vanade.com Terms of Service / Acceptable Use Policy

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System Login

System Login - Authorized Users only!!!

System Login is a service provided for a select group of people to allow web access to my machine(s). This login has no relation to Midgar's Mess which has a completely different authentication system and is completely unlinked to this service. Users of Midgar's Mess are classified as anonymous as no in-person authentication has been done.
If you were allowed command line/secure shell access to my machine, you are authorized to also use the web login service as well.

Warning - copied for Terms of Use for Anonymous users

This server is a private machine for the usage by only the owner and friends of the owner. All other usage is prohibited and vehemently denied. Some data and resources are made available for the general public but can be revoked or changed at any time. All accesses to this machine may be monitored and/or logged for any use the owner can conceive of. While the confidentiality of any data collected is generally adhered, many exceptional cases of unusual tampering or hacking may cause the data to be used to ridicule or cease connections to this server. Any access to this machine indicates consent to this logging. Realistically, no access is allowed to this machine unless it's of original intended access.

Bandwidth usage - for authorized users

This machine is of limited bandwidth, and is easily overwhelmed. Thus, be careful with your usage such that it does not noticeably degrade my use of my network and machines. As an authorized account holding user, you may use the server for your personal use for most uses, but if you have questions, please ask owner. The biggest hog of network resources is the serving of photographs from this machine, and to limit consumption of the resource, you must be careful not to create situations where my machine could be overwhelmed with requests.

Special alerts for authorized users

Most of these warnings are unnecessary as I trust that given an account, I have full confidence you will not abuse my computers. For curiosity of anonymous users, this guide is here:

Special privileges are granted to specific, authorized users. Do not share your accounts. If someone else has need for an account, please forward their contact information for me to review.

You may not access any protected resources without permission, even if the code has bugs.

Using my machine for spam, harassment (including slander, libel, blackmail, and denial of service), or other unauthorized access to my own or anyone else's computers is prohibited.

Do not commit copyright infringement or other illegal actions with my machine.

Home directories are backed up to another disk frequently. Do not keep anything on this machine that shouldn't be archived out of your control.

Please do not make it a nightmare for me to clean up disk usage after your mess. Use your home directory or /tmp for disk space. /scratch/tmp may be used if you don't expect the data to remain for long - this directory does NOT get backed up unlike other directories. Ask if you need more disk space than on the partition your home directory is on or want temporary space that is not backed up.

Do not abuse my disk space. There are no quotas and you may to use as much as you like. Just don't fill the disk and cause my machine to crash or cause backup headaches as files do get backed up.

Be wary when using network bandwidth. Do not saturate my network, especially if I'm using an interactive session such as ssh or World of Warcraft.

You may use CPU at 100% on doujima to do interactive, short, predictable and finite tasks such as compiling kernels or reencoding audio/video segments (be careful of overloading my network connection, though) without asking for prior permission. Destructive tests are obviously not permitted. Do not run things that have unknown or undefined completion times (such as SETI@Home, distributed.net, Folding@Home, etc.)¹. Exception is running for a short benchmark. Please ask if unsure.

You may run non-interactive, low CPU/network bandwidth software such as IRC bots (which also need to adhere to the no-spam policy) and MUD servers, but please make sure I am not using the same IRC server and notify me in advance of your intent. I do reboot the machine on occasion, randomly.

Use only encrypted connections such as SSH to login. Encrypted web-login is now available to check/update files in lieu of ftp removal. See left sidebar, click on control panel. Some usage information is available at the FAQ.

Generally, you're welcome to use the other computers on my network that you have accounts on via hardcode or NIS/YP. Let me know in advance as I may not check before shutting them down. Machines under test are disallowed because I know they're not going to be stable and I'm not sure you want to login to a machine that's going to crash every 5 minutes anyway :-)

Available machines:

doujima(doujima.vanade.com, virtual machine) is my main shell box and should receive most of the work. This machine should have 99.9% availability.
ouka is my pvr and backup server, x86_64 Core2 Duo 4GB, YP/NIS. However due to hardware failure it is down. (distccd)

Upon Request, as these usually are off, disconnected, or have other special issues

Tier 1: Likely setup with NIS and enabled

fujiko is my workstation, x86-64 Core-i7 2700K (overclocked to 4.1GHz), 8GB RAM, SSD - this is for high volume jobs, frequently on (distccd)
geode is a low power machine, Geode GX1 266MHz - Down until further notice.
trinity Celeron 1200 with bad disk and 1.25GB RAM - down until further notice.

