| Shell Accounts | ||||
FTP |
A shell account is an account on any flavor of UNIX.
A UNIX account is really a must if you want to get into hacking. There are
serveral different types of shell account, BASH, csh (c), ksh (korn), tcsh are some. BASH - Bash is an
sh-compatible command language interpreter that executes commands read from the standard
input or from a file. Bash also incorporates useful features from the Korn and C shells
(ksh and csh). csh - is the Berkeley C shell tcsh - tcsh is an enhanced but completely compatible version of the Berkeley UNIX C shell, csh. It is a command language interpreter usable both as an interactive login shell and a shell script command processor. It includes a command-line editor, programmable word completion , spelling correction, a history mechanism, job control and a C-like syntax. ksh - ksh is a command interpreter that is intended for both interactive and shell script use. Its command language is a superset of the sh shell language. This is commanly used and proberly best to start of with.
There are many places that offer shell accounts, some of which mabe free and some of which you will have to pay for. You could also ask your ISP if they provide a shell account, but nower days, not many do. AOL and compuserve being ones that don't for sure. To find a free one, run a search in a search engine for "free shell accounts" or check out my list I compiled a few paragraphs down. One place that I will tell you about is sdf.lonestar.org. They provide many types of shell, email and homepage, but access is limitated unless you sign up. You can read more about there. So you telnet into sdf.lonestar.org and go and signup. Once you have got the shell explore it play around, Read the manuals online and learn the system. Play around and don't worry if you make mistakes. We all make mistakes and its part of the learning process. A few UNIX commands to get you started can be found here, but use the online manuals and you will learn alot more (This is usually done by $man <file> where $ stands for the command prompt). Here is a list of free sites. Do not abuse this accounts. Free shells are getting harder and harder to find !! Another place to get a free shell is from deathstar.acol.com. This is a new service that has started up just a few days ago and what I quite frankly think is the best. You have practically full access to the system and its resources. You have full access to system programs and facilities, and anything that you need on the system, just ask the owner to install. It is on a t-1 connection so there is no lag. At the moment there is no way to sign up by logging is as a vistor, but there will be soon. At the moment you will need to email accounts@adam.acol.com and state your username and password. Of course if you are still having problems you could get unix on your machine, check out www.linux.org, www.FreeBSD.org, www.x.org , www.xwindows.com ,or you could get a unix for windows client. Such a place ca be found at www.unixdos.com.
I thought I would add this command here as it is relevant to shell accounts and very simple. If you need to change your shell account all you need to type is: chsh <shell>. And then it would be changed. $chsh tcsh The different shells have different prompts. More about using your shell and commands in the UNIX section of this page A little note about the lynx browser - with most shell accounts, you have to pay to use it, you can login to trfn.clpgh.org and use it for free. |