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Arts and Recreation
Animation, Architecture, Cartoons, Crafts & Folk Arts, Fine Arts, Games, Graphic Arts, Music, Photography & Film, Recreation, Recreational & Performing Arts, Regional Planning, Sports & Outdoor Activities

Geography, Biography, and History
Ancient History, Archaeology, Biography, Cartography, Geography & Travel, Geography - Africa, Geography - Asia, Geography - Burma, Geography-Australia, Geography-Europe, Geography-North America, Geography-South America, History - African, History - American, History - Asian, History - European, History - World, Latin America, North Carolina Culture, South America, Southern Culture

Language
Burmese, Catalan, Celtic, Chinese, Dutch, French, Gaelic, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Linguistics, Mongolian, Philology, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Tibetan, Yiddish

Literature
American Literature, Balti, Chinese, French, Humor, Italian Literature, Japanese Literature, Literature, Poetry, Storytelling

Natural Science and Mathematics
Anthropology, Astronomy, Biology, Botany, Chemistry, Cytology, Earth Sciences, Ecology, Genetics, Life Sciences, Mathematics, Meteorology, Palaeontology, Physics, Zoology

Philosophy and Psychology
Ethics, Logic and Epistemology, Metaphysics, Oriental Philosophy, Paranormal Phenomena, Philosophy, Psychology

Reference
Bibliography, Dictionaries, General Encyclopedic Works, General Reference, Journalism, Journals, Library Science

Religion and Theology
Atheism, Baha'i, Bible, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Philosophy of Religion, Shintoism, Sikhism, Taoism

Social Sciences
Anthropology, Civil Rights, Communications (television, radio), Criminology, Demography, Economics, Education, Folklore, Human Rights, Information Science, International Relations, Law, Military, Native American Studies, Political Science, Slavery, Social Issues & Services, Sociology, Statistics, Women's Studies

Technology and Applied Sciences
Agriculture, Aviation, Computers & the Internet, Cooking, Engineering, Horticulture, Medical Sciences, Television & Telecommunication, Veterinary Medicine


Ebooks
full text books available for reading on line or for download

Journals
online publications

Archives
archives of newsgroups & email lists

Historic
no longer maintained, but useful or interesting


About ibiblio
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ibiblio Frequently Asked Questions for Contributors

Hopefully we have the answers.

Some general questions are answered in the visitor FAQ.

  1. How do I connect to ibiblio?
  2. I can't log in... or I lost my password...
  3. Can I have an email account?
  4. What's my disk quota?
  5. What powers your web server?
  6. Can I have a cgi-bin?
  7. Can I have a mailing list?
  8. Can I have a database?
  9. Do you offer streaming audio / video?
  10. How do I password-protect directories?
  11. How do I set up email forwarding?
  12. How do I set up an automated vacation message for my ibiblio email account?
  13. I'm getting too much spam...can you help me?
  14. How can I add searching to my web pages?
  15. How do I add my ibiblio site to the ibiblio collection index?
  16. Do you do virtual hosting?
  17. How can I access usage statistics about my site?
  18. How much do your services cost?
  19. How can I repay you?
  20. I'm having problems installing/configuring/repairing my kernel/video display/ethernet card/such-and-such software. Can you help me?
  21. What do you guys do?
  22. How do I set up Server Side Includes on an ibiblio-hosted web site?
  23. Does ibiblio have an IRC Channel?
  24. Can I have access to my web site's Apache transaction log files?
  25. Where can I access my site's error log files?
  26. What are the ssh key fingerprints for the ibiblio login server?
  27. I just received a message telling me my account was going to be deleted. Is this true? And more generally, how will Ibiblio contact me if it does need to get in touch with me?
  28. Is there a development server?
  29. How do I change my password?
  30. How can I contribute a collection to ibiblio?
  31. How can I connect to my MySQL database with a GUI client?
  32. Why can't I use FTP to access ibiblio.org?
How do I connect to ibiblio?

ibiblio maintains login.ibiblio.org to provide shell and sFTP access for its many contributors. You should use it for ssh, sftp, and scp connections. SCP/SFTP can do everything telnet and FTP clients can do, but they are encrypted and secure.

UNIX and Linux
OpenSSH is widely available and comes installed on most Linux systems.

Windows:
Lots of folks use Putty, a free ssh client for Windows. WinSCP is a free secure file transfer application.

