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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?"
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..