Dealing with no shell access

[cthesoup]

I'm currently a reseller with another company, but thinking of moving over to HostGator. The company I'm with now allows SSH access, and I feel like I can't live without it. I install a great number of scripts, and do most of my development in PHP in the shell.

How does everyone feel about not having SSH access with HostGator? This is the only thing that's keeping me from switching here. I was told by HG that I could do things like untar and such through the CPanel. How difficult a time do you have managing your site without it?

Thanks..

[Stef]

Hi there,
I'm in the same situation. Hostgator seems great to me. At my current hosting company I'm using ssh (via JTA - Java Telnet App).
Any experiences from Hostgator users that were used to ssh and now are 'limited' to cpanel? Doesn't it cause any probs or slows you down?
Is Hostgator considering telnet/ssh in the future?

Thanks,
Stef.

[GatorJustin]

Allowing shell/telnet access on shared machines is a huge security risk, so I doubt you'll be seeing that as an option anytime soon. However, you can do anything you want if you purchase one of our dedicated servers.

As far as limitations associated with not allowing shell/telnet, there are few. Cpanel includes phpMyAdmin which allows administration of MySQL databases, an .htaccess generator which builds .htaccess files for you, and a host of other features.

We feel that the risks invloved with allowing ssh/telnet on our shared servers far outweigh the benefits, but if you ever find yourself in a situation where something must be executed via a shell, we would be happy to do it for you.

-Justin

[amartins]

Hello,

Just to add my opinion, I guess the presence of access to telnet (whatever flavour) depends on what you need it for.

I've been using hosting providers since 1999 and over that time have mostly used telnet either to:

-delete things faster than I could through ftp (which cPanels file manager substitutes nicely)

-zip and unzip files... unzip being the most important as uploading a 30 or 40 mb site by folder and individual files usualy ended up in constant time-outs.

At 1st hostgator didnt provide for unzipping through file manager but since they installed that module I find I have no need for telnet...

To be fair (as far as my experience goes) at my previous hosts I never had security problems on shared or dedicated servers due to telnet... then again none of those used Cpanel which Im guessing this restriction has something to do with. Anyway... I think its a decent trade-off if telnet is in reality such a risk. whatever the reason.

António.

If it wasn't the best deal on the net for the space and cpannel/whm i'd be gone. No ssh compleatly sucks - I understand the risks and understand why its not allowed. I however feel that there should be a procedure.. somehting ..like - send in a copy of drivers license that matches a credit card which matches the name on the account. Then pay with THAT card to get shell.

Im on a cellular 19.2 Nextel modem.. fetching a 2.5M fils takes 14 min.
Sending it to my account takes another 14 min.

30 min of my life gone.. It blows. But HostGator RULES otherwise.
Thanks HostGator!!

[GatorJustin]

Originally Posted by Hardly

If it wasn't the best deal on the net for the space and cpannel/whm i'd be gone. No ssh compleatly sucks - I understand the risks and understand why its not allowed. I however feel that there should be a procedure.. somehting ..like - send in a copy of drivers license that matches a credit card which matches the name on the account. Then pay with THAT card to get shell.

That would be fine if we were only concerned with the actual account holder using the shell for nefarious purposes, but the fact is that we would have to concern ourselves with the outside world as well. Unfortunately, many customers use passwords that are easily cracked using freely available hacker tools, so if they had shell access, it would be like giving it to everyone - and it wouldn't matter if we had a copy of their ID on file.

-Justin

[dotmil]

I myself use SSH/SCP extensively on my own servers, but I find that I can do 99% of the same things through cPanel and a decent FTP client with my HG account. It might not be as simple as using the OpenSSH tools, but it works.

As for the password issue, personally I think that's kind of a weak excuse. FTP access uses passwords in plaintext (unencrypted) format. SSH with host based authentication would be much more secure, but the support requirements would probably be a nightmare.

You can use telnet.cgi if you are really desperate.