Macintosh:
Mac OS X comes with OpenSSH already installed. Fugu is a nice graphical application for ssh, scp, and sftp. For pre-OS X, try MacSSH and MacSFTP

I can't log in... or I lost my password...

If you have trouble connecting or have forgotten your password, please fill out the form at http://ibiblio.org/help. NOTE: Please make sure you are using login.ibiblio.org and not www.ibiblio.org, ftp.ibiblio.org, ibiblio.org, etc. Thanks.

Can I have an email account?

Each ibiblio user receives an email account (userid@ibiblio.org). There are three ways you may access your email on ibiblio:

  1. SSH to login.ibiblio.org and run either pine or mutt, the two mail clients we offer
  2. Use an IMAP-capable mail reader like Netscape Messenger, Outlook Express, Eudora, Mulberry, etc. to connect to mail.ibiblio.org We require smtp-auth on mail.ibiblio.org, so you'll want to configure your mail client to use smtp-auth with your ibiblio username and password. You'll also want to enable SSL to encrypt your password. Some email clients require that you change the port number to 465.
  3. Browse to http://webmail.ibiblio.org . If you have trouble connecting, please use the help form or call us at 919-962-5646.

What's my disk quota?

We do not enforce disk quotas on our users' web space, and are limited only by our available disk capacity. This means filling us up with illegal MP3z and pirated software can seriously hurt us. Please don't.

What powers your web server?

ibiblio runs the Apache web server on www.ibiblio.org. The web server supports PHP scripting, Server-Side Includes and CGI.

Can I have a cgi-bin?

Sure! For security purposes we must specifically enable the directories that will run CGI scripts - please create your html/cgi-bin directory and paste the directory's location into the help form.

Can I have a mailing list?

ibiblio offers mailing lists to its users via the MailMan mailing list software. To request mailing lists, please use the help form.

Can I have a database?

ibiblio runs MySQL on mysql.ibiblio.org. To request an account or troubleshoot problems with the server, please use the help form.

Do you offer streaming audio / video?

ibiblio has an unlimited stream license for the Real Networks streaming server, version 9. We also have experimental Icecast and Quicktime streaming servers. For assistance with the Real, Icecast and Quicktime servers please visit the help form.

How do I password-protect directories?

Our web server supports http-level password protection via the htpasswd utility. If your website is http://www.ibiblio.org/something/, the directions below will just work. If, on the other hand, you have a virtual host, we must enable things so you can use these directions. Please use the help form to request htpasswd for your virtual host.

To set up this utility in your /public/html/ directory, first login to login.ibiblio.org, then cd into the web directory that you want to password-protect:

$ cd /public/html/<login>
Then create the .htpasswd file (which will contain the username and the password (in a hash)) with this command:
$ htpasswd -c .htpasswd MyLoginName
(the name you use above will be the username that others will use to access the page; when it prompts you for a new password, type the password you want people to use with the username 'MyLoginName')

Next, in the same directory, create an .htaccess file using vi (or another text editor):

$ vi .htaccess
(use i to insert, then paste in these lines:)
AuthType Basic 
AuthUserFile /public/html/<login>/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName MyLoginName
<limit GET>
require valid-user
</limit>
Use Esc to save what you have pasted; then type
:wq 
(to (w)rite/save the file's changes, and then to (q)uit/close it)
Note: whatever you insert where 'MyLoginName' in the .htaccess file will show in the dialog box that asks for the username and password when people try to access your site. If you want to password-protect a subdirectory of /public/html/<login>, you will need to do this process within the subdirectory, and change the path for its AuthUserFile in its own .htaccess file.

For example, if you have a subdirectory called 'test,' you would use this in your .htaccess file:

AuthUserFile /public/html/<login>/test/.htpasswd

If you run into trouble, this page will give you plenty of information on the topic - and if you can't figure it out, use thehelp from an email.

How do I set up email forwarding?

If you would prefer to consolidate your mail accounts (and we would prefer this as well), you may easily forward your ibiblio email to another address by logging in to login.ibiblio.org and issuing

echo email@address.com > .forward 
at the prompt, so that email@address.com matches the address to which you'd like to forward your mail.

How do I set up an automated vacation message for my ibiblio email account?

