Some quick notes on pubserver.freeciv.org from a sysadmin's point of view.
Please note that this page describes pubserver, the public set of Freeciv servers that used to run pubserver.freeciv.org, which went down permanently in 2007. Other similar services have appeared since then - this document makes no attempt to describe them.
See also pubserver software.
Hardware; OS; hosting[]
All hardware at freeciv.org, except the mailing lists, is provided by Paul Zastoupil; he buys the hardware, handles all physical installation and maintenance, and also handles all OS installation and maintenance. The machines are located and hosted at his workplace, Sony Entertainment in San Diego, California - i.e. the PST timezone. pubserver.freeciv.org is currently a dual processor Pentium II (330 MHz) running Redhat Linux 7.3. It is dedicated to running the public "gameserver", pubserver. Software maintenance is done like on any Redhat box; software packages available from Redhat are maintained as RPM packages, while additional software or packages for which more up to date versions are required are compiled from source and installed in /usr/local. Paul (paulz) shares root access with some people in Europe (MET timezone), which can be useful to know in case of problems.
==System administration tasks==
(To be specified here.)
Access and user management[]
Access is restricted by a firewall that allows world-wide access to a range of ports for the game servers and port 80 for the web server. ssh access is no longer restricted; you no longer have to have be a user on www.freeciv.org to ssh in.
User management is simple: users are added with useradd. Some users know the root password; some users can sudo to the (password disabled) freeciv account, which owns and operates all pubserver specific services and data. No special use is made of groups, mail aliases, startup files or anything else.
Users can receive e-mail, so they are advised to create a .forward.
freeciv@.pubserver.freeciv.org
is used as a contact address on the website.