noir.crocodile.org

About

"We provide this service for free because we can"

Since 1997 noir.crocodile.org is computer which hosts FTP, WWW, NNTP servers in crocodile.org domain, as well as user accounts and email boxes. It was built as life-long home on the net for select group of people. It is hard to get here, but once you have account, your email account and home page will stay. Because it is free service for friends we expect you to behave as one.

User Policy

You password must be secure. If your account will be compromised, it will be permanently closed.
No warez, hacking and other illegal activity or content.
Real names in gecos fields are mandatory.

Services

Here is brief list of services accessible to our users:

Unix shell access (using ssh)
Email acccount yourname@noir.crocodile.org (including POP3, IMAP, POP3S, IMAPS access)
Spam filtering
News server with news.crocodile.org
Home page (http://www.crocodile.org/~yourlogin) with PHP, CGI support.
FTP space (ftp://ftp.crocodile.org/pub/people/yourlogin)
MYSQL database access
Subdomains under crocodile.org (you need to host your DNS)
UUCP over TCP mail delivery for subdomains.
User mailing lists hosting (low volume)
All data on noir backed up weekly

We carefully maintain this server applying all securing patches, upgrading software and hardware. to insure stable work. DNS for this server is hosted on multiple servers, geographically located in different places.

Donations

Services provided by this system are free for users. However we pay money for internet connection and hardware upgrades. User donations are very welcome. You can donate money by clicking one buttons below:

PayPal is preffered form of payment:

Or you can mail me cheque. My postal address is:

Vadim Zaliva
Crocodile Group
2244 Kalenda common
Fremont, CA 94539

If you wish to donate hardware, please email me first.

You can view noir Donation and Expenses history.

History

NOIR got his name from it's black case, which is no longer used.

Here are some dates from noir history:

18 Jul 98	Big upgrade. Disk space increased to 4Gb.
18 Oct 98	Upgraded to FreeBSD-2.2.7.
15 Mar 99	Linux installed. Thanks Vlad and Vadim for thier help.
28 May 99	We now receive some 'odessa.*' newsgroups on news.crocodile.org
09 Jun 99	Now this machine could also be reffered as noir.crocodile.org.ua
12 Aug 99	Upgraded to RedHat-6.0+patches. Thanks to Vlad for help!
12 Aug 99	ssh2 installed and recommended for use instead of ssh1.
04 Nov 99	Moved to new physical location.
28 Dec 99	Now we can host low volume mailing lists using GNU mailman.
05 Jun 00	2 new hard drives installed. Thanks serge for donation.
15 Jun 00	Open SSH is installed. SSH2 DSA host key changed!
12 Aug 00	Upgraded to dual 300Mhz Celeron. Thanks 'vlad','vadim','alext'.
11 Mar 01	Moved to new location (thanks dk for hosting)
17 May 01	We get second news feed for fido7.* from news.demos.ru.
20 May 01	Upgrade to RedHat Linux 7.1.
08 Dec 01	Use www.orbz.org for spam filtering.
09 Feb 02	New Ultra-SCSI disks and controller. More disk space. (thanks artifact, vk for hardware)
10 Mar 02	DLT Backup drive is working. We do daily backups now. (drive purchased with user contributions)
01 Dec 02	Bandwidth upgraded - new DSL connection
16 Jun 03	Faulty hard drive replaced (new one donated by artifact)
06 Sep 03	Memory increased from 128Mb to 348Mb (dontaed by vk and artifact)
1 Apr 04	Upgraded to brand new 1U rack mountable machine bought with user donations
20 Feb 05	Installed external hard drive for backups (donated by vlad)
01 Jul 08	Upgraded to new 1U machine purchased with user donations. We named it 'periplum'.

Pictures

1997-2000 noir was Pentium-I 133Mhz, 32Mb RAM
Since April 2000 noir is Dual 300Mhz Celeron, 128Mb RAM
Since April 2004 noir is 1.7GHz Celeron, 512Mb RAM
Since July 2008 noir (actually white, contrary to the name) is 3.2GHz Celeron, 2Gb RAM

Button

We have created small noir photo

button which you can put on your web pages hosted on noir.

This is completely voluntarily, of course. But we thought it is a good way to show sense of community. Some day watching some page on the net you may recognize fellow noir.crocodile.org user!

To insert the button add following HTML fragment to your page:

FAQ

Q: May I have account on noir?
A: In short - No. If you know some of administrators in person or reffered by several current users - maybe.

Q: I already have an account for myself, may I have account for my wife/husband/child/parent or other close relative.
A: Yes

Q: If I do not donate money, would you close my account?
A: No! Donations are stricly voluntary. We understand that some users could not donate. However, if we will be experiencing financial problems because of lack of donations, we may have to limit provided services (for example forced to use slower connection, or stop receiving some newsgroups, or introduce disk quotas)

Q: If I do not have account, can I have at least email alias at @crocodile.org?
A: No

Q: I am current user and want software package XXX installed. Is is possible?
A: Yes

Q: I am current user and want to have email alias at noir for my pager/cell/PDA. Is is possible?
A: Yes

Q: I am current user and want to have subdomain under crocodile.org or crocodile.org.ua. Is is possible?
A: Yes, if you can host your DNS.

Q: Can you host secondary DNS for my zone?
A: No.

Q: May I run daemon?
A: Yes, if you are sure that it does not open any security holes

Credits

I would like to thank Yan Koum, Serge Zhuk, Vlad Karpinsky for hardware donations. Also I would like to thank Vlad Karpinsky, Vadim Kurland, Alexander Komlik, Alexander Usenko, Alex Timoshenko for their help with software installation/upgrades and day-to-day server maintenance. Special thanks for Dmitry Kohmanyuk for hosting and network support.

Back to Crocodile Group WWW Server.