Welcome

to Free-Shells

Next, you will find all the contact mail addresses and list of most frequent problems. Please READ it before sending us an email. Thanks.

For Page problems, send email to webmaster@free-shells.com.ar.

For Connection Problems or problems with any server please send email to staff@free-shells.com.ar.

To report any abuse send email to abuse@free-shells.com.ar.

Table of Contents

• General
  • What is Free-Shells.com.ar?
  • What Services are available?
  • What can be done in this Systems?
  • What Operating Systems are available?
• How...?
  • ...do I create an account and what's its use?
  • ...do I access to hosts on free-shells?
  • ...do I change my login ID or user name?
  • ...do I change my name, shell, password, or terminal?
  • ...do I confiture a Web Page?
  • ...do I chat with others?
  • ...do I use and quit VI Editor?
  • ...do I execute X-windows (Kde, Gnome, etc)?
  • ...do I create a DataBase account?
  • ...do I change MySql(Database) password?
  • ...do I compile a program?
  • I already compiled a program. Why its not working?
  • ...do I install, configure PsyBNC?
• Miscellaneous
  • Which are Free-Shells IP Addresses?
  • How do i recover a file from your Backups?
  • How do i get a list of Unix commands and its Sintax?
  • I can´t access to Hotmail. Why?!?
  • When i try to telnet to Free-Shells, it hangs. Why can't I connect?
  • How much disk space can I use; and how can I know how much I am using?
  • I found a huge core file in my Homedir. What does it mean?
  • How do I make "ls" output in colors?

General

Free-Shells its a computer network, which grants Free access to Unix like Systems.

Ftp, telnet, ssh, personal web page + php + mysql. Email and Own-Domain Webs in a near futurel.

• Shell Access, with standard unix commands.
• Compile and run unix* programs.
• Upload files via FTP.
• Make your own Web-page php+mysql.
• Surf the NET in text mode with "lynx".

For the moment we have 2 computers. We will be adding more as times goes by.

• Everest: One Powerfull FreeBSD is the core of this Mountain. It raises 40GB from the sea level, green medows cover its 160 MB
• Hindu-Kush its situated at 5 gb over the sea, over th plains rests a PentiumMMX. Its valley is formed with 40 Mb, all based on a solid structure of a GNU/Linux Debian Sarge.

How...?

To register you must fill the form found in the Register section. This will enable you to access through Telnet or SSH to our Systems. Soon you will be able to have an Email account.

Here you will find a table describing how to access each host. As we have a limited number of IP's, we are forced to use NAT(port forwarding). This means that to access each service/host in our network you will have to know in qhich port they are located. Below you have a Table and Examples for you to picture it.

Here is the table in which you can find the hosts and services and which Port Number corresponds to each. Each host has a number assigned, to which adding the service number you form the access port.
Example [host num.]+[service num.].
If you have Windows you may need to download an SSH Client like Putty. That is the Official page.

NOTE: Its worth clarifying that we have 2 public ip's, each one on different and independant Networks, so if you cant connect to one of the hosts behind one of this specific Networks, try to ping the Network respective gateway. Our two gateways are:
himalaya.free-shells.com.ar and hindukush.free-shells.com.ar. Each gateway is responsible for each host/server in its Network; so if the gateway is down, it will be impossible to reach the hosts/servers behind it. Notice that the hosts on himalaya's network begin with 7 yand hosts/servers on hindukush begin with 8.

To connect to a host/server you have to add its number with the Service number. Down you can appreciatte a table which explains hot this is done. How to connect to each host from Internet and frm within the Local Network.

Any doubt send an e mail to staff@free-shells.com.ar

WARNING: Hindukush Network is temporarily out of service for Undetermined time.

Can't be done. Instead you can create a new account with another name and once you have done this you can copy the files you need from the old one to the new one. staff@free-shells.com.ar.

You can change your password with the passwd command. For any other change just ask.

There's a hole FAQ that explains this, here.

There are many commands available.

• 'wall' is a chat program that sends broadcast messages to all users at once.
• 'write' sends text to the other person's screen one line at a time.
• 'chat' is like 'write' but it sends one character at a time. Was used for Modems.
• 'talk' splits the screen in half, so both people can type at once.
• 'ytalk' is like talk but can accommodate more than two people.

You can disable/enable chatting, messaging with a simple shell command; #mesg n | y....