Tier 2: Need special alerts, as they are not always using NIS and NFS, and turned off

hinoki is my spare laptop, Pentium-M 1.6GHz 1GB RAM
yuri is sometimes up, x86_64 P4-3400 machine 3GB RAM (distccd)
mughi(mughi.vanade.com) is my 4GB RAM, IA64/Linux box
kei AthlonXP 2500+ with 1GB RAM, not used

Tier 3: Not using NIS/NFS at all, need account setup prior to access, request if needed

subaru is a x86-64 Core2 Quad 8GB. This is my main disk/VM server and is up 24/7 (distccd)
mikuru is my main laptop, Core i5-3317U ultrabook with 8GB RAM, not always on (distccd)
diablo is my NetBSD box (MIPSel R2000 @ 16.7MHz, 24MB RAM), rarely on
chii Atom N270 netbook, 2GB RAM, SSD, may not always be on

Machines explicitly off limits - mostly embedded devices as they don't have normal accounts and have to deal with flash wear:

firebox(router, virtual machine)
sumomo(PDA)
Madoka(WPA2 router, nat-router.vanade.com)
Miyuki(open router, external.net.vanade.com)
kotoko Nokia N900 PDA/Phone, 256MB RAM
~~cisco~~ actiontec(Actiontec GT701WG CPE/Router)
poodle(Zaurus SL5600 PDA)
rukia Celeron-M 1.5GHz 2GB RAM, not on premesis

Machines marked with (distccd) are distcc enabled.

Please don't turn on any machines without permission, as unpowerred machines may be in service, or partially disassembled. Now that I mentioned that, don't force me to unplug those machines.

Please ask if you have any doubts. Don't run anything that you wouldn't run on your own machine. I may even allow controlled tests of exploit software as long as you tell me about how it will affect my computer and how to clean up.

Security and Uptime

Security will be kept up to the best of my abilities (and I do watch my machine quite a bit), but there are no guarantees. Please do not store sensitive information on my computer without encryption. Assume this machine could be hacked at any time, though I'd have to say the chances of that happening is much lower than unmaintained machines.

This server will attempt to be up 24/7/365 with minimal downtime. No guarantees of uptime is expressed (especially uncontrollable network outages), but my personal desire for this machine to be available at all times will give an indication of its uptime. "Five 9's of reliability" (i.e., 99.999%, or 5 minutes down per year) is unfortunately impossible for me to attain, but 99% uptime is likely, estimate (less than) 3 days of total downtime per year. Three 9's (99.9%, that's less than 12 hours down per year) is the goal, but there are those days when restarts of the machine (minimal interruption), repair/cleaning/upgrades of the machine (potential for hours of interruption), or CenturyLink internet/electricity interruption (unknown downtime) is inevitable.

All authenticated usage must use encrypted connections to help secure your data. It also helps secure data for all users on this machine. This machine currently uses a Self-Signed SSL certificate as I can't afford a real one. Your web browser will likely report an invalid or untrusted certificate upon first login. Please accept this certificate as official for now, it's allright to accept the certificate - it's merely to allow for encryption as long as you trust your network to not contaminate DNS or have man-in-the-middle proxy attack.

The SSL certificate is available via snail mail or telephone for verification. Please ask for it if you're not sure if you're really connecting to my computer versus some hacker's machine, I'll be glad to read the fingerprint. Make sure the FAQ contains the same fingerprint as the one I read to you. If you need to ask my address or phone numbers are, you don't need to know my public key is either!

Rationale

Why ask why? You should know better! :)

Contacts

Please contact abuse at mail.vanade.com if anyone sees someone violating our policies. Remove "spam" before sending any correspondence to this address.

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¹I found my computers have a potential to double their power consumption when running heavy workloads. I calculate that even when idle, most of my desktop computers cost me around $5/month/machine worth of electricity, not including cooling bills during the summer. Some machines are higher. Thus I personally discontinued running these apps.

[Ads go here... but we don't have any ads, so nothing goes here and nothing to help pay for this network connection!

So, since there are no ads, and it costs me money (electricity, hardware repairs, and time for maintainance) to keep this server up, there are lots of restrictions to usage and linking to this server. See Terms of Use before linking.

Do you want to donate some cash? So you can have a little space here to advertise your wares? Feel free to send mail to webmaster or sysadmin. Note that I will be very selective on what kinds of ads are acceptable.]