Common requests

This is a list of all queries and issues we receive often. Please check we haven’t already answered your question here before contacting the sysadmins.

Contact owners of a personal or group website or account

The SRCF hosts user websites and mailing lists on its systems, and we provide domains of the form CRSid.user.srcf.net or acronym.soc.srcf.net, along with matching email addresses like CRSid@srcf.net and acronym-role@srcf.net.

The SRCF itself is not immediately responsible for content under these domains. In the first instance, you should direct queries to the owners of the relevant account and allow them time to respond.

• For websites like spqr2.user.srcf.net or email addresses like spqr2@srcf.net, the responsible individual can be reached directly via spqr2@srcf.net.

• For websites like sample.soc.srcf.net or email addresses like sample-role@srcf.net, the responsible group of people who manage the account (its “admins”) can be reached collectively via sample-webmaster@srcf.net for queries about its website specifically, or sample-admins@srcf.net for anything else.

If your communication relates to infringing copyrighted material or other abuse, please also CC the SRCF system administrators.

We also host websites on custom domains, which do not end in .user.srcf.net or .soc.srcf.net. Please contact the system administrators if you’re getting in touch about a website hosted by us under a custom domain and are unsure how to reach the site’s owners.

Bounced or undeliverable messages to account owners

If an email to an account owner bounces, you may ask the SRCF system administrators for help with getting in contact – please include a copy of any bounce messages you receive.

Note that group accounts can have multiple listed admins, and a bounce from one of them doesn’t rule out another, contactable admin still receiving and acting on it.

Gain access to an existing group account

Read more about group admins and unmaintained accounts

As a prospective admin seeking access to manage a group account, you should first contact its existing admins and request access from them. See the answer above for how to identify the short name of the account. If you don’t know the short name, you can check this list of group accounts.

If you’re unable to make contact with them, you may ask the system administrators for assistance, who will then attempt their own contact, and may remove inactive admins or transfer ownership as needed.

Group accounts are considered unmaintained if they have no active admins remaining. Accounts in this state will display an Unmaintained group website page if you visit their SRCF-hosted website.

Grant group admin access to someone else

As an existing admin of a group account, you can use the control panel to promote other users. Each new admin will need to create a personal SRCF account first if they don’t currently have one.

If you are stepping down from managing a group account, you can remove yourself as long as there’s at least one additional admin present.

Permission errors writing files in a group account space

Read more about group permissions

You can try to fix permissions yourself using the srcf-soc-permfix tool over SSH, which can fix your own files and those of the group account:

srcf-soc-permfix <groupname>
sudo -u <groupname> srcf-soc-permfix <groupname>

However, this won’t be able to fix files owned by other admins. If you continue to get permission errors, ask the system administrators to run this for you instead.

Problem with an @lists.cam.ac.uk mailing list

Whoa, stop right there! That’s the University Information Services mailing list system, not the SRCF one, and there’s nothing we can do to help you. Try going to lists.cam.ac.uk instead.

Update forwarding addresses on a domain

The SRCF does not (and cannot) provide email forwarding outside of @srcf.net addresses, so we don’t have control over these. You’ll most likely need to consult your domain registrar to do this.

Can you design/upload/run/fix my website?

Unfortunately, our support team does not have the capacity to maintain both our servers and the thousands of websites hosted on it. If you have a specific technical question (e.g. an error message you don’t understand), be sure to seek help.

You may upload a website designed elsewhere to be hosted on the SRCF. However, it must be you who performs the upload – you must not share access to your SRCF account with anyone else, even if they are acting on your behalf.

We recommend societies and groups have appointed webmasters that are in charge of maintaining the website.

Can you help me debug a program?

Only if we have time - our support team are all volunteers, however we generally like hacking code, so if you’re having problems drop us a line and we might be able to help you out.

Last modified on Sunday Dec 8, 2024 by Richard Allitt