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1.1) Who we are
MERCATOR offers storage space for web pages and domains with global public
access to those pages over the Internet. We also offer a form of program execution
known as "cgi-bin".
Our computers are Pentium-class machines (166Mhz Pentium with 64 MB 60ns
EDO RAM, 512K of pipeline burst cache, 3.2 gigs of disk space, and dual PCI
Ethernet cards running Apache over Linux (Linux 2.0). Apache responds to web
page fetch requests from remote browsers while Linux is one of several variants
of the Unix operating system. The server is connected to tlg.net and to alter.net. T1
lines are used for efficient and rapid connection to the rest of Internet. The server
is backed up once a week and is protected by UPSes (5kva and 2Kva UPSes).
Spare machines are setup to help out in case a machine fails.
1.2) To begin with...
You probably got your User Login and your password now. So, what next? If you
haven`t put up a page so far, the browser will show "You don`t have permission to
access this server" when accessing your new domain with a browser. This is
normal! Don`t worry. The reason is that the directories are secured and there is no
index.html yet. Sometimes we put up an own one, but sometimes we just forget to
do this.
There are several features that come with your domain account. You can use FTP
and telnet for your file operations.
We will explain HOW on other pages.
Every customer gets his own password protected userid under Linux. By logging
in to his userid, the customer gains access to his web storage space. Every userid
"owns" a structure of disk subdirectories in the Linux file system. The "root" of
this structure is the "home" directory, found at path "/home/userid". Note that this
is somewhat similar to the MS-DOS directory structure, except that there is no
drive letter and forward slashes are used instead of backward slashes.
Inside the home directory is a subdirectory named "www". Every customer has his
own separate "www" subdirectory. Files placed in "www" are visible to remote
browsers over the Internet.
For example, when a browser asks for URL http://userid.com/page.html, Apache
looks for the file /home/userid/www/page.html and sends it out.
Now that we know where the files have to be located in order to be visible from
the Internet, just how do we put the files there? There are several ways, depending
on the local computer.
For the MacIntosh, a program called FETCH is used. Documentation on Fetch is
available on our Utilities page. Note that the binary mode referred to throughout
the manual corresponds to the 'raw' mode in Fetch.
For MS-DOS systems, communications programs such as ProComm emulate
dumb terminals for connection to Linux.
For UNIX systems, use rlogin to connect.
For Microsoft Windows systems, use FTP. This is the easiest method.
We provide further information, if you need them. Just let us know.
With TELNET you can access the Unix Shell of your account.
For Windows, there are several programs available, such as the Windows95
internal "telnet" program or several FTP programs.
The best and easiest program is WS_FTP. Install this program and run it. Click on the left button on the bottom that reads CONNECT. This will bring up a "session profile" form. Under hostname, fill in your domain name (userid.com, for example). Under userid, fill in userid. Under password, put in your password. Make sure the checkbox for "Anonymous Login" is CLEARED.
At the bottom of the form, under "initial directories", you may specify which
directories you want to work with on your local system and on your domain
system. Under "remote host", specify /home/userid/www. Under "local PC",
specify the DOS path where your web files are located.
(Note! While this is for your convenience, remember that /home/userid is your
home directory and /home/userid/www is your WWW directory. In other parts of
this manual you may be told to put something or find something in your home
directory; you'll need to cd /home/userid to get there first.)
Further more, note that with our new servers, the structure might show
/usr/www/htdocs/userid
but it is acutally only a link to /home/userid/www
Hit the OK button. This will cause you to be connected to your domain. The right
side of the screen will show the files in your www directory while the left side
will show your local PC files. To send a file from your local PC to your Mercator www directory, click on the file you want to send and then click on the right arrow button. To send a file the other way, click on the left arrow button.
You will see two option radio buttons under the right window labeled "ASCII"
and "Binary". For all text files, including html files, and perl cgi programs, be sure to select "ASCII" so the end-of-line conventions are handled correctly.
Perl scripts and HTML files are ASCII files, along with many others. If you use a
plain text editor to work with a file, it's an ASCII file. It's not terribly important to transfer HTML files in ASCII mode, but it is important for Perl scripts.
GIFs and JPEGs are binary files. They must be uploaded in binary mode, or will
be corrupted. Files that look like garbage in a plain text editor and require a more
advanced program to edit are not ASCII files, and must be transferred in binary
mode.
1.3) The "home" page and HTML
The filename of your home page should be index.html. The web server will
automatically send the file at path /home/userid/www/index.html when a browser
specifies http://userid.com.
