This page exists to provide some hints and links for users of sensus-communis.com (by which I mean 'members', not simply 'browsers', though if anyone else finds it useful, all the better.)

sensus-communis.com is a lowly K6-2, 400Mhz, with 384MB of RAM and about 40GB of HD space. It is run with the SuSE distribution of Linux, currently at version 7.0. It is primarily a toy and learning tool for me (John Emmer, a.k.a. 'jjustice') -- though it is even more fun and more useful as such if more people use it. Hence I give accounts to my friends and family as requested.

Although I do try to keep it running smoothly and offer useful services to the users, sensus-communis.com cannot hope to compete with commercial-grade service providers in either scope of services or reliability. I use a free DNS (that's what maps the numerical IP Address to the name 'sensus-communis.com',) I have a flakey service provider, and I have been known to pull the cord out of the wall when moving furniture. However, if you bring symptoms or suggestions to my attention, I will do what I can to improve service.

Here are some hints and tips on how to get the most out of your sensus-communis.com account:

• Although sensus-communis.com sits behind a firewall, I do allow HTTP, FTP, and telnet traffic through. This last is not very secure, so when I get around to it, I will switch to SSL and help everybody who wants one to find an appropriate SSL client.



• As a Linux site, sensus-communis.com offers standard Unix-style services for those who know how to use them. You can get started by looking at: http://www.geek-girl.com/Unixhelp/



• If you want to put up a web-site on sensus-communis.com, simply create a folder called 'public_html' in your home directory. Whatever you put in this directory will show up on the web at http://www.sensus-communis.com/~username, where username is, of course, your username. Check out '~dasein' and '~boop' for some examples. If you do this, be sure to set file permissions appropriately, or else nobody will see anything. If you don't know about file permissions, see the link above or ask me for help.



• If you just like the idea of having a sensus-communis.com email address, but don't want to have to login and check your email with something like Pine, you can create a ".forward" file in your home directory, in which you simply put one line with the address to which you would like your email to be forwarded. Then everything that winds up here for you will automatically be forwarded to the address (or addresses) you specify. (Be sure to include the leading period in the filename.)



• I run the Apache web server, and have enabled user authentication. Therefore, if you would like, you can make your web documents or a subset of them available only to people to whom you give a username and password. There's a link in the bookmarks collection on how to do this, but I will also have to add users to the Apache user database, so just let me know if you're interested in using this feature.



• I have installed a dynamic bookmark database system here at http://www.sensus-communis.com/bookmarker. You can add your own links or just browse there and see what the other members have added. It's a nice feature to be able to reach your links from whatever computer you're at. I hope to enhance the software for this so that you can just browse your own links, share categories, etc.



• As I mentioned above, since this is Linux, there are tons of services available. If there is something you would like to do but I don't have it installed or configured, just let me know.