I'm looking for a reliable shell account service.

October 4, 2006 6:41 AM

I'm looking for a reliable shell account service.

Having never sought such a thing before, I'm not entirely sure what to ask for. I'm not terribly experienced with shells. What I am looking for is some anonymity when connecting to IRC, so I don't have to deal with packet monkeys and port-scanning fools, plus some small amenities. Here's what seems to be necessary:

1. Long-standing service, so they don't disappear overnight, as many shell providers have when I look over previously established lists of shell providers.
2. Payment: Be able to pay by money order.
3. Allowable (or encouraged) use of BNC or some other bouncing program (never used them before but would like to) to run three clients simultaneously (on three different networks), at least.
4. Not banned on the major IRC networks: EFNet, Dalnet, Undernet

Bonuses would be the use of screen, an email account, web space, perhaps command line ircii if my very old weird client doesn't play nice with BNC. Whom do you personally recommend, and how long have you used them?

posted by adipocere to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Lets be honest here. Do you want anonymous IRC (which can be done over TOR for free), or are you looking to run bots, etc.

Everyone I know that uses shell accounts specifically does it for running bots in chats, being l33t with their hostname, or for faster warez transmissions.
posted by SirStan at 7:30 AM on October 4, 2006

Response by poster: I'm not looking to run bots. Yeah, I leave my client on overnight. No, that's not a bot.

I'm looking to not get packeted. I'm looking to not get portscanned. Having been flooded off of the net by some packet monkey because I happened to ban him for flooding a channel (and had similar incidents many times), I'd rather just not repeat it.
posted by adipocere at 7:41 AM on October 4, 2006

I'm looking to not get packeted. I'm looking to not get portscanned.

So are most providers, unfortunately. But look at Tor. If you're anonymous, they can't find you to packet.
posted by mendel at 8:58 AM on October 4, 2006

Response by poster: Tor sounds nice, but it's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for a shell provider. Shell providers have more or less fixed hosts. I need fixed hosts to IRC. I'm guessing Tor won't do that, or come with web space, etc.
posted by adipocere at 9:31 AM on October 4, 2006

You might want to check out some of the cheaper virtual private server (VPS) hosts out there. Take a look at the VPS offers subforum at webhostingtalk.com; you'll find some good deals there for unmanaged, control panel-less VPS accounts.

A few hosts with cheap, geek-oriented VPS packages:

vpslink.com
unixshell.com
slicehost.com
rapidvps.com
posted by elmwood at 10:18 AM on October 4, 2006

i have several websites on asmallorange.com for $5 USD/month. They respond to email quickly and i've been happy with the quality and uptime.

they offer shell access (linux) and AFAIK there are no restrictions on IRC.

also you can also get a VPS from them for $25USD/month.

you can pay with paypal - you'll have to verify money order. (what is that - western union? postal money order?)
posted by kamelhoecker at 1:16 PM on October 4, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks, guys! This will be a big help.
posted by adipocere at 3:59 PM on October 4, 2006

Scratch unixshell off that list. They don't allow IRC, because their upstream bandwidth provider doesn't let them.
posted by evariste at 4:58 PM on October 4, 2006

ASO offers only a jailed shell with their shared hosting, and only if you ask; it's not a full-fledged shell account. They offer VPS packages where you'll have root, but they're expensive.
posted by elmwood at 7:11 AM on October 5, 2006