Support¶

We are happy to assist you with any issues that you may have when using our services. We have multiple informal ways that you may be communicating with us like telephone, chat, or video conferences.

However, for situations where a higher due diligence is required (like leaving a paper trail of what we agreed on) we offer a formal support structure based on an issue tracking system. You are always welcome to start inquiring about any issue through our informal channels - our staff will guide you towards the more formal structure if needed.

We differentiate inquiries into this system based on whether they critically affect production services or not.

General Support¶

For non-production critical issues please contact our support by sending an email to support@flyingcircus.io. This will create a ticket and our staff will follow up with you within at most a business day.

Emergency Support¶

As a customer with a service level agreement you have access to additional ways of communication that will ensure that our personnel responds within the agreed short time frames (i.e. 24/7 and 1h response time) during an emergency.

An emergency is any situation where you experience large visible outages, are unable to proceed with development, or find yourselve in any other business-adverse situations caused by or related to our services.

In the case of an emergency we will concentrate our resources towards a resolution. Other work is postponed until the problem is resolved. Information about ongoing large scale emergencies and disruptive work is published on our status page.

There are three ways for us to get aware of an emergency:

• Our system monitoring detects an outage and alerts us automatically.

• You send an email to emergency+\@flyingcircus.io (If your PIN is 1234, send an email to emergency+1234@flyingcircus.io).

• You call our emergency support number +49 345 95990625 and enter your client-specific PIN.

The call is forwarded to on-duty supporter who either picks up immediately or will call you back within the allowed time frame of the SLA. If you phone number is not transmitted, our supporter will follow up with known emergency contacts from your team.

In any case there will be a support ticket created automatically.

Chat¶

For daily communication in ongoing projects we also offer the opportunity to chat with us. We decided to base our system upon the Matrix-protocol by hosting our own homeserver for every of our users. We do also provide a self-hosted and pre-configurated version of Element to allow easy access. However, alternative clients are allowed and welcomed to use.

We usually create a project-specific Matrix channel and invite all needed persons to join. You may participate using the Matrix ID provided by us, or your currently existing ID at any other homeserver of your choice. In this case: Just let us know how we can reach you.

If you want to use our Matrix setup, our pre-configured Element is available at chat.flyingcircus.io.

There's a number of alternatives to the web version of Element available. An overview can be found at matrix.org/ecosystem/clients. Please make sure to use a client that's actively developed and supports end-to-end encryption (E2EE).

If you want to use your own client, please find the needed information below:

Homeserver

customermatrix.flyingcircus.io

Login

<your_flying_circus_username>

Password

<your_flying_circus_password>

Matrix handle

@<username>:my.flyingcircus.io

Shared screen sessions¶

The multiuser session feature of GNU screen comes handy if a user needs remote assistance. Multiuser sessions allow other users to join in a running screen session. They see the same terminal output as the inviting user and are able to type in commands.

Walk-through¶

We illustrate how to use it with an example. Imaging user alice has a screen session running and wants to invite user bob.

We assume that alice is already running a screen session.

1. User alice needs to activate multiuser mode by typing ++Control-a :multiuser on++.
2. User alice needs to allow bob to join by typing ++Control-a :acladd bob++.
3. User bob joins the screen session by invoking screen -r alice/ at the shell.
4. To detach from the shared session, bob types ++Control-a d++.

Both alice and bob should share the same terminal now. For further details, please refer to the screen(1) manual page.

Limitations¶

screen cannot be run inside sudo sessions. So start screen first and then sudo inside the screen session.