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Locating Good Shell Accounts?
willis asks: "Several friends of mine will be graduating from college soon, and we're looking for a good place to get shell accounts with lots of space/bandwidth/reliability that we can do what we want with. We are currently considering two options: rolling our own by putting a box in a colocation facility, administering the box ourselves; or purchasing accounts from a commercial service. Our needs are: 20-30 users, 1-2GB/user, 0.5-1GB bandwith/user, FTP/HTTP/IMAP/SSH and expandable if neccessary. It seems like lots of people miss having good UNIX accounts after they leave school -- what is everybody else doing? Does anybody have any suggestions about good/cheap colos? Good account providers? Appropriate hardware?"
Faradic.net has an amazingly sensible price list that includes background daemons, IRC bots, and the like.
The one thing that is kind of limited is the disk space. The default ($9.95/month, $7.95 if paid annually) shell account only has 30 MB of quota, and additional space is ordinarily kind of dear ($0.25/MB/month), but I suspect that price just hadn't been adjustted lately and a few GB is negotiable.
They appear to be allergic to hand-holding, but do keep things working just fine.
Speaking of which, for a real change of attitude, see FlexNet in Hawaii. They offer zero tech support with attitude. You get a username, password, and phone number. Their NOC phone number is fairly easy to find, and they promise to hang up on you rudely if you call about anything except a problem at their end.
This is kind of an irrelevant plug, because they don't offer shell service (AFAIK), and I'm nowhere near Hawaii. I just think anyone who starts their main web page with "So that things are clear to you, please read this Letter From a Disgruntled Customer." is cool.
I don't know if your diskspace and bandwidth limits are met by them, but you can't beat the price.
http://www.workspot.com
They give VNC-accessible linux desktops. They allow you to install software locally too. Cool.
I've had fairly decent service with them in the back at a company I consulted for. There were a few issues (like when they put 64Mb of RAM in a box that was speced to 512...), but they have pretty good support and certainly have the bandwidth.
Disclaimer: I just got my Faradic account today, and in fact, I'm soaking in it.
As for your comments about them, I have to say that 30 MB is actually pretty good, and 0.25/meg is standard. (1 GB / user is insane imo, btw.) I went searching for a new ISP over the weekend and I have to say most of what I found was very poor. I saw rates as high as $1/meg for extra space, most accounts had only 10-15 MB, and almost never a shell account. Some didn't even have a true 24/7 plan, some had max connection times, etc. Yech.
I also have a FlexNet account. Cheapest vhost you can get that I know of. I don't even use the dialup access that comes with it, which is probably the bulk of their market. (Though I have had trying experiences with their technician/owner, which worked themselves out)
I used to work for an ISP that offered shell accounts. I won't mention who, because a) they don't want to sell shell accounts (or dialup for that matter) anymore, and b) they laid me off on Friday. But I can tell you that they had very good rates, and Faradic's beats theirs.
Only problem is that I had to wait three days for the account to be phone-verified and activated. Sigh, so much for realtime, but at least its here. (I suspect that it is a one-person operation or not much larger. I know FlexNet is. [Fine with me.]) But *all* Faradic accounts have shells -- its default.
FWIW, a friend used to run a basement ISP that offered cheap shell accounts (he still might, mail me for info), and advertised that he would offer component colocation; i.e. you could send him a disk drive and that would be your quota. So, you could go get yourself a ##GB disk and send it to him to mount. Unfortunately I don't know if he ever actually got that service in place.
Oh, and when I saw Faradic's special IRC charges, I was amused. Its a great idea. Unfortunately I doubt it helps Faradic's standing with EFnet ircops.
-- Keith "She sells C shells at the Shore.Net" Tyler
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
i used to freeshell back when they were called sdf.lonestar.org. Theyre definitely cool guys. Unfortunately, shells would often lock up on there, and more than once my ~ directory got deleted and I got no answer when I mailed admins about it. Hopefully they've gotton better considering it's nice service, but I have moved on.
I have no idea what happened to them. they just up and disappeared. I used to chat with the admin, sedriss, and then *poof* he was gone. Very strange.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
I'm getting a lot of php errors on that site. I hope it's just a temporary thing.
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
I'd reccommend getting a box at rackspace.com or something similar. they take care of the hardware and connectivity and stuff and give you root. It's about $200 - $300 a month depending on what extras you want. Works well for me.
All your events are belong to us.
I have a shell account on toolshed51.com The guy running that site has a Dual P3-800 box running linux and connected to a T1 line (maybe more???). The machine is really fast, he has tons of hard drive storage, and is very flexable on what you can run. Russ (the sysadmin) will also host your domain for you, etc. Shell accounts aren't listed on his price page, but if you send an email to support@toolshed51.com they will be able to give you all of the information, including pricing...
Doh!
Server4Me.com has a $49/month leased server deal. For that, you get a P3-500, 64M, 8.4 gig (IDE), and FreeBSD 4.1. The bandwidth is done two ways. For $49/month you can get up to 3 gig transfer a month or a dedicated 56k. If it were 2 or 3 guys looking for a shell account and a box to screw around with, that's the best deal I've come across. If you want a serious server, this isn't the deal for you.
I think in your particular situation, I would pass the hat, build a server, and co-locate it at a local ISP. (Hurricane Electric has an acceptable reputation and OpenBSD Journal just moved to a co-lo there.)
That's cool. Of course most employers also say you can only use company resources for company business. I didn't get the sense that these guys are looking for a place to work after they leave work. In the era of broadband, the home solution may be the best for the most people...
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
But there are benefits to having someone else deal with the headaches, especially on days with new viruses.
Most of the decent shell ISPs are gone now, sold out to huge conglomerates. Mine has been sold 4 times in the last 1.5 years, lately to a Japanese company (it started out in California). I'll be first to admit that my shell account now is -way- better than the account I had in college. But I'm still shopping around for a new provider.
One starting point for finding a provider of a shell account could be www.colosource.com They have a database of over 500 National and International colocation providers. Just an Idea, Kevin
Kevin Facinelli www.colosource.com webmaster@colosource.com
I simply called all of the ISPs in the phone book until I got one that said "Sure, we do shell accounts." In Austin, realtime.net is pretty cool and outer.net is very cool, in Houston, insync.net is very cool (despite being purchased by Enron). I have liked applink.net in Dallas so far (a Linux shop and very security conscious), but they don't offer shell accounts. With DSL and my home machines, though, that is less of an issue -- the additional analog line that got for the DSL works great with my old modem, and I had an extra ISA slot free in the dual-homed box that I use for my NAT box so I can dial in when I am on the road. I was somewhat bandwidth-constrained with ISDN (not really, just sometimes) and so I wasn't that happy doing so at the time, but with DSL that limitation is gone. So, I just keep ssh up and use my own box. I suspect that applink would be cooperative if I wanted a dedicated box, but all I have now is a DSL connection.
Another was to get around the "no shell" rule is also to get a "business" account -- they are usually a lot better with those in being cooperative. And they fix the hardware when it breaks!
As to the "make friends with the sysadmins" idea, well, that works until everyone graduates and they review the hidden "never delete" sudo list. Suddenly, you get a nastygram and the account goes away. Bummer. Best to do the pruning yourself and keep up with your own stuff. Yes, that means storing tapes off-site from your house and doing your own backups, but you ARE an adult now, right?
The hardware requirements don't sound very reasonable on your end, unless you're willing to pay out the nose.
Freeshell's got good stuff going on, and is -- FREE. As in beer.
If you want to use FTP, etc, it's $36 for a lifetime membership.
I love it.
www.shellreview.com should service your needs..