Shell Scripting: Expert Recipes for Linux, Bash, and More

Shell Services

There are two types of shell services; the traditional ones are shell hosts that allow you to have an account on their server, which you can ssh into. A newer form has come along more recently, such as http://anyterm.org/ — http://simpleshell.com/ is an instance of that — which uses AJAX to pass text between the browser and a shell on a server, turning a shell account into a web service. Fabrice Bellard (author of the QEMU emulator) has even written a Javascript-based 486 CPU emulator, which runs a native Linux in a browser at http://bellard.org/js-linux.

http://shells.red-pill.eu/ has a long list of shell providers, as does http://www.egghelp.org/shells.htm. Personally, I use silenceisdefeat.com occasionally (my username there is steveparker). They provide access to an OpenBSD server in return for a minimum one-off donation of USD $1.

It should go without saying that it is a privilege to be granted access to anybody else’s system, and the terms of use always reflect that. It is only right to treat such a service as if you are a guest in someone’s house. The only difference is that you should also expect and accept that your host has the right to inspect your files and activity however they please. It is not acceptable to use these services for sending spam, or for Denial of Service attacks, for portmapping, cracking, hosting warez, or for attempting anonymity, and all of the other obvious abuses that spring to mind, such as flooding the host’s network either from ...