Getting an account

If you know Andy, Scott, or Kevin, talk to one of us and we will be glad to set you up with an account. We are currently not giving accounts to people we are not otherwise associated with.

Once you have an account set up, you have access to e-mail, shell access, and space for your personal Web page. See below for help on using these.

Secure protocols

We are dedicated to making communications to and from Destiny as secure as possible. We have therefore shut off all insecure services (e.g. FTP, POP, IMAP) in favor of their secure counterparts. Details on using the secure protocols can be found below.

E-mail

You can access your e-mail on ringworld.org through any of several methods. You may use our Web-based interface, which uses secure HTTP to communicate with your browser.

Alternatively, you may use your favorite mail program to access your mail via secure POP or secure IMAP. Most mail programs have an option to select these protocols. For help with a particular program, contact the admins.

You may also use Destiny as your outgoing mail (SMTP) server, if your mail client supports using SSL for outgoing mail. (Most mail clients do.) Use destiny.ringworld.org:587 as the SMTP server address.

Shell access

Shell access is offered through SSH, which replaces the insecure Telnet protocol. You can use the Java SSH applet that we've set up from any Java-enabled browser, or you can install an SSH client on your own machine.

If you are using some flavor of Unix (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.), install OpenSSH. Packages are available for most Linux distributions, and the BSD ports collection includes it.

For classic Mac OS (9.x and earlier), use either NiftyTelnet SSH or MacSSH. Mac OS X comes with OpenSSH pre-installed. Simply open Terminal and type 'ssh destiny.ringworld.org'.

For Windows, we recommend using puTTY.

A more complete list of SSH clients (including both free and commercial applications) can be found at freessh.org.

Web space

To use your Web space on ringworld.org, compose your Web pages with your favorite HTML authoring program, then use SCP to upload them to destiny.ringworld.org. (SCP is included with OpenSSH, and both puTTY and NiftyTelnet SSH support SCP.) Place them in the following directory (replace <username> with your username on Destiny):

/home/<username>/public_html/.

For Mac OS X or Unix, open a terminal and type:

scp file.html <username>@destiny.ringworld.org:~/public_html/

Alternatively, you can check out RBrowser for Mac OS X. It's a solid, easy-to-use graphical FTP and SCP client.

If you are using NiftyTelnet SSH on Mac OS, start the application, enter destiny.ringworld.org as the hostname to connect to, then press the 'Scp' button. A dialog will appear to allow you to select which files to upload. Select your HTML files, enter:

/home/<username>/public_html/

as the upload directory (replacing <username> with your username on Destiny), and click 'Send'.

For Windows, download WinSCP (get the 'installation package' and install it). When you run the program, use destiny.ringworld.org as the hostname, and your username and password. Browse to your local files in the left pane and be sure you're in your public_html directory in the right pane. Select the files you wish to copy and click the button that says 'F5 Copy'.

If you prefer a command-line SCP or SFTP client, download pSCP or pSFTP from the same location as puTTY.

CuteFTP PRO also supports SFTP, but it will set you back about $60

Other services

We may be able to help you with setting up other services. For example, if you have registered a domain name and want it to be hosted on ringworld.org, talk to one of the admins and we will try to help you out.