This can be done in two steps:
First, create a .vacation.msg file in your home directory on login.ibiblio.org:

 $ pico .vacation.msg

It might look like this:
Subject:  Nancy's at the beach

  Hello,

  I will be out of the office from friday, June 6th until
  monday, June 9th.  I may not be able to check mail while 
  I'm away.  I assure you though, that I, Nancy, will be having
  a great time at the beach.  

  If you need assistance with ibiblio.org, please use the 
  help form or call the ibiblio office at 
  919-962-5646.

  Thank you,
  Nancy                                       

Next, create a .forward file:
  $ pico .forward
with this line:
  \[youruserid], "|/usr/bin/vacation [youruserid]"
To stop sending your vacation message, just remove the .forward file (or rename it if you wish to reuse it later).

I'm getting too much spam...can you help me?

ibiblio does not place global spam filters on our mailserver. We do this for a number of reasons. Due to the extremely diverse nature and of our collections, we cannot risk mail discard false-positives. Instead, we ask you to install a local spam filter. Here is our spam information site, with documentation and resources for fighting spam.

How can I add searching to my web pages?

If you'd like to offer full-text searching of your site, you should probably use what we use: google. As we're an educational institution, google allows us some free use of their search facilities. We've tried various free, open source solutions to searching through our vast collections and so far, nothing scales to the level we need. To use google, if your site is a directory off the main ibiblio.org domain, use this HTML:

<form name="search" action="http://www.google.com/search" method="get">
<input size="12" name="q" />
<input type="hidden" name="hq" value="/sitename" />
<input type="hidden" name="sitesearch" value="ibiblio.org" />
<br />
<input type="image" height="22" width="55" src="/images/search_blue.gif"
    alt="search" border="0" name="search-image" />

</form>
Where "/sitename" is the name of your actual directory on ibiblio.

How do I add my ibiblio site to the ibiblio collection index?

First step - go to the collection page. Click on the category(s) that describe your site and check to see if it is there. If it's not, make a note of what categories you think should have your site, but don't.

Second step - go to collection admin page, log in using your ibiblio (metalab, sunsite) user name and password. After login, you can add a new site or modify the description of an existing site (Think you can describe your site better than we can? You're right! You probably can - make any changes to your site description there.)

When you've completed the changes, mark the collection as 'ready'. It will be instantly added to the collection index and pages and will appear in the 'collection additions' section on the home page within a day.

Do you do virtual hosting?

We will be happy to host your files under www.yourdomain.org , .net, or .com. To set up virtual hosting, you must register the domain with a network registration service. A domain registrar is a company that sells the service you need for domain hosting. There are a number of these companies on the net, so make sure to shop around for low prices!

Look over the ibiblio Collections Criteria to make sure you qualify for hosting. If you do, drop a note in the help form with a proposal for your site. Let us know what you want to do, and what you'll need to go about doing it.

Once you've been approved, it's time to get started on the technical details to make things happen. To run a website, you need a few different things, all working together: a DNS server, a web server, and whatever content you've got to publish.

New Site Steps

If your site is going to be at a new domain, you'll need to go through a few more steps to set up your new domain. (So, if you're just now setting up http://www.example.org/ for the first time, and your site has never been at http://www.example.org/, you'll need to do these steps.)

First, you need a domain name, like "ibiblio.org." To have a domain, you need someone to run your domain server (DNS server). This is just like how an email address requires an email server.

You can run your own DNS server, or use one provided by your domain registrar. In that case, you'll want to ensure the following settings:

example.org resolves to 152.46.7.81
www.example.org is an alias to example.org OR resolves to 152.46.7.81

Alternately, UNC can run your DNS server. This service is free, but they have stringent requirements:

Whether you're hosting with UNC DNS or not, email us to let us know that your DNS should be set up. We will look things over and let you know if we see any problems.

Steps for everybody

Once you're ready to start testing out your site, we can set up a testbed for you. After your project is approved, you can request a test setup. Also, after your DNS is set up, we'll create one for you. We'll send you information on where you should upload content for your site. You will then have a "live" test site, which will work with or without DNS. It will probably be something like http://www.example.org.test.ibiblio.org, and will reflect exactly how your site will look when it finally goes live. This allows you to test out things before taking your site public.