Vi is a text editor that comes in nearly all Unix flavours. To edit a file do vi {file_name} and the editor will open. Have a look at the manual to get a notion of its working and if you see you are stucked and can't get out, press the Escape key and then ":q!" ( colon-q-exclamation sign); this will be shown on the left inferior corner of the screen, press Enter and you will leave the editor omitting all the changes done to it. You can try another Editor like Edit command.

We do not support Graphical Environment due the high resources needed for this.

We have one MySql DB. If you need one account u can ask it, by email to staff@free-shells.com.ar. Probably you can use the test DB which is accesible for all. Please DO NOT make an intensive/excesive use of the DB. Logs are kept and if you are caught making abuse of it we will let your account go.

Send an email to staff.

To compile a Program in C use gcc test.c -o test. This creates an executable called test, which you can run by typing ./test.

This is in testing mode so please tell us before u compile your program. We are giving this for new C programmers to start testing basic programming...We'll see if we keep like this or create special accounts for this only given to old users....

Usually the cause of this is the probram not being in the system PATH. You must call/run your program prepending "./"; that is, if your program is called test, then you must enter ./test.

We have PsyBNC already installed on the system to ease up things. We are only going to authorize th Psybnc from the system. So DONT Download it from the Internet. User accounts with own copies of PsyBNC running will be blocked temporarily. The way to run it is from your HOME. If you like you can create a dir named psybnc in your HOME dir; put the file psybnc.conf in it, and create also the log dir there. Configure the connection port between 9000 and 10.000 (check that it isnt being used first, and that your selected port isn't one of the next ones as lots of IRC Networks scan them and ban users using them: 9001 , 9030 , 9050 , 9051 , 9090 and 9091), run psybnc in the previously created dir, where you you have put the psybnc.conf file and thats all. If you want you can also connect to our IRC and ask for instructions there.

This are the one by one steps to follow...

1. cd
2. mkdir psybnc
3. chmod 700 psybnc
4. cd psybnc
5. mkdir log
6. cp /usr/local/etc/psybnc.conf.sample psybnc.conf
Choose a random port between 9.000 and 10.000.
Once the port is chosen,

7. chmod 600 psybnc.conf
8. edit psybnc.conf
Change port 31337 for the one you have chosen:
PSYBNC.SYSTEM.PORT1=31337
for
PSYBNC.SYSTEM.PORT1=9575

9. Save and Quit from EDIT pressing ESC and two times the letter a
Execute the psybnc this way, always from your HOME, psybnc dir, which is where you should be if you followed this guide,

10. /usr/local/bin/psybnc
11. Any issues connect to our IRC irc.free-shells.com.ar channel #Free-Shells and we can hep you.

Miscelaneous

Unfortunately we have only dynamic IPs; therefore they can change in any time. Always that is possible you mshould use the domain names. Also, in the System Status section of the site you will find all data from the hosts and network, like its actual IP, etc.

Can't be done. For now we do only backups of the critical parts of the systems. We do not have the time to recover someone's specific files. So don't store anything critical to you in our systms.

In the future, running "listcommands" you will have a list of most important commands, In the meantime you can type info and you will get a list of utilities on the system, and doing man {command} you will get the sintax and complete information on that command.

Unfotunately we arent able to access Hotmail. This is due the people in charge of Hotmail decided that lynx isnt an acceptable browser, as it doesn't meet their requirements.

There can be lots of reasons:

1. DNS Problems. Try to connect through the hosts IP address.
2. Your telnet client/programmay not be working properly.
3. A firewall may be blocking the access to the port you are trying to connect. Contact your LAN Administrator to check it and if the Admin its you; ooops, try to configure it..
4. The host is down. This can happen from time to time. To mantain and keep the servers sometimes we will need to unplugge them. Check the Web page to see if theres a news regarding the issue or states of the systems.
5. If it is neither of the previous or you are trying with no luck for a couple of days, send us an email to staff@free-shells.com.ar explaining all the steps you did. Specify your IP, GMT timezone, and if possible attach ping, ipconfig, traceroute(tracert for windows) and any info you might consider helpful.

The disk Quota is 25MB(For now). You can find out how much space you are using(in Kilobytes)with the nex tcommand executed on your HOME directory.

du -sk

quota -v

Nothing really. Its generated when a program crashes. It helps the programmer debug it. This files will be removed if name isnt changed.

It depends on your type of terminal-emulation u use. The argument to do this is --color=auto. You can create an alias on your .profile or .login according to the shell you use:

alias ls='/usr/local/bin/ls --color=auto'