One thing that we've found is that people who have web pages on our
system need shell access to do things like change the permissions of
CGI scripts, and run the scripts through perl so I don't have to take
a call "My script doesn't work. Can you fix it?" (BTW, it's usually
one of 2 problems - the script doesn't have execute permissions, or
they've forgotten the backslash before the @ symbol in an email address.)
One thing that hit me like a brick to the forehead the other night was
how *simple* it is to offer shell access to most customers. Note that
very few people want to dial in with a terminal package (true shell
access at PM login time) - they want to set up a PPP connection, then
telnet into the Sun that is our webserver/home directory machine.
For these users, all that's required is that their shell in /etc/passwd
be set to /bin/csh (or whatever shell you want). The initial login is
handled by the PMs with the *DEFAULT* entry in the users file, while the
Sun fields the telnet session just fine.
Maybe this seems obvious, but we'd been busting our chops to try and
provide shell and PPP access at login time, which we'd done by having
those customers with that access running PPP from the Sun, not the PM,
and having a menu that required entering a 1 for PPP and 2 for shell
access. (We wanted to avoid the Pname/Sname situation). Now we just have
to do that for people who might want shell access at dialup time.
> >Shell users always
> >want something (can we get compiler access,
>
> What do you need compiled? We'll compile it for you....happens about
> once every three weeks at most.
We have lost only one potential customer this way. He wanted "full"
shell access, with compilers and this and that. Our position is that
we are a 'net access company, not a software house, and if he wants
those tools, he should be running Unix at home (Linux, FreeBSD,
whatever) and connecting _that_ to our service. He said he couldn't do
that since he was running a Mac (though he didn't want PPP access
because he *hated* GUIs), and just mumbled something and hung up when I
mentioned that there was a freely available version of Unix (FreeBSD? I
forget now) for the Mac.
==========================================================================
Joe Hartley - jh@brainiac.com - brainiac services, inc
PO Box 5069 : Greene, RI : 02827 - vox 401.539.9050 : fax 401.539.2070
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - Frank Zappa