Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : is ssh access on the way out?

[drew1974fl]

all i can find are hosts that offer jailed shells with just vi. i want a host with emacs and pine....i dont like the whole webmail thing and really like to use pine on the server where i can log in from anywhere i'm at.

[bhalsted]

There are some out there and they are hard to find. Jailed shells are here to stay as more control panels offer them. IMO it just comes down to liability and profit: Security of the box for 200 clients is much more important than losing a single client over an ssh account. ;-)

Cheers,
Ben

[ldcdc]

Security of the box for 200 clients is much more important than losing a single client over an ssh account. ;-)

That's basically the idea.

[NetHosted-Andrew]

Afraid so, who would seriously risk that? It's really now worth it

Andrew

[tjogin]

Originally posted by bhalsted
Security of the box for 200 clients is much more important than losing a single client over an ssh account. ;-)

How about losing 200 clients over an ssh account?

As mentioned, proper SSH access is getting rare, and I'm sure there are at least 200 people out there who really wants SSH access. Offering SSH access is becoming one of the things that can really set a host apart from others.

[Rich2k]

I find that most people who want SSH are probably the type of people that need a dedicated server anyway.

What do people really need SSH for?

In my experience it's
- cron jobs - can be done through most control panels
- editing mail account settings - well that's usually admin only
- importing sql databases - Very large ones are most efficient on the server side but if you've got a huge sql database is a shared host really the best option for your site?
- running server side perl scripts - OK will grant you this one

[tjogin]

Originally posted by Rich2k
I find that most people who want SSH are probably the type of people that need a dedicated server anyway.

Perhaps, but I can think of many reasons why someone would want SSH access, but not a dedicated server, just a simple 200mb plan with 5 gigs of bandwidth or so.

- To edit configuration files, such as .htaccess. Sure it's possible to download them, edit them and then upload them again. But editing directly in the shell is more convenient. For some, anyways. For me, definately.
- To write server-side code. Perl and Python, for instance. Sure, it's possible to write it locally and upload, absolutely. But some people find shells convenient. I do.
- Cron jobs. Sure, it can be done via the control panel. But some people find using the shell more convenient.
- To ping other servers, to see if "that server" is down or if it's just your own ISP which is having problem. I do that sometimes. Even though it can be done in a plethora of other ways. Because the shell is convenient.

Basically, off the top of our heads, we could think of roughly the same type of uses for a shell, I'm sure there are a dozen more if you ask a dozen more people. And, you're right, mostly you don't need a shell to do any of those things, because the control panels are really good now. But the shell is convenient. Some people like having a shell.

And since there are, what, millions of webhosts to choose from? Cheap ones, feature rich ones, bandwith and diskspace generous ones. Ones whose bandwidth and diskspace you really can't compete with, nor other key aspects of web hosting.

- Gee, which do I pick, this one with the convenient shell and the robust reputation, or this other one which also seems very nice, offers more bandwidth and more diskspace for less, but doesn't offer shell access?

That was me one week ago, wanna bet there are more just like me out there, people who kind of like the Linux environment, thinks it's kinda cosy, weeding through the hosting jungle?

[sigma]

Originally posted by tjogin
That was me one week ago, wanna bet there are more just like me out there, people who kind of like the Linux environment, thinks it's kinda cosy, weeding through the hosting jungle?

Or the FreeBSD environment

Kevin

[Michael-MS]

Originally posted by tjogin
Perhaps, but I can think of many reasons why someone would want SSH access...
- To edit configuration files, such as .htaccess. Sure it's possible to download them, edit them and then upload them again. But editing directly in the shell is more convenient. For some, anyways. For me, definately.
- To write server-side code. Perl and Python, for instance. Sure, it's possible to write it locally and upload, absolutely. But some people find shells convenient. I do.
- Cron jobs. Sure, it can be done via the control panel. But some people find using the shell more convenient.
- To ping other servers, to see if "that server" is down or if it's just your own ISP which is having problem. I do that sometimes. Even though it can be done in a plethora of other ways. Because the shell is convenient.

You can do most of these with a Jailed Shell.

There's no reason to offer unsecure shell access just so that a user can ping stuff. If they want to ping something they can use their own computer's ping command. It's build into windows.

Even if the Shell was not jailed, they still can't setup cron via SSH unless they have a dedicated server. The cron files are owned by root last time I checked.

[Michael-MS]

Originally posted by drew1974fl
i dont like the whole webmail thing and really like to use pine on the server where i can log in from anywhere i'm at.

Pine works on a Jailed Shell on cPanel for admin users. I haven't figured out how to get it to work for sub-email accounts though.

[BizJohn]

There is no ssh anywhere because people think ssh access makes their servers less secure, but having a web interface to the system is fine.

[sigma]

Originally posted by Michael-MS
Even if the Shell was not jailed, they still can't setup cron via SSH unless they have a dedicated server. The cron files are owned by root last time I checked.

Each individual user account has its own crontab which runs jobs under that userid.

Kevin

[Michael-MS]

Originally posted by sigma
Each individual user account has its own crontab which runs jobs under that userid.

Kevin

Yes, they do.. but they are owned by root. A user can't edit them with Jailed SSH or regular SSH unless they have root access. (on cpanel)

[sigma]

Originally posted by Michael-MS
Yes, they do.. but they are owned by root. A user can't edit them with Jailed SSH or regular SSH unless they have root access. (on cpanel)

Well, in regular SSH, they would just use the crontab(1) command, which runs setuid.

Kevin

[Akash]

Moved to Technical/Security