[GTALUG] Web hosting companies providing Linux shell accounts?

[Karen Lewellen via talk]

Hi All,
The organization for whom I work presently has a shared hosting account
with dreamhost. Recently though they made a change that prevents me from
accessing my work shell account with the combination of adaptive
technology tools I must use.
so, I am seeking a new hosting that includes shell accounts with their
offerings, Dreamhost used Ubuntu, but I have done this with freebsd as
well.
Ideas of where to start?
Thanks,
Karen


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[Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Karen Lewellen via talk" <***@gtalug.org>
To: <***@gtalug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2018 8:56 PM
Subject: [GTALUG] Web hosting companies providing Linux shell accounts?

Post by Karen Lewellen via talk
Hi All,
The organization for whom I work presently has a shared hosting
account with dreamhost. Recently though they made a change that
prevents me from accessing my work shell account with the combination
of adaptive technology tools I must use.
so, I am seeking a new hosting that includes shell accounts with their
offerings, Dreamhost used Ubuntu, but I have done this with freebsd
as well.
Ideas of where to start?
Thanks,
Karen
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Hi Karen,

Not sure what you're looking for in technical facilities, but here are
my recommendations.

I use two (2) hosting services, one for my personal / business hosting,
and the other for a specific website hosting project, that has been
dormant for some time:

www.siteground.com

I use SG for POP3 & SMTP email hosting (personal and business), hosting
a few web pages http://aspetrie.net/ and hosting some documents for
secure FTP access by other people.

I find SG to be an excellent company. Rock-solid reliable
infrastructure. It just works (has for me). Exceptionally knowledgeable
and responsive technical support. Not the least expensive hosting
service, but worth every dollar for hassle-free and worry-free hosting.

SG are focused more on clients using mainstream tools for website
building and operation (e.g. WordPress). Not sure about shell accounts.
It's something I have had in the back of my mind to ask SG about ...

www.elastichosts.com

I chose EH for running my own choice of operating systems on a hosted
virtual server setup. Running two operating systems: debian Linux and
DragpnFlyBSD. Both under QEMU / KVM virtualization.

Did a bunch of prelimary work to get both these OSs up and running
successfully on EH VPSs in shell text-conaole mode. Due to other
priorities, haven't worked on this EH setup fior many months. But I keep
paying the bill becaue I don't want to lose all the work already done.

Like SG, EH is not the least expensive, but worth every dollar.

The few times I've checked my EH virtual servers, everythig started up
just fine.

I get occasional notificaiton emails from EH about planned service
maintenance / upgrades. Also advisories regarding fixes I should install
for critical security patches.

As with SG above, the EH infrastructure seems rock-solid and the
technical support I experienced was excellent, too.

For sure you can use EH to run Linux with remote shell access. EH also
have the VNC stuff for when your Linux is borked and you still need to
be able to mess around with some terminal access to the borked-Linux
virtual machine.

HTH.

Steve

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[Alex Beamish via talk]

Post by Karen Lewellen via talk
Hi All,
The organization for whom I work presently has a shared hosting account
with dreamhost. Recently though they made a change that prevents me from
accessing my work shell account with the combination of adaptive
technology tools I must use.
so, I am seeking a new hosting that includes shell accounts with their
offerings, Dreamhost used Ubuntu, but I have done this with freebsd as
well.
Ideas of where to start?

I've been with pair.com for close to twenty years. and I've use this
company for hosted websites, as well as a testbed for scripts I want to try
our remotely. They're located in Pittsburgh, PA.

https://www.pair.com/webhosting/shared.html

They have a variety of plans -- I have one that gives me shell access,
because I love the command line. They are currently running FreeBSD
10.4-RELEASE-p9.

[Myles Braithwaite 👾 via talk]

Post by Karen Lewellen via talk
Hi All,
The organization for whom I work presently has a shared hosting account
with dreamhost.  Recently though they made a change that prevents me
from accessing my work shell account with the combination of adaptive
technology tools I must use.
so, I am seeking a new hosting that includes shell accounts with their
offerings,  Dreamhost used Ubuntu, but I have done this with freebsd as
well.
Ideas of where to start?

I'm a huge fan of Nearly Free Speech,
<https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/>. They are inexpensive and offer a
the least restrictive shell environment of any shared web host I have used.

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[David Ing isss--- via talk]

Karen,

In November 2016, I had changed shared hosting companies. My search is
described at
https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-good-Canadian-web-hosting-provider .

Post by Karen Lewellen via talk
Hi All,
The organization for whom I work presently has a shared hosting account
with dreamhost. Recently though they made a change that prevents me from
accessing my work shell account with the combination of adaptive
technology tools I must use.
so, I am seeking a new hosting that includes shell accounts with their
offerings, Dreamhost used Ubuntu, but I have done this with freebsd as
well.
Ideas of where to start?
Thanks,
Karen
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[Stewart C. Russell via talk]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 11:01 David Ing isss--- via talk, <***@gtalug.org
<mailto:***@gtalug.org>> wrote:

Karen,

In November 2016, I had changed shared hosting companies.  My search
is described at
https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-good-Canadian-web-hosting-provider .


Can you summarize here, please? Quora blocks content unless you're a
registered user. 