Checklist

  1. Make a proposal
  2. DNS registration (for new domains) (instructions)
  3. Email ibiblio Let us know that your DNS should be set up, and mention whether or not UNC should be hosting it.
  4. Upload content and test Upload your site and try it out on your test setup
  5. Email ibiblio Let us know that your site is working, and we'll go ahead and clean up the creation process.

How can I access usage statistics about my site?

Once you have your ibiblio site(s) up and running, you can gather usage statistics on your site by pasting a request into the help form to have it added to Urchin, which is at stats.ibiblio.org.

We don't offer ftp statistics, sorry.

How much do your services cost?

We offer these relatively standard services at no charge and in the spirit of open information exchange. As we are not-for-profit and a part of the University, we are not allowed to sell things from ibiblio servers and are not allowed to house pages that display banner ads for commercial websites. If you would like to request a service you believe we should provide, wish to report a problem with our machines or recommend that we upgrade something, please use thehelp form.

How can I repay you?

We would be honored if you included one of our "Hosted by ibiblio" images at the bottom of your site's home page. You may choose an image size and format from http://www.ibiblio.org/hosted/.

You can also contribute to ibiblio. Send your or your organization's tax-deductible contributions to:

Ibiblio.org
Campus Box 3456
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3456
Re: Donation

Make checks payable to University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill with a note "for ibiblio.org"

I'm having problems installing/configuring/repairing my kernel/video display/ethernet card/such-and-such software. Can you help me?

Sorry, but we don't do tech support. But we do have the Linux Documentation Project. And if that doesn't help, there are always the newsgroups, like comp.os.linux.setup, comp.os.linux.X11, and groups.google.com.

What do you guys do?

We're all about freedom, man! Free Tibet, Free Burma, Free Love, you get the picture. We offer a free platform for the exchange of free thought. We host tons of cultural sites like Documenting the American South, Zen@ibiblio, and North Carolina Raves (all of which can be seen from our collections index). We are also one of the first servers to mirror the original Linux kernel, so you can tell we're big on free software, too.

If you've got something culturally cool and need a place to go, check out the ibiblio Collections Criteria to see if your collection would qualify for hosting. If you do think it does, follow the procedures outlined there for contacting us about contributing.

If you've got software that you think would go great with our already humongous collection of free software, read our directions on properly uploading software and having it added.

How do I set up Server Side Includes on an ibiblio-hosted web site?

Server Side Includes (SSI) are configured for .shtml pages with the IncludesNoExec option. This means that pages with SSI directives must be named with the extension .shtml (e.g. index.shtml). The NoExec portion of the configuration means that the web server will not run cgi scripts or other executables from with SSI pages. Please send a message via the help form if your SSI pages require the ability to execute scripts.

Does ibiblio have an IRC Channel?

Yes, there is a channel for ibiblio staff, contributors, and visitors. This channel is created to increase communication, and is not supported by ibiblio. The channel is #ibiblio, located on irc.freenode.net.

Can I have access to my web site's Apache transaction log files?

Yes, however, access to log files is restricted to the maintainer of a given site. Send an email message via the help formrequesting access. After you have been set up, log files will start to appear in /public/var/log/sites/<site directory>.

Each night, the previous day's log file(s) will be copied into the site directory. In addition, log files more than a week old are removed.

Where can I access my site's error log files?

Error logs on the cluster nodes are deleted nightly, but you may view error logs on our development server. Here are the steps:

  1. View your test page here: http://www-dev.ibiblio.org/<site directory>/<page-to-test.html>
  2. After viewing the page you wish to test, connect to login.ibiblio.org and change directories to /public/var/log/www-dev
         $ cd /public/var/log/www-dev/
    
  3. search for your site directory in the file named "www-dev_error_log" :
         $ less www-dev_error_log
        (use a forward slash (/) to search the file for your site directory)
    

What are the ssh key fingerprints for the ibiblio login server?

The ssh host keys for login.ibiblio.org are as follows. The key you receive depends on which encryption algorithm is used. Note that we only support SSH version 2.

  • ssh v2 (rsa) 2048 fingerprint:
    95:bd:fb:2d:f7:d5:d5:71:3b:04:75:55:4d:1c:3e:00
  • ssh v2 (dsa) 1024 fingerprint:
    71:be:62:a8:8d:88:ef:fa:3c:bf:bd:3b:d4:56:48:2e

See also the same keys published on secure.ibiblio.org.

