Am I remembering correctly that someone, possibly Jaimie, recommended Mythic
Beasts for hosting/email? Have just discovered that when my current outfit
migrated me off my previous package, they removed ssh from the deal, and want
£££ to add it back.

--
TimH
pull tooth to reply by email

On 05 Feb 2024 at 10:50:21 GMT, "TimH" <thnews@poboxmolar.com.invalid> wrote:

> Am I remembering correctly that someone, possibly Jaimie, recommended Mythic
> Beasts for hosting/email? Have just discovered that when my current outfit
> migrated me off my previous package, they removed ssh from the deal, and want
> £££ to add it back.

Yes, I followed the recommendation and am quiet satisfied. However, whether MB
offers ssh I know not.

--
Tim

TimS <tim@streater.me.uk> wrote:
> On 05 Feb 2024 at 10:50:21 GMT, "TimH" <thnews@poboxmolar.com.invalid> wrote:
>
> > Am I remembering correctly that someone, possibly Jaimie, recommended Mythic
> > Beasts for hosting/email? Have just discovered that when my current outfit
> > migrated me off my previous package, they removed ssh from the deal, and want
> > £££ to add it back.
>
> Yes, I followed the recommendation and am quiet satisfied. However, whether MB
> offers ssh I know not.

They do. Costs an extra £1.80 per month.

If you aren't sure about SSH, I recommend signing up with it turned on as
that puts your hosting account on their server that offers SSH. You can
later turn it off (and stop paying the difference) and your account will
stay on that server, which allows you to turn it back on again later should
you wish.

I have not tried it, but I suppose if you sign up without it on you may get
put on another server without SSH and have to migrate your account to a
different server if you later want it.

Their config is pretty simplistic; they have a handful of hosting servers
(ocelot, bobcat, lynx, etc) and you need to know the name of which one your
account is one because it's used for webmail and IMAP config. They don't -
by default anyway - shim things so mail.yourdomain.com is an alias for
ocelot.mythic-beasts.com, you have to know to select ocelot when you login
to webmail or set up IMAP. So migrating your account between servers likely
means changing your IMAP config in your clients.

Theo

On 5 Feb 2024 at 11:06:39 am GMT, "Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:

> TimS <tim@streater.me.uk> wrote:
>> On 05 Feb 2024 at 10:50:21 GMT, "TimH" <thnews@poboxmolar.com.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> Am I remembering correctly that someone, possibly Jaimie, recommended Mythic
>>> Beasts for hosting/email? Have just discovered that when my current outfit
>>> migrated me off my previous package, they removed ssh from the deal, and want
>>> £££ to add it back.
>>
>> Yes, I followed the recommendation and am quiet satisfied. However, whether MB
>> offers ssh I know not.
>
> They do. Costs an extra £1.80 per month.
>
> If you aren't sure about SSH, I recommend signing up with it turned on as
> that puts your hosting account on their server that offers SSH. You can
> later turn it off (and stop paying the difference) and your account will
> stay on that server, which allows you to turn it back on again later should
> you wish.
>
> I have not tried it, but I suppose if you sign up without it on you may get
> put on another server without SSH and have to migrate your account to a
> different server if you later want it.
>
> Their config is pretty simplistic; they have a handful of hosting servers
> (ocelot, bobcat, lynx, etc) and you need to know the name of which one your
> account is one because it's used for webmail and IMAP config. They don't -
> by default anyway - shim things so mail.yourdomain.com is an alias for
> ocelot.mythic-beasts.com, you have to know to select ocelot when you login
> to webmail or set up IMAP. So migrating your account between servers likely
> means changing your IMAP config in your clients.

Thanks both. That's useful to know about email config, as various parties will
need hand-holding. I wonder why they don't do the aliasing; it does make life
simpler..
--
TimH
pull tooth to reply by email

TimH <thnews@poboxmolar.com.invalid> wrote:
> Thanks both. That's useful to know about email config, as various parties
> will need hand-holding. I wonder why they don't do the aliasing; it does
> make life simpler..

I would guess it's to do with TLS certificates. If the TLS cert says the
machine is called ocelot.mythic-beasts.com but you're connecting via
mail.yourdomain.com, you'll get a TLS error for name mismatch. I've seen
other hosts who do this who just tell you to bat away the error and carry
on, but this isn't good practice (what if the certificate was for evil.com
instead?) - plus maybe some IMAP clients don't have UI for dealing with a
cert mismatch?

That's what I mean by the KISS config: they don't have some big frontend
server whose job is to proxy traffic to a pile of backend servers, they just
have 9 separate servers and your account lives on exactly one.

Theo
(a happy customer for ~20 years)

On 5 Feb 2024 at 1:09:19 pm GMT, "Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
wrote:

> TimH <thnews@poboxmolar.com.invalid> wrote:
>> Thanks both. That's useful to know about email config, as various parties
>> will need hand-holding. I wonder why they don't do the aliasing; it does
>> make life simpler..
>
> I would guess it's to do with TLS certificates. If the TLS cert says the
> machine is called ocelot.mythic-beasts.com but you're connecting via
> mail.yourdomain.com, you'll get a TLS error for name mismatch. I've seen
> other hosts who do this who just tell you to bat away the error and carry
> on, but this isn't good practice (what if the certificate was for evil.com
> instead?) - plus maybe some IMAP clients don't have UI for dealing with a
> cert mismatch?
>
> That's what I mean by the KISS config: they don't have some big frontend
> server whose job is to proxy traffic to a pile of backend servers, they just
> have 9 separate servers and your account lives on exactly one.

Thanks; that makes sense

> Theo
> (a happy customer for ~20 years)

....very reassuring :)
--
TimH
pull tooth to reply by email

On 5 Feb 2024 at 10:50:21 GMT, "TimH" <thnews@poboxmolar.com.invalid>
wrote:

> Am I remembering correctly that someone, possibly Jaimie, recommended Mythic
> Beasts for hosting/email? Have just discovered that when my current outfit
> migrated me off my previous package, they removed ssh from the deal, and want
> £££ to add it back.

I certainly have recommended them, and I still do :)

Cheers - Jaimie
--
If you think it's simple, then you have misunderstood the problem
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

On 5 Feb 2024 at 6:31:08 pm GMT, "Jaimie Vandenbergh"
<jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:

> On 5 Feb 2024 at 10:50:21 GMT, "TimH" <thnews@poboxmolar.com.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>> Am I remembering correctly that someone, possibly Jaimie, recommended Mythic
>> Beasts for hosting/email? Have just discovered that when my current outfit
>> migrated me off my previous package, they removed ssh from the deal, and want
>> £££ to add it back.
>
> I certainly have recommended them, and I still do :)

Thanks. Exchanged a few emails with their support today, and was encouraged :)
--
TimH
pull tooth to reply by email