A mostly thumbs-down from me for 1and1, even though I've used them for
15 years. They do have Linux shell access, but my complaint is more
about their use of https certificates as a cash cow: you get one per
account, linked to one domain. Further certificates cost money, and they
actively block Let's Encrypt usage. 

 Stewart

(accidentally sent that last one off-list)

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[Don Tai via talk]

Quora does not block for non-registered members. I've never been a member
and can read Quora.

Post by Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk
Karen,
In November 2016, I had changed shared hosting companies. My search
is described at
https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-good-Canadian-web-hosting-provider .
Can you summarize here, please? Quora blocks content unless you're a
registered user.
A mostly thumbs-down from me for 1and1, even though I've used them for
15 years. They do have Linux shell access, but my complaint is more
about their use of https certificates as a cash cow: you get one per
account, linked to one domain. Further certificates cost money, and they
actively block Let's Encrypt usage.
Stewart
(accidentally sent that last one off-list)
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[David Ing isss--- via talk]

@Stewart, my response to "What's a good Canadian web hosting provider?" is
1200 words, plus I wrote on the answer wiki:

---

A Canadian web hosting provider should:

1. have servers located in Canada;
2. be owned by Canadian citizens or registered as a Canadian
corporation; and
3. comply with The Personal Information Protection and Electronic
Documents Act (PIPEDA)
<https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/privacy-topics/privacy-laws-in-canada/the-personal-information-protection-and-electronic-documents-act-pipeda/>
set
by the Canadian government (rather than the USA PATRIOT ACT
<http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/gospubs/tbm_128/usapa/faq-eng.asp>).

A positive feature would be acceptance of payment in Canadian dollars
(rather than a requirement of U.S. dollars).

---

I considered 7 alternatives: Planethoster, HostUpon, Web Hosting Canada,
Funio, Cirrus Tech, Dynamic Hosting, and Hostpapa.

Different people make different decisions, based on their own needs.




On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 12:05 PM Stewart C. Russell via talk <

Post by Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk
Karen,
In November 2016, I had changed shared hosting companies. My search
is described at
https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-good-Canadian-web-hosting-provider .
Can you summarize here, please? Quora blocks content unless you're a
registered user.
A mostly thumbs-down from me for 1and1, even though I've used them for
15 years. They do have Linux shell access, but my complaint is more
about their use of https certificates as a cash cow: you get one per
account, linked to one domain. Further certificates cost money, and they
actively block Let's Encrypt usage.
Stewart
(accidentally sent that last one off-list)
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[Giles Orr via talk]

Post by Steve Petrie, P.Eng. via talk
Karen,
In November 2016, I had changed shared hosting companies. My search
is described at
https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-good-Canadian-web-hosting-provider .
Can you summarize here, please? Quora blocks content unless you're a
registered user.
A mostly thumbs-down from me for 1and1, even though I've used them for
15 years. They do have Linux shell access, but my complaint is more
about their use of https certificates as a cash cow: you get one per
account, linked to one domain. Further certificates cost money, and they
actively block Let's Encrypt usage.
Stewart
(accidentally sent that last one off-list)

Blocking Let's Encrypt gets them on my shit-list from now until the end of
time. NOT impressed.

Karen, it's sounding like you have many, many choices. I'm going to add
one more plus some details.

Cloud machine providers are a dime a dozen these days ... Hmm, old and
inaccurate expression. More correct to say $5/month at the bottom end.
Old-style hosting providers are cheaper, but much less flexible. With
DigitalOcean (which I use both at work and at home and have been very happy
with) you can spin up a new virtual machine with the click of a button, and
it's ready in about one minute. They currently offer Ubuntu, Debian,
Fedora, CentOS, and FreeBSD (they also have container distros - ie. for
Docker and friends - but that's probably not useful to you). Once the
machine is running, you can install any software you want - you have full
administrative access on the machine, unlike normal hosting providers.

If cost isn't a concern, I'd recommend a cloud infrastructure provider like
D.O. over an old-style hosting provider for flexibility. And you don't
have to go with D.O. - there are lots of companies in that space doing
exactly the same kind of thing. But I'd start with Bob Jonkman's
suggestion of sdf.org as first go, because "free" is a pretty good price.

[Bob Jonkman via talk]

Depending on how much flexibility you need, sdf.org has offered shell
hosting for decades.

To get a free (Gratis, and probably Libre too) shell account Linux/UNIX
users can type 'ssh ***@sdf.org' at their shell prompts.

There's a single-payment lifetime subscriptions available "ARPA" ($36),
providing more resources and access to some custom software, and several
monthly subscriptions for VoIP services, VPN, VHOST, &c. from $4/month
and up. http://sdf.org/?join

You'll often find me in the SDF COM text chat application, in the
anonradio room...

--Bob.

Post by Karen Lewellen via talk
Hi All,
The organization for whom I work presently has a shared hosting account
with dreamhost.  Recently though they made a change that prevents me
from accessing my work shell account with the combination of adaptive
technology tools I must use.
so, I am seeking a new hosting that includes shell accounts with their
offerings,  Dreamhost used Ubuntu, but I have done this with freebsd as
well.
Ideas of where to start?
Thanks,
Karen
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