I just received a message telling me my account was going to be deleted. Is this true? And more generally, how will Ibiblio contact me if it does need to get in touch with me?

Ibiblio will only contact you via the following channels: The ibiblio-announce or webgroup mailing list, or personally from an employee. What this means is that ibiblio will never contact you using an alias address "admin", "support", "root", "info" (the list literally goes on and on).

If you have recieved a strange email from one of these addresses, telling you your account is suspended or revoked, it is a virus, and not from ibiblio.

Again, to be extra clear, ibiblio will not contact you with strange aliases. You will only receive personal contact from ibiblio staffers, directly to your account, or via the ibiblio-announce or webgroup mailing lists.

Is there a development server?

We currently run a full-scale development environment, which is available to all contributors.

If you run a site in our /public/html directory, you can access a dev version of the site by browsing to www-dev.ibiblio.org/your_directory

If you currently are virtual hosted, you can access your dev environment by browsing to http://www.yourvhost.org.test.ibiblio.org/

Realtime logs for the dev server can be found on login.ibiblio.org, in /public/var/log/www-dev. Virtual hosts get their own logs, and the ibiblio main log is called www-dev_combined_log and www-dev_error_log. Please see Where can I access my site's error log files? for more info.

How do I change my password?

After you log into login.ibiblio.org via SSH (see How do I connecto to ibiblio?), you may type the passwd command at the prompt. You will be prompted for your current password and to enter your new password twice. A typical session looks like the following:

$ passwd
Changing password for user <your username>.
Changing password for <your username>
(current) UNIX password: 
New password: 
Retype new password: 
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
This will also change the password for your ibiblio email.

How can I contribute a collection to ibiblio?

Check out the ibiblio Collections Criteria to make sure you qualify for hosting. If you do, follow the procedures outlined there for contacting us about contributing.

How can I connect to my MySQL database with a GUI client?

Our firewall will not allow you to connect a MySQL client directly to any of the ibiblio MySQL servers. However, you can establish an SSH tunnel that will allow you to connect indirectly.

How it works

An SSH tunnel is an encrypted channel between two machines; in this case between your computer and mysql.ibiblio.org. SSH connects the two machines by using a third machine as the tunnel; in this case login.ibiblio.org acts as the tunnel. Your computer sends encrypted information to the tunnel machine and the tunnel machine forwards the data to the remote machine. When you establish a tunnel you assign a local port number that will be forwarded via the tunnel to a port on the remote machine. This allows you to pretend that a service running on the remote machine is actually running on your computer. So, to connect your MySQL client to mysql.ibiblio.org, create a tunnel on local port 3306 to port 3306 on mysql.ibiblio.org using login.ibiblio.org as the tunnel.

Setting it up

On Linux, Mac OS X, or Cygwin, you can use SSH command line client create an SSH tunnel:

$ ssh -T -L 3306:mysql.ibiblio.org:3306 username@login.ibiblio.org &

This establishes the SSH tunnel and backgrounds the process. The -T option suppresses the TTY allocation meaning you will not start a new shell with this SSH session. The -L option establishes local port 3306 as the local end of the tunnel, mysql.ibiblio.org as the remote end of the tunnel, and 3306 as the remote port. The final parameter, username@login.ibibilo.org, tells SSH to use login.ibiblio.org as the tunnel and names your account as the requesting user. Now, any packets that I send to local port 3306 will be encrypted and sent to login.ibiblio.org where they will be decrypted and routed to mysql.ibibilo.org on port 3306.

On Windows, use PuTTY to create an SSH tunnel. Excellent instructions are available here. The MySQL port number on all ibiblio MySQL servers is the default: 3306.

Once the SSH tunnel is established direct your MySQL client to connect to localhost port 3306.

Why can't I use FTP to access ibiblio.org?

We have disabled FTP access to ibiblio.org for security reasons. With FTP, the entire transmission made between the host and the user is sent in plain text. Anyone who has the ability to snoop on the network packets can read the data, including the password information. An unauthorized user can use this information to compromise the system.

Instead of FTP, we recommend you use SFTP or SCP. PuTTY offers free SSH, SFTP, and SCP tools. These tools can be downloaded here. If you're more comfortable using a GUI under Windows, you might try WinSCP. OSX users can use Fugu for SFTP.


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