When you log into your domain, you will mostly find two directories already
installed. These directories are ANONFTP and CGI-BIN. The "anonftp" is an
ANONYMOUS ftp area where files can be uploaded or downloaded by anyone
without a password. This area is necessarily separate from web space and
password protected ftp space for obvious reasons. If you want both upload and
download anonymous ftp, you may want a read-only subdirectory for distributing
files and a separate write-only subdirectory for receiving files. This is to prevent
files that you are distributing from being destroyed accidentally, and to prevent
files uploaded to you from being distributed to others before you examine them.
If we have set this up, it will appear as the 'anonftp' directory in your home
directory.
"So what's the ftp directory?"
It's almost always the same as your www directory, and can be ignored. If it's not,
it's an older style of anonymous FTP area that should probably be replaced with
the current style.
1.4) Telnet Account
A telnet account is just another name for UNIX/LINUX userid. You need at least
one to be able to upload/download your html files. When you sign up with
Mercator, you get a userid and password.
By using a telnet program, you can log onto your domain at the shell prompt.
There, you could run several simple Unix programs, such as mail, a primitive
email program, pine, a more powerful email program, ftp, to ftp onto other sites,
telnet, to telnet onto other sites, lynx, a primitive text based web browser, pico, an
easy to use text editor, and vi, a not so easy to use text editor.
At the shell prompt, type "man" and the name of the program to get instructions
for that program online.
1.5) Cgi-bin Access
"CGI" stands for "Common Gateway Interface", a fancy name meaning computer
programs running on the web server that can be invoked from a WWW page at the
browser. The "bin" part alludes to the binary executables that result from compiled
or assembled programs. It is a bit misleading because CGIs can also be Unix shell
scripts or interpreted languages like Perl.
A typical use for cgi is the processing of online forms. When the user fills in the
boxes on the form and hits the SUBMIT button, the cgi program specified in the
html will be run at the server, and the information in the boxes become available
to the program as parameters. The program, being a program, can then do anything
the programmer wanted it to do.
"cgiemail", for example, is a canned program written in C that gathers up the
contents of the boxes on the form and emails them to a specified destination, then
sends a WWW page confirming the action.
If you like us to install it for, send us an e-mail
"imagemap" is another common use for CGI. Here, the X-Y coordinates of the
pointer on an image are correlated with a specification table, so that clicking on
different parts of the image will result in different links being followed. (It was
such a common use, in fact, that it's built in to recent WWW servers.
Other CGIs might ask for a password, check the password, then access a database
for requested information. What it does is up to the programmer, but we do ask
that the CGIs are reasonable in their usage of CPU time. While we do not require
that they be submitted for approval first, out of control CGIs that hog the CPU
will be hunted down and killed by our death robot.
Your CGIs reside in a cgi-bin directory under your www directory.
1.6) Your E-mail address
Getting your domain account from us will allow you to set up several e-mail
names that will all be sent to one mailbox. So, you could have
"userid@userid.com, but you could also have sales@userid.com or
info@userid.com. All mails sent to these addresses will arrive in one mailbox. We
will explain how to get mail in another chapter.
If you need separate logins, thus different mail accounts, we can provide these
for a small surcharge. Please mail any requests for additional logins to
support@mercator.net.
Use of mail
You can log in via telnet to your domain and read/send your mail with "pine". But
the easiest way is to configure a mail program, such as Eudora.
Eudora is a mail program that runs under MS Windows.
Eudora connects to the mail server over the Winsock. Mail may be composed and
read offline, but make sure that Winsock is running before attempting to send or
receive mail.
After Eudora has been installed, it must be configured to point to our mail server.
To do this, start Eudora and select "Special" from the menu bar. Then select
"Settings". Most of the options are self explanatory.
Leave the entries for PH, and Finger blank.
For STMP, put in the mail server of your local access provider.
You may have to ask him what to put in. The SMTP protocol is to SEND
mail and therefore must be set up with your local access provider`s mail
server.
Fill in userid@company.com for your POP account (with userid replaced
with your userid and company.com replaced with your domain name).
Under advanced network features, select 90 seconds for your network
timeout.
The option save password should be checked.
The authentication style should be password option.
Under connection method, do not check the offline option.
If you have multiple email addresses, you can install a separate copy of Eudora for
each email address.
Eudora "Light" is freeware offered by Qualcom and can be downloaded over the
net. Eudora "Pro" must be purchased. You can find a link on our Utility page!
1.7) .forward (redirecting mail)
You can also forward your mail to any other e-mail address you have. You just
have to create a file named .forward in your home directory. Enter the e-mail
address in the file you want your mail sent to. Now all your mail will be
redirected from your user account to your other mail address!
Note that files that start with a "." are hidden files. To see them, type ls -al at the
shell prompt (over telnet).
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