Panix Technical Information

Panix: Technical information about our shell servers

User hosts:: We currently have four user hosts (for shell login, telnet, ftp, and the like) running NetBSD (currently v9.2). Three of these hosts (panix1, panix2, panix3) are accessed arbitrarily as "shell.panix.com". The fourth (panix5) sometimes runs a NetBSD-Current build and is not entirely the same as the other three. New software and software upgrades often appear on panix5 before they appear on the main shell hosts.
Programs available:: We maintain and upgrade our software regularly, and add to it at our users' request. See the commands in /usr/local/bin; this list is updated weekly. If there is software you wish to use that you don't see in this list, email us with a request for the software you need.
Packages available:: You can see the packages available on our user hosts. The list is updated weekly.
Web servers:: Our web servers are running NetBSD and Apache, with numerous options. We have shared servers for personal and for corporate accounts, as well as dedicated machines for high-volume websites. We also offer a 'virtual' add-on for cases where you need to run custom software not available on the shared servers, but where a full dedicated server is unnecessary.
Newsgroups:: Our news feed machine is connected to the Internet via multiple gigbit ethernet links. We add groups in the Big Eight (comp, humanities, misc, news, rec, sci, soc, talk), and some of the geographical hierarchies (if control messages are authenticated) automatically. We add other groups upon user request.
RAID file server:: All Panix single-user accounts come with 6 GB of storage space for web, home directory files, and mail. Storage is provied on a ZFS RAID protected storage area network. This eliminates downtime due to disk problems, and lets you recover accidentally-deleted files immediately from frequent "snapshot" backups.
Privileges:: Users are permitted to build and compile programs and scripts in any of the many langauges available on Panix (even other compilers). Persistent processes (programs that keep running after the user logs off) and cron/at jobs are generally not allowed though we occasionally permit exceptions.