What Is A Shell?

A shell is a program which provides an interface between a user and a computer operating system. Older operating systems had the user interface built in to the operating system. By taking that functionality out of the operating system and providing it in an external program, it became possible for a user to pick an interface they are most comfortable with or that provided a specific set of facilities.

Early in the development of the Unix operating system, command line interpreters were the only type of shell that existed. These have variables, looping constructs, and conditional execution facilities that made them usable as a scripting language. Commands placed in a file and marked executable can be run like any other program. There are some entire applications written in shell scripts. There are also a plethora of scripting languages available in Unix such as perl, python, ruby, and tcl, that are specifically designed for scripting and not used as interactive command line interpreters.

Modern Unix systems also have graphical user environments available providing the user with a comfortable intuitive point and click environment. Graphical environments lack the programming aspects of a command line interpreter and so capabilities like scripting and pipes are not directly available to graphical user environments. Unix graphical environments include some variant of xterm which gives a window into a command line interpreter.

What Is A Shell Account?

Unix was designed to share the resources of a computer between multiple users. For each user there is a numerical user ID, a login and password, a mailbox, and a home directory which contains that users files and may be organized into any number of subdirectories. Each file and directory has ownership and permissions that determine the ownership of the file and who may access it.

A shell account is a login and password on a Unix host along with a home directory to store files and a mailbox. A shell account provides a stable central home on the Internet allowing you to access e-mail and other applications remotely from anywhere. You can access a shell account here via rlogin, telnet, ssh, and via the web with a Java enabled web browers. It also allows you to run background tasks as well as automatically schedualed tasks that operate periodically.

Eskimo North shell accounts include many applications and ancillary services that greatly expand the ability of a basic shell account. These include a vast array of program development tools, scripting lanaguages, compiled languages, editing facilities, and many specialized tools. Also available are mysql and postgres databases. Web hosting under our domain is included with our shell accounts and may be extended to include your own domains.

We offer shell accounts with different capabilities customized to meet your specific needs. All of our shell accounts offer basic command line access, web hosting, and e-mail. Some offer the ability to run light background processes such as eggdrop IRC bots or bnc IRC relays, heavier background processes such as multi-user online games, forums, data bases, and extended disk storage. We have accounts tailored to the needs of students, hobbiests, program developers, website developers, online gaming enthusiests, and small to large businesses.

Linux

Unix was created in 1970. It has evolved heavily over the years and today remains one of the most powerful and heavily used operating systems in existence. Linux was created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linus made his operating system open sourced and encouraged the participation of anyone on the Internet. The result has been the creation of the worlds most efficient, flexible, scalable operating system that has ever existed. Technically, Linux isn't Unix because it is not derived from the Unix operating system but developed independently. Functionally, Linux is equivalent to Unix except that it is faster, works on a much wider variety of hardware than any commercial Unix, is more secure, and more scalable. If you have a computer that is less than two decades old; chances are good there is a port of Linux that can run on it. If you have any sort of appliance ranging from Tivo DVRs to routers, there is a strong possibility that it may have Linux running it. If not, there is an even greater chance that there is a Linux port available.

While we still operate a SunOS 4.1.4 based server to support legacy applications, the rest of our services are based on Linux as is our newest shell server. With very few exceptions, any program that will compile and operate on a modern commercial Unix will likewise compile and operate under Linux. If you have an application designed to run under Unix, it will likely run just fine here if you compile it from source. Because we run Sparc CPU based hardware for most of our applications, precompiled x86 binaries won't presently work here, although we are working on bringing Xeon based servers online and presently use one internally.

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