> > >> So if they really want 'shell' you need UNIX. (I for one won't consider
> > >> using an ISP that doesn't have a full featured UNIX shell.)
> >
> > >The one problem with shells is high maintenance.
> >
> > I've never really understood this....I've never seen shell accounts as
> > being high maintenance.
>
> 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.
Did you have success providing the shell/PPP access at login time?
> ==========================================================================
> 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
>