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Q: What are the POP (point-of-presence) numbers to dial into RAIN?
Santa Barbara, Goleta, Carpenteria, Montecito: 690-7246
Ventura, Ojai, Camarillo, Oxnard, Port Hueneme: 804-7246*
West Lake Village, Thousand Oaks, Simi, Moorpark, Agoura Hills, Canoga Park, Santa Paula,
Fillmore, Camarillo, Conejo Valley, Northridge: 876-7246*
Santa Maria: 361-7246
Solvang, Santa Ynez: 694-7246
San Luis Obispo: 597-7246
Lompoc: 875-7246
Paso Robles: 591-7246
Cambria: 935-7246
New Cuyama: 766-2566
*Note: If in the dialup areas south of Santa Barbara, before dialing
please consult with your local telephone provider to determine which
dialup prefix is local to you.
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Q: Does/Will RAIN support the X2 modem standard?
No. Rain currently supports Kflex and V.90. Also, these modem standards
are starting to hit the peak of what the telephone lines can support (X2 or
no, in certain places like the mesa and Goleta, you can only get 26400 or
21000 baud connections due to the phone lines there).
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Q: My Internet software is asking for server values. What values should I
enter?
Gateway: 198.68.144.1
Primary DNS Nameserver: 198.68.144.2
Secondary DNS Nameserver: 198.68.144.20
POP3 Mail Server: rain.org
SMTP Mail Server: mail.rain.org
NNTP News Server: news.rain.org
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Q: I was working on writing an email or news article and I was
disconnected from RAIN. Why?
There is a maximum idle interval of 12 minutes set on RAIN. This means
that if there is no activity over the modem (the transmit and receive
lights blinking) for 12 minutes, then RAIN will hangup the connection so
another user can login to the system. Working on an email or news article
on your local machine is not considered modem activity so RAIN
disconnects.
You can always reconnect to RAIN, and most Internet mail and news programs
are written so that you can work on replys to email and news articles and
then upload them in a batch the next time you are connected.
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Q: How do I setup my own web page?
Check out: http://www.rain.org/~help/rainsoft/webclass/create.html
Basically there will be a subdirectory in your HOME directory which is
named 'public_html'. You will use a FTP or some file uploading program to
change to this directory and upload your html text and pictures to your
public_html directory on the RAIN server. Check out the above URL for
detailed instructions.
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Q: How do I setup CGI so I can use scripts on my web pages?
For individual accounts, we have implemented a system where everyone has
their own cgi-bin directory to install and manage their scripts. What you
do is create a "cgi-bin" subdirectory in your "public_html" subdirectory.
Basically, you path will be something like this:
~{{username}}/public_html/cgi-bin
Now what you do is put the scripts you wish to run in your cgi-bin
directory. You will need to type in the following UNIX command while in
the cgi-bin directory to make the script executable by the server:
coyote% chmod 755 {{script}}
When you want to run your scripts, you would use the following URL:
http://www.rain.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/{{username}}/{{script}}
This will run the script and generate output for your HTML page.
If you will need to debug your script due to a "server error", you can get
debug information by running your script in the following way:
http://www.rain.org/cgi-bin/cgiwrapd/{{username}}/{{script}}
A very common error is that the "Content Type: text/html" type line with a
blank line afterwards was not added to the start of the output stream.
Also make sure to upload your text files in ASCII mode and not BINARY
mode!
The RAIN staff can help out if you have problems getting your script
recognized by cgiwrap, however we do not have the resources to support
the debugging of your scripts ... especially ones created by other people or
sites.
For a simple XBITMAP counter, check out the following URL:
http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/cgi.htm
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Q: I've started to get some unsolicited e-mail. I notice that other people
are able to fiddle with their return addresses to foil the spammers. Is
there any way to do this on Rain?
The easiest way to deal with stuff like this is to just throw it away and
ignore it.
Second thing you can do for prevention is only fill out the
'questionnaire' forms on the web sites that you are really interested in.
This information is kept and given out to others. Also, advertising your
web pages on search engines will make you more susceptable to these type
of messages.
Pegasus has a good mail filter and I believe the new Eudora Lite offers
this functionality as well. Anything coming from that user/site is thrown
away.
The other thing you can do is forward the ENTIRE message to
'postmaster@sitename' and they may take action to deal with this type of
behavior.
I've found over the last 13 years that the best way to 'get them back' is
not to react to it at all but just ignore it ... no reaction and most
the time they just stop. Just like those kids who teased you in 4th
grade. :-)
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