Contributed by jose on from the free-shell dept.
"I am submitting my site and yes I am aware this is a little non-PC. About 1 year ago I bought the domain open-network.net and I am an avid BSD user (Work/Play, Open/Free/Net). I have know what I wanted to do with the domain for quite a while and now I have finally done it. "
"I have setup a server offering free shell acounts, free web serving, free access to PHP/Perl/MySQL, IRC access and whatever else people want. I'm not trying to get a customer list or sell ads or anything like that. I am trying to give back to the internet what free BBS's back in the early 90's gave to me. Unrestricted access to information and an evergrowing supply of places to visit.This sounds kind of cool. Way back when I started on the Internet something like this would have been welcome. Now, it's just handy to have a shell account someplace you can get to without the hassel of administering a box.I call the site http://shells.open-network.net and an open network it will attempt to be. It is currently only one machine although I may add a second next week. I am inviting adventurous individuals with spare hardware and thier own bandwidth to join the network. If you don't have the machine or bandwidth, I'm sure someone will provide a place for you to play.
I am doing this for 2 reasons. Number one, "because I can", and number 2 because I am sick of paying for shell access to a machine I can't do anything on or there is nothing to do on. I want to create a network from which everyone can learn and play in a relatively safe environment.
Have fun, Scott"
(Comments are closed)
By Scott () scotth@open-network.net on http://shells.open-network.net
Thanks again,
Scott
By RC () on
How long until each service is disabled (usually due to DoS attacks). How long until new registration are either made insanely difficult, or stopped completely. How long until the box mysteriously drops off-line without any warning?
By Anonymous Coward () on
yes, i read your list, but still want to make sure you're forwarned about how frustrating it can become when every second person who comes to use your system really is trying to abuse it; i'd want OpenYetIronWill.org
By Blake () obsdj at two one one two dot net on two one one two dot net
Write yourself a nice little user agreement, use the tools available in OpenBSD (chroot jails, profiling, etc) to keep your box as un-0wn3d as possible while still providing users with functionality. Keep an eye on people and nuke their accounts when they are obviously trying to cause trouble.
Congratulations, you're officially a BOFH. Welcome to the club (-:. Now where did I put my etherkiller...
By pravus () on
i'm curious though... what measures have you taken to ensure that your users don't root the machine within a couple of days? i'm sure you have all the standard stuff in place (firewall, maybe an IDS, quota, etc...), but what other things have you done to make the system secure?
By Anonymous Coward () on
Best of luck. What's the liability if someone does evil things, like hacking .mil addresses from your box? Just a thought. Have fun.
By zil0g () on
so how would you do it?
snortbridge;
chroot;
systrace;
freebsd syscalls^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
Stephanie/trojanproof;
hire Dug Song;
zonealarm^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
etc etc - yes/no?
I want to know, and I bet I'm not the only one.
just looking for experience.
By Pierre () pierre@userid.org on http://www.userid.org
If any BOFH's want to trade shells for traceroutes and other network diagnostic utilities, mail me. I can also do sec. dns, mail caching and more.
Check out http://www.userid.org/config.txt for my dmesg info.
By Anonymous () on
By Anonymous Coward () on
if you don't have an AUP you have skipped a very important first step. you certainly want to set preconditions to account creation. user _must_ agree to the conditions set forth _BEFORE_ you ever give him/her an account. if you have not done this then you may find yourself in a major legal pickle if/when someone uses your host to attack another system.
By Chris Humphries () chumphries@drauku.net on http://drauku.net
i think it is a waste, and it will get abused very quickly. you have to ask yourself what kinda person would be interested in shell accounts and jump on the first mention of it... not the kinda people i would want on my network/boxes.
but that is just me, sure i will get DoS'd in 15 seconds... oh ph33r...
--
times are different, lots of kids dont care of have ethics in this whole thing. shells accounting would be great if it actually was used as intended and not abused, but time and time and time again, it has shown that what is intended is not how it eventually gets used.
i am all for community and group growth in a unix environment, but i also know that alot of what i would like to happen, wont happen. not cause i think so, but from what has happened.
maybe it will be different this time, maybe slashdot didnt attract a bunch of linux redhat monkeys jumping for a place to run a eggdrop.
i could be wrong, but i am willing to bet that i am not... we'll see if the server(s) you have up for these shells accounts still exist in 6 months... if you still have hair and dont mind phone calls from other admins complaining about your user's actions...
just my opinion,
chris
By shaji () shajikv@fastmail.fm on mailto:shajikv@fastmail.fm
By foo () on
They have NetBSD servers supporting a ton of users, and have been around for a few years.
By Anonymous Coward () on
By Chris Humphries () on
http://speedygrl.com/shells.html
sdf.lonestar has been around for a while.