Here we'll be listing the current status of ShellTown plus announce things like scheduled downtimes for maintenance (yes, we'll actually be maintaining this system -- we know it's a change from certain other companies that shall remain nameless) plus new features and improvements.

Be sure to also check out the various relevant Saugus.net forums for more status info: saugus.net.announce, saugus.net.support, and saugus.net.misc.

Sporadic Slowness

Some users have reported seeing occasional periods of intense system slowness. We've tried to track down the source, and it looks like several things all have to happen at once to actually cause the problem (including large influxes of spam, certain users accessing giant mailboxes, etc.). We believe that we've got it fixed, so if anyone is still seeing problems please let us know and provide us with as much detail as possible on what you're seeing and when. Also, if you've got a gigantic amount of e-mail, please try and break it down into smaller individual mailboxes before using tools that try and pull it all into memory simultaneously...

E-Mail Issues

Our e-mail server is currently weathering a denial-of-service attack (June 9). We're addressing it now. Curiously this attack apparently wasn't intended for us, but for EarthLink, who has a handful of TIAC domains pointing at us (including Sunspot.TIAC.net, Max.TIAC.net, Shell1.TIAC.net, and Shell2.TIAC.net).

Fake E-Mails From admin@saugus.net

Some our users have pointed out that they recently received e-mails claiming to be from "admin@saugus.net" including the following text:

Hello there,
I would like to inform you about important information regarding your email address. This email address will be expiring. Please read attachment for details.

These e-mails are fakes and are not actually from Saugus.net (as you may notice by viewing all the headers). The included attachment includes an MS-Windows virus; Macintosh, UNIX, Linux, BeOS, OS/2, Amiga, etc. systems are all immune. All manner of ISPs are being targeted, not just Saugus.net; note that in general, no competent "admin" of any computer system would ever send an attachment containing the "details".

Recent Spam Increases

A bevy of MS-Windows machines have recently been hacked for the purpose of turning them into open relays that can then be used to send spam. We use open relay databases, but these are not effective against people's desktop machines being used as spam routers. Our spam labeling should still be effective (and in fact we've been working behind the scenes to make it even more so), though, so if you're using an automated tool to reject things labeled as spam, you probably haven't even noticed an increase. We're currently looking into ways of making our labeling system even more effective, and we'll hopefully be posting a tutorial on how to effectively make use of these filters soon.

If you're using an MS-Windows machine at home, you may want to try and verify that it hasn't been exploited without your knowledge. Right now the situation for MS-Windows users is the worst it's been in years; even the U.S. Federal Government has put up advisories for some of the recent MS-Windows security vulnerabilities; see:

for some of the more severe recent MS-Windows problems, but there have been over thirty security issues with the various flavors of MS-Windows this year alone, so you're probably going to want to hunt around through both the Microsoft and CERT sites looking for patches / fixes if you've not been keeping your system up-to-date.

If you are using an MS-Windows machine, you can help alleviate the problem by ensuring it's as secure as possible. Install all the recommended security patches, replace MSIE with Firefox, etc.

As usual, most of the other non-MS systems are fairing somewhat better and these severe problems won't affect you if you're using a Mac, an Amiga, or some type of UNIX (Solaris / FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD / Linux / etc.) box.

Dial-Ins

Probably the single biggest question is "what's the status of the dial-ins?" to which the answer is "they're working and can now be used". If you want to try them out for yourself, you can use 1-781-691-0053, 1-508-817-3045, 1-617-861-0071, 1-978-515-0049, 1-413-351-0066, 1-339-219-2047, 1-603-812-0065, or 1-401-648-0068 to connect. When you connect, you'll be hit with a set of username and password prompts. Use your login name with the extra suffix @shelltown along with your regular password.

For example, if your username is "webmaster" you'd enter webmaster@shelltown at the prompt. This will get you to the ShellTown login prompt on shelley, so you'll have to enter your regular username (no extra "shelltown" stuff) and your password (again). You should then be logged in normally. For now, if you have any problems send an e-mail.

Python

The long-discussed Python upgrade has happened. We waited until the current version was pronounced "Safe for Zope" before upgrading. Enjoy 2.3.5.

MSIE Crashes

Apparently certain pages within ShellTown (especially the currently underused ShellTown.org) can cause certain versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer to crash sporadically depending upon a whole bunch of unknown variables including possibly the phase of the moon. This is ultimately a bug with Internet Explorer, and apparently Microsoft is working on a fix; expect a beta sometime before the end of the year, but only for Windows XP. (No, we're not kidding -- wish we were.) In the meanwhile you may consider upgrading to a standards-compliant browser like Firefox, Safari, Mozilla, Camino, Konqueror, or Opera, none of which have any problems. There are (of course) also no problems viewing anything on the site with either lynx or links (or anything else for that matter) from within ShellTown. We currently don't view this as a major issue since it doesn't seem to affect any of the pages with real information and does have easy work-arounds.

Miscellany

We try to address most small issues right away. If something that at first appears small ends up being more complicated, we'll list it here along with its status:

"Bounce" on elm doesn't

We've been able to reproduce this not only on ShellTown but on an external machine as well; we're working to fix it on the external machine so that the impact on ShellTown's elm (it'll have to go down for a bit when the fix is applied) will be minimal. We hope to have the fix soon.