5 ms·

> The problem is, unless you donate or find someone to sponsor you, you don't actually get shell access; you get some very limited BBS functionality. And even

by fao_ 8y ago

> The problem is, unless you donate or find someone to sponsor you, you don't actually get shell access; you get some very limited BBS functionality. And even once you do donate to get the basic access level, there are a number of basic programs (like Python and a C compiler) that aren't executable without getting a higher access level. Eh? It takes a minute of dropping in on com to get someone to verify you, and after that you have access to everything in the 'basic' user level -- which does indeed give you access to compilers and the like.

lambda 8y ago
SDF appears to be down right now (maybe too much attention from this thread?), but according to the archive https://web.archive.org/web/20180503065444/http://sdf.org:80/?join https://web.archive.org/web/20180503065444/http://sdf.org:80..., you need the ARPA membership level ($36) for "outbound telnet, ssh, sftp, ftp, ytalk, irc, snarf, wget" and "gcc, elisp, perl, php, python, ruby", and this matches what I recall from when I tried. There are the "instructor" and "student" levels, but since this wasn't an official course I was running but just "I want to show someone the ropes of Bash scripting," I found it a lot easier to just spin up a free-tier VM on Google than try to find someone who could give me the appropriate membership level.
- lambda 8y ago
  It's back up again, and I checked. Right now gcc and some versions of Python are usable for people in the "users" group, but others are not: lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Jan 2 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python -> python2.7 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 5952 Nov 12 17:13 /usr/pkg/bin/python2.7 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 1685 Nov 12 17:14 /usr/pkg/bin/python2.7-config lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Jan 18 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python3 -> python3.6 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 7728 Feb 9 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.6 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 3132 Feb 9 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.6-config -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5984 Dec 24 01:27 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.7 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 3132 Dec 24 01:27 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.7-config They seem to use the "users" group to deny execute access to members of that group, but they have some more recently installed/updated packages that they haven't applied such permissions to. There is the additional membership level MetaARPA, at $9/month which you need to have to have access to tools like git: $ ls -l /usr/pkg/bin/git -rwxr-x--- 1 root MetaARPA 2481424 Sep 11 13:50 /usr/pkg/bin/git The motd mentions that they're testing a NetBSD 8 upgrade right now, which may be why the permissions aren't set up correctly for some of the tools that are supposed to be restricted at the "user" level. But anyhow, this kind of restriction of use of basic development tools for the free tier makes it kind of useless for what I wanted to use it for, even if the restriction isn't enforced all that well. I could understand if they restricted usage, like disk or CPU, or things like TLS for your home page, and I can understand restricting some outbound networking to prevent abuse, but not providing access to Python and Git in the free tier?

by fao_ 8y ago

lambda 8y ago

SDF appears to be down right now (maybe too much attention from this thread?), but according to the archive https://web.archive.org/web/20180503065444/http://sdf.org:80/?join https://web.archive.org/web/20180503065444/http://sdf.org:80..., you need the ARPA membership level ($36) for "outbound telnet, ssh, sftp, ftp, ytalk, irc, snarf, wget" and "gcc, elisp, perl, php, python, ruby", and this matches what I recall from when I tried. There are the "instructor" and "student" levels, but since this wasn't an official course I was running but just "I want to show someone the ropes of Bash scripting," I found it a lot easier to just spin up a free-tier VM on Google than try to find someone who could give me the appropriate membership level.

lambda 8y ago
It's back up again, and I checked. Right now gcc and some versions of Python are usable for people in the "users" group, but others are not: lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Jan 2 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python -> python2.7 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 5952 Nov 12 17:13 /usr/pkg/bin/python2.7 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 1685 Nov 12 17:14 /usr/pkg/bin/python2.7-config lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Jan 18 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python3 -> python3.6 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 7728 Feb 9 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.6 -rwx---r-x 1 root users 3132 Feb 9 2018 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.6-config -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 5984 Dec 24 01:27 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.7 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 3132 Dec 24 01:27 /usr/pkg/bin/python3.7-config They seem to use the "users" group to deny execute access to members of that group, but they have some more recently installed/updated packages that they haven't applied such permissions to. There is the additional membership level MetaARPA, at $9/month which you need to have to have access to tools like git: $ ls -l /usr/pkg/bin/git -rwxr-x--- 1 root MetaARPA 2481424 Sep 11 13:50 /usr/pkg/bin/git The motd mentions that they're testing a NetBSD 8 upgrade right now, which may be why the permissions aren't set up correctly for some of the tools that are supposed to be restricted at the "user" level. But anyhow, this kind of restriction of use of basic development tools for the free tier makes it kind of useless for what I wanted to use it for, even if the restriction isn't enforced all that well. I could understand if they restricted usage, like disk or CPU, or things like TLS for your home page, and I can understand restricting some outbound networking to prevent abuse, but not providing access to Python and Git in the free tier?