available for news. There are also a number of graphical clients.

[Nanook]

Back in the late 80's, between 1985 and 1991, before Eskimo North was part of the Internet; before the Internet existed; we ran a Tandy 6000 for a while, and on that we had a number of Unix adventure games, what used to be referred to as Interactive fiction.

One of those games was "world", it is a Sci-Fi based adventure game that I always enjoyed but never completed. When we moved from the Tandy to the Sun 3/180, I successfully got it to compile on that, but then moving to the Sun 4/180, I never got it to run under Sparc.

Well, with the new shell server running Linux; I tried to compile it and succeeded with very little trouble and it runs. So I got to revisit a game I haven't played in 20 years and those of you who were around in the early days can enjoy it to. It's on shell.eskimo.com in /usr/games.

[Nanook]

Phantasia is something we had back when we had the Sun 3/180 running here. Never was able to get it to work after we transitioned to Sparc, until now. Someone has created an RPM with a bunch of the old BSD games compiled for Sparc Linux, and it included Phantasia, so it's now online for you to play on shell.eskimo.com. All of these games were included in the package:

adventure, arithmetic, atc, backgammon, battlestar, bcd, boggle, caesar, canfield, countmail, cribbage, dab, go-fish, gomoku, hack, hangman, hunt, mille, monop, morse, number, pig, phantasia, pom, ppt, primes, quiz, random, rain, robots, rot13, sail, snake, tetris, trek, wargames, worm, worms, wump, wtf

Please note that these are not all in /usr/games or /usr/local/games. Most of them are in ordinary directories like /usr/bin. This is because of the way they were packaged into the rpm. Have fun!

[Nanook]

You can now compile the very latest eggdrop version, 1.6.19, on shell.eskimo.com. The bot itself and all the standard modules compile without modification. In addition to the necessary compiler environment, there is a full set of TCL utilities allow you to construct complex scripts.

[Nanook]

The Zork interactive fiction game that we had on the original BBS back in the early 80's (running on a Trs-80 model III) is now available on our new shell server at shell.eskimo.com.
Be sure that /usr/games is in your $PATH variable and then just type 'zork' (without the quotes), or 'zork2' or 'zork3' respectively.

[Nanook]

The interactive fiction games Starcross, Planetfall, and Sorcerer are now available for play online on shell.eskimo.com. These are all located in /usr/games.

[Nanook]

We are having some problems with mail on the new shell server that I'm having a difficult time resolving.

If you use a mailer where you can configure the mail server, set the outgoing server to mail.eskimo.com and it will work fine. Pine is one such mail program, just go into the setup menu and set the outgoing SMTP server to mail.eskimo.com and all will be will. But those that try to use the local host for mail will have problems.

I was unable to get the sendmail included with Aurora Linux to work properly, so I compiled 8.14.3, but am not having much better luck with it. Tracing it indicated a library issue with the Berkley NewDB
libs, so I grabbed the most recent version of those and recompiled, but so far for some reason sendmail seems to want to use the old version and I'm still trying to chase down why.

[Nanook]

Mail is mostly fixed on the new shell server. It still will not properly handle unqualified addresses, that is, an user without the domain name.

You can say:

mail nanook@eskimo.com

But not:

mail nanook

Other than that it seems to be working.

[Nanook]

A few people were pretty unhappy when we took ping, traceroute, and top away from the old shell server.

We had to do this because ping and traceroute on the SunOS server had security flaws and top would chew up a large amount of resources.

The new server doesn't have these issues and so ping and traceroute as well as top are all available for your use.

[jmtt]

Re: I also welcome your feedback here with respect to applications that you would like to have online on the new server.

I'd like to see Bogofilter (http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net) or some other form of Bayesian email filtering. I've had marginal success with Procmail (I just use the canned set of rules I found on http://www.spambouncer.org), and I'd like to try something more advanced.

Thanks in advance.

[Nanook]

I haven't looked at it at all yet, but spam assassin is on the new machine. I'll take a look at Bogofilter and see if it's something we can implement.

[jmtt]

I haven't looked at it at all yet, but spam assassin is on the new machine. I'll take a look at Bogofilter and see if it's something we can implement.

Oh, Spam Assassin is also a popular Bayesian filter.

Is this installed in a way that individuals can customize their own filters? Or do we all sink or swim together?

P.S. I did 10 minutes of reading, and it appears that each user will have their own $HOME/.spamassassin/user_prefs file for customizations. I'll try playing with this when I have some spare time. Thanks.

[Nanook]

We've had a problem with mail on the new shell server showing up as user@shell.eskimo.com or user@list.eskimo.com, and then when the receiver of that mail tried to reply it would send to that address and fail.

We also had a problem where virtual domain customers, if they sent e-mail from an address within their virtual domain outside, to their eskimo e-mailbox here; it would arrive with the address changed
to 'eskimo.com' but the user being whatever was sent.

Lastly, mail sent to a user with no domain portion, i.e., mail nanook, would fail.

I believe all of these issues are now resolved. Mail should appear to come from 'eskimo.com' no matter which server you send it from now (unless you use software that allows you to override the send address such as Pine, and if you have an eskimo.net address then you need to do this).

[jmtt]

I haven't looked at it at all yet, but spam assassin is on the new machine.

FYI, I tried and failed to use spamassassin. It was determined that we need it to live on the mail server rather than on the new shell server in order to use it. I also was told to expect that change on the mail server at some future date. Please post an update here when this happens, so everyone will know when it's safe to begin using spamassassin. Thanks.

[solardiz]

I am a "guest" in here - not an Eskimo user. I wanted to say that it is nice to see that providers like Eskimo are still in business (that is, that the demand continues to exist), like they were 10+ years ago.

As to the topic of shell servers, we highly recommend our Linux distro, Openwall GNU/*/Linux (or Owl for short). Its advantages for this purpose are:

Enhanced security - it is possible to run a fully functional shell server, where users are able to change their passwords, setup cron jobs, etc. - without having a single SUID program (there are some SGIDs instead, and the privileges granted to those programs are very limited).

Owl includes just the required set of programs (including development tools, things such as GNU screen, lftp, ELinks, etc.) and Internet services (OpenSSH, a privilege-separated telnetd, vsftpd, Postfix, etc.) that are required from a base distro installed for a shell server. Anything else, such as IRC clients, is to be installed on top of the base distro anyway (built locally or installed with RPMs - Owl currently provides package compatibility with RHEL4/CentOS 4).

Speaking of Eskimo's needs - Owl supports SPARC. The initial install for this architecture may be a bit tricky, as we do not generate ISOs for SPARC yet, but it is not very hard ("make installworld" onto a new partition from an existing install of another Linux distro). We're willing to help with it if needed - please ask on the owl-users list.

Alexander