Policies, rules, declarations and so forth.
We are not a corporate company, so we are not going to be boring you with a bunch of legalese. Instead, here is a list of simple rules that we advise you to follow.
- We will not tolerate any malicious behavior at all
- No background processes are allowed on standard accounts
- If the above still doesn't make sense - no eggdrops, BNC's, ircd's or detached screens/tmux
- Do not cause any IRC drama
- No hosting of any questionable material - warez/cracks/exploits/pornography/phishing sites/etc.
- Tunneling is a bonus, do not abuse it.
- No resource hogging or causing general problems on devio.us systems
- In addition to that: No distcc and equivalents of it.
- No remote vulnerability testing unless directly allowed on a case by case basis by devio.us staff
- No spamming
Failure to adhere to any of the above rules will get your account revoked and possibly get you banned.
Backups
We are serious about backups. We've seen quite a few providers lose all of their client data way too often.
Now, while we cannot say that your data is 100% safe with us, we are at least comfortable saying that your data is pretty safe with us. "Pretty safe" means, that we perform nightly on-site and off-site backups of all user and system related data; that is, home dirs, configs, databases, logs and a bunch of other stuff.
Standard background philosophies
You are probably curious as to what falls under the guidelines of a background process, so here are some answers for you.
(Our) definition of a background process would be any process that is detached/nohup'd and stays running after you log out. Example: starting screen/tmux, starting irssi and logging out. Not cool. HOWEVER, note that we do not have a problem with you running screen/tmux with multiple windows, while staying connected to our servers. We are not crazy overlords and want you to be able to work in peace.
If you happen to 'accidentally' detach something and 'accidentally' log out (and you are not a premium account holder), your process will be killed within 5 minutes and a report will be sent to devio.us staff. Continuous violations are likely to result in an account suspension or a bad mother-like scolding from one of the admins. Removals and bans are reserved for "special" cases (ie. someone getting their BNC killed for the Nth time).
Premium background philosophies
Our premium users enjoy the comforts of being able to detach/nohup 1 or 2 background processes based on account type. We have one very special exception here - we truly love 'screen/tmux' and all the glory it can bring to your shell experience. Due to this, we count screen/tmux as a single background process, regardless of how many windows you open (as long as it still falls under normal usage/non-resource hogging policy).
Lets look at some examples:
Example 1: we are perfectly 'ok' with our premium users detaching a screen/tmux which has a window with 'irssi', and two 'shell' windows - this still counts as one process in our eyes.
Example 2: detaching a screen/tmux with 3 windows and secondary session with a nohup'd script - two background processes. You get the idea.
Finally, premium accounts are not for running eggdrops, bnc's, ircd's etc. - they are available for users who want to be able to detach their screen's or tmux sessions, for whatever reason - work, fun, research or learning something new.
Privacy concerns
Lets make this clear from the beginning - we are not interested in your email address, your name or really anything else about you. We know, that sounds a bit harsh, but its the truth. With that said, let it be clear, that we will not sell your information to anyone for any sort of money, services or cakes.
What you can expect though is the following:
- We store all signup information (accepted and rejected)
- We will co-operate with any law enforcement and will provide any requested information
Yeah, seriously, that's about it.
Asterisks and subnotes
Premium accounts are allowed anywhere between 1-2 background processes. Consult our FAQ for more info on premium accounts.
IRC drama means - flooding, trolling, nick jumping, ban evasion and being a general dumb ass. You will definitely get banned for this.
This is very simple - the goal of our project is to provide you a place where you can get some work done, do some research, get familiar with UNIX or just have some fun. We are not here to provide you a means to bypass your corporate proxy to access Facebook. If you are found to be using a large amount of bandwidth (ie. tunneling video traffic) - you will be removed and banned. Respect us, our efforts and our systems, and we'll respect you.
There are some special cases, where users would like to use our systems to perform penetration testing for a company they work for or are contracted with. These cases are rare, however they do happen - each one of these cases needs to be approved by devio.us staff; failure to do so, will get your account removed immediately.
TL;DR Don't be stupid and use your common sense.
