Advanced FAQ

This FAQ describes many of the advanced techniques involved in utilizing your TravisBSD account to its fullest capacity. If this FAQ does not answer your questions, please feel free to email us at team@travisbsd.org.


Q: How do I change my default shell?

A: For security purposes we do not allow users to do this manually at this time, although this may be subject to change in the future. If you wish to have your default shell changed, or a new shell installed, contact us at team@travisbsd.org.


Q: Am I allowed to compile and install programs on the server?

A: You are allowed to compile programs and install them within your home directory. Any programs you need installed we can also install, providing they do not present security issues or conflict with something which we already have installed.


Q: Am I allowed to run cron jobs and programs on the server?

A: Yes, providing that the cron jobs and programs do not consume massive amounts of memory or CPU time. Each user is allocated a certain amount of CPU and memory time, if your programs exceed this they will be killed by the system. If you require more process space, please contact us and request it.


Q: I need to get DNS hosting, what do I need to do?

A: DNS hosting is much easier than most people think. All you need to do is register your name with a registrar of your choice, and set your nameservers for the domain to ns1.travisbsd.org and ns2.travisbsd.org. Once you have done this, contact us and we will setup your DNS records and modify apache to reflect the DNS.


Q: Why are you guys so strict about security?

A: To make a long story short we're veteran administrators, and we've been around the block more than once. If you were to take a survey of all the administrators who compose TravisBSD you would find that all of us have had our servers compromised at least once, usually when we were just starting out. After you realize the chilling depths of how much you can be compromised, and much it puts you in doubt, you work to prevent it. TravisBSD accomplishes this with a teired security system, throw away load balancing servers with the least security, master authentication servers with the most security. This teired approach allows us to view any irregularities in our network, and detect the cause. As of the date of writting, we have caught twelve attempts to compromise our systems, all total failures. Each case resulted in a talk to the abuse department of the would-be hacker's ISP, and finally in their internat access being revoked.