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Unix Shell Accounts?
mcovey asks: "Unix shell accounts used to be easy to find, with quality applications installed and free web space. Nowadays the only free ones left are either not accepting new accounts, have limited applications or send you on a wild goose chase to register. Does anyone know any free or low-cost shell accounts that include compilers, IRC, background processes, FTP, a decent editor and an email app (preferably pine, since I have a config file already on my IMAP server)?"
Just fire up Linux on some dusty old i386, and plug it into your home network. What's so special about having a hosted account?
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
Get an inexpensive UML (User-Mode-Linux) virtual server and it's just like having a whole server online.
I use Tektonic. Their cheapest plan is only $15/month. For more money you get larger slices of the CPU and RAM. There are several other good ones as well.
(oh, and FP).
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The reason there are few free ones is because people abused them. Just go buy a cheap shell somewhere like QuadSpeed Internet. $3 a month. JVDS offers a limited free shell, but as they put in the big print, no IRC.
I'm sure there are plenty of people that own dedicated hosts that would be happy to offer shell accounts, if only the company that they rent from would allow it. I own several dedicated hosts, and none of the companies allow me to sell shell accounts from them.
I'm sure it wasn't done on a whim. Giving out shell accounts allows the potential for serious abuse, and when you start granting strangers permission to do so many random things from the shell, abuse is destined to occur.
I've been using Panix for over 10 years. They have $10/month shell-only bring-your-own access accounts. CGI, IMAP, et. al. included. I highly recommend them. Highly competent personnel. Well administered. Worth every penny.
Ok, so I'm curious, what is the benefit to the provider to give free access to shell accounts.
All the shell accounts I've had in the past (I'm in the camp that just runs their own server over broadband now) were in some way attached to a paying account and/or were provided by a school or employer.
I can see a low-cost account, say $5/month for no compiler and $10/month for compiler (or just limit the account to x% CPU), but free doesn't make sense to me.
Not saying I think they should go away if they exist, just wondering what the incentive to give someone command-line access to your box would be?
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I'm a customer of hub.org.
They have web accounts with SSH login as a standard feature, and you can even get root access to your own personal VM and install whatever software you want.
Oh, and they run FreeBSD, which happens to be my favorite unix.
Does anyone know where I can find an open mail relay for legitimate purposes? For some reason, all the public open mail relays seem to be scarce now :(
Most shell accounts are disappearing because they are very unsafe for the hoster. Also, the prevelence of UML (User Mode Linux) lets hosters run virtual servers in security sandboxes so that the child application is more isolated from the host system.
UML virtuals behave like complete Linux servers with smaller RAM and disk sizes. You can load full distros and get a direct, public, IP address. Some hosters let you run IRC servers and some don't (many upstream providers hard-filter IRCD). In terms of software and services, you can run just about anything you want. Mail, FTP, ssh, IRC, Apache, Perl, PHP, MySql, etc. Plus you have full editors (vi, emacs) and compilers (gcc, java, etc.).
You can typically get these starting at about $12/mo. We sell them starting at $15/mo. They are more than shell accounts because the load you can place on a physical server is much smaller. In general, we only put 15-20 on a box to keep the underlying LoadAvg < 1.
Info on UML is available at:
http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/
Have fun.
HP Test Drive
You sign up for a free account and get NetBSD, Linux, Tru64 and HP-UX accounts on a variety of hardware.
The account itself is not mail enabled, but compilers, ftp, editors - it's all there and anything else you need you could compile and run yourself...
HP-UX software ports and archives here.
Enjoy!
RJ
Notice the spike, right around the time that this article was posted. Hard data on the Slashdot effect!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
SDF (a.k.a. freeshell.org) is good. Large userbase; running since -87. Several access levels are available.
As a serious user, you appreciate some degree of user validation - it means the server won't be full of spammers and script kiddies.
No sig to see here. Move along.
This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
This, ultimately, is probably the major reason supported, open, free shell accounts have died out. Most people who'd want one have the ability to create what they need. As a result, the bulk of users of the free services have become those who are desperate to use someone else's machine, and you can imagine that a high proportion of those are script kiddies and other undesirables.
So I think the GP was on the money. Of course, you're out of luck if you don't have a DSL connection (or something else you can use to stay on the net permanently.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This is only because of spammers and phishers. They have absolutely no shame and will immediately abuse any open access shell acount, and even those that are not free are still not immune.
We have had a hell of a time with people signing up for our service with stolen credit cards, and we ended up just blacklisting big parts of the world and subjecting every new order to a pretty meticulous investigative process prior to turn up.