Congratulations on becoming a newfangled Subcon citizen! This guide will help you get on your way and inform you about what there is to do in Subcon Town.

While Subcon has a number of services that can be accessed from a web browser, the bulk of the fun is to be had on the server itself. For that, you'll require SSH access. Fortunately, by the time you're reading this, you should already have had a small introduction about it while setting up your keys for authentication. If not, don't worry, that will happen sooner or later.

First off, to login with SSH, you will need an SSH client. If you are using Linux or MacOS, this will likely be already installed by default; for other operating systems, you will have to install a suitable client yourself. Below we will provide instructions for Windows, MacOS and Linux.

Windows users will need to install a suitable client to connect to SSH. While any will most likely do, we recommend PuTTY to begin with if you have little experience with SSH. While it may look less-than-simple, it has been the goto SSH tool for Windows for ages now. It offers a lot of settings, but for basic connectivity there's only a few you'll need to set.

When opening PuTTY, you'll be met with the session options. Here you'll need to enter the host name and port that PuTTY should connect to. You may also save and load sessions here, for easier connecting next time.

Next, you'll need to set up your connection settings. Proceed to Connection > Data and fill out the auto-login username field with your given username. This will make PuTTY automatically login with your username. Leaving this blank means you'll have to type in your username at the login prompt once you connect.

Proceed to Connection > SSH > Auth to set up your private key for the connection. If you do not yet have a keypair, you can generate one with the PuTTYgen tool. Subcon will only accept connections authenticating with a key, so it's imperative that you have one. Once you have a public/private keypair, click Browse…and select your private key file. They usually end in the .ppk extension. Keep in mind that new keypairs must be set up first on the server before you can log in with them!

And that's all! Going back to the Session options, be sure to save your session for easy use next time. Once done, click Open to connect to Subcon Town!

You'll be greeted with the terminal prompt. If your key requires a password, you'll be asked to enter it now. After that, you'll be logged in and ready to go.

MacOS and most Linux distributions usually come with the standard openSSH client installed. To check, you can open your terminal of choice and enter:

ssh -V

If openSSH is installed on your system, this will print out the version you have installed.

To log in using the openSSH client, you will need your username and your private key file for the public key you have supplied. If you do not yet have one, you may generate them with this command:

ssh-keygen

Keep in mind that new keypairs must first be set up on the server first before you can log in with them.

Then, you may log in with the following command:

ssh your_username@subcon.town -p 420 -i /path/to/your/privatekey

To make logging in easier in the future, you may also set up a config file with these configurations in:

~/.ssh/config

An in-depth explanation of this file can be found here: https://linuxhandbook.com/ssh-config-file/. This way, you won't need to specify the extra options when running the ssh client. This config file will also work exactly the same way on MacOS.

When logging in, if you private key requires a password, you'll be asked to enter it now. After that, you'll be logged in and ready to go.

So, you have logged in and are ready to use the system. So, what to do next? Good question, so below we will list a number of guides for the different programs and services that we have running. Each will have a dedicated page on this wiki with more detailed information for you to read. Note however that it's not necessary to read it all; everyone uses the system in whatever way they like, using whatever services they have use for.

If you are new to Linux, this guide will be essential to you. Here we will explain to you the basic commands for navigating and working with the filesystem, how to edit files, as well as explain some things that are in your personal home directory.

Read the guide: How to Linux 101

If you wish to write some shell scripts do to stuff on the server, then reading this guide is recommended. Keep in mind that this will not teach you every part of shell scripting, as there are plenty of better guides for that out there. However we will get you started and give you some tips on what to look out for.

Read the guide: Shell in a nutshell

Some users may wish to upload files to their home directory. This is most notably handy for setting up your personal website. In the guide below you can read all about how to set up SSH so you can use it to easily upload files.

However, if your goal is merely to store your files in the cloud for easy access, we also have a nextcloud instance for that.

Read the guide: Uploading files with SSH

Users on the server are able to communicate with each other through local mail messages. The below guide will explain the programs we have available for it and how to use them.

Read the guide: Local mail

On Subcon Town, users can host their own webpages from within their home directories. Besides webpages, we also support hosting old fashioned gopherholes (see Gopher (protocol)) and the newer gemini pods (see Gemini (protocol)). We have guides for all three of them.

Generally we also recommend reading the guide for uploading files with SSH above. While this is not required, it does make it easier to deploy your website if it is bigger than a few files and contains assets like images.

Read the guide: Hosting a website

Read the guide: Hosting a gopherhole

Read the guide: Hosting a gemini pod

We support hosting for two version control systems: Git and Fossil. Fossil repositories can be hosted and managed from within your home directory. The below guide will tell you the basics of how to use Fossil and how to set up your repositories so they will be remotely reachable.

Read the guide: Hosting a fossil repository

For Git repositories, we use a Forgejo instance instead. It can be found at https://forge.subcon.town. To use it, you must have a user account: this will likely have already been created for you when joining. If not, you can request one from the admin.

Not all things on Subcon Town require you to login with SSH and type commands. We also have a number of services that are available from the browser. These usually require separate user accounts, so keep that in mind. Below is a list of all webservices available on Subcon Town:

List of web services