Frequently Asked Questions
General Issues
Q: I mailed you about hosting and you gave me a rude answer. Why do you have to be so nasty?
A: You obviously didn't read our "Getting Hosted" page. If you don't bother to read our docs, we don't bother to be polite.
Q: I sent a mail to staff@dotsrc.org but didn't get a reply (aside from the automatic notification). What's up?
A: We're all doing this in our spare time, so it might easily be that we're busy with paid work and/or personal stuff. More likely though, the people with the proper expertise are busy. If it's urgent, send another mail or nag us on IRC.
Q: Your site is slooow.
A: Possibly some kiddie launching a DOS (Denial Of Service) attack on us, or just many people accessing our servers (e.g. mirrors updating from us via rsync can raise the load quite a bit). Things should be fast again soon. If in doubt, ask us in IRC or via mail.
Hosting Issues
Q: Will you host my personal homepage / clan site / gaming site / fan site?
A: No. See "Getting Hosted" for details.
Q: Will you host my webshop / company website?
A: No. If you earn money with it, you also can pay for it to be hosted (i.e. not here).
Q: Will you host my university / school project?
A: Unlikely. Maybe if it's of general interest to others and if you plan to continue working on it for the following years. Otherwise your university / school can (and is usually required to) provide hosting for it.
Q: I have this great idea for a project on XY and I need a good host so that others will flock to this project and it will be the greatest ever so please host me!
A: Kudos to your enthusiasm. However experience shows that (a) most ideas for "greatest ever" projects stay just that -- ideas and (b) people won't help with a project until they see at least some working code. We know, yours will be different, but we've seen enough such special projects that never went anywhere. You're of course welcome to apply, but don't be surprised if we don't accept you unless you already have a working prototype.
Q: I just started with this Open Sourcy thing and want to do my first project and see how all this works. Can you host it?
A: Theoretically yes. In practice though you'll be much better served at http://sourceforge.net/ etc. We specialize on hosting demanding projects run by experienced developers, which means we offer little in the way of standard and easy to use clicky tools.
Q: I need feature X which isn't listed as standard in your docs. Does that mean I have to look elsewhere?
A: Not necessarily. We try to be as forthcoming as possible, so we might just offer that feature if you ask nicely.
Q: I'm the head / admin of Big Project X. We want to move away from our current hosting and yours looks promising. We however need some special features, and moving over our huge CVS repository, mailing list archives etcetc will be a lot of work for everyone involved. Possible?
A: Yes! Projects like yours are the most interesting and fun ones for us to host :)
Mirrors
Q: Can you add mirror XY?
A: Maybe. If we have the space for it, you have good chances. There might be other mirrors in the queue first though. Please see "Requesting Mirrors" for more details.
Usenet
Q: I think your server is missing a group which I'd like to read. Will you add it?
A: Yes, we probably will. Drop us a mail on staff@dotsrc.org and we will consider your request.
Q: Why can't I read or post articles anymore?
A: From May 2004 every user has to authenticate to get access to the server. Please see the registration section.
Q: Why do I get access denied when I try connecting to the server?
A: From May 2004 every user has to authenticate to get access to the server. Please see the registration section.
Q: I can't connect with Mozilla/Opera?
A: There has been some bugs with authentication in some old versions of these news readers. Please upgrade to the newest available version.
Q: How do I configure my news reader to access the news server?
A: There are some screenshots here.