Guides and documentation

Guides for getting things done on the shell. Everything here was written against this box, so the commands are the ones that actually work on it.

Start here

What this box is, what your account can do, and the handful of things worth knowing on day one.

Your first hour on ShadowShells: Connecting, what the login banner means, your limits, and the three commands worth knowing.
Who else is here: who, w, last and finger; what other users can and cannot see; and the classics.
Your ident, and why it is not yours to choose: What IRC networks see when you connect from here, why it is your account name, and what that buys you.

How to leave something running when you close the terminal, which is most of the point of a shell account.

Keeping things running: screen and tmux: Detach a session, reattach from anywhere, and understand how it counts against your plan.
irssi with screen or tmux: Keep an IRC client running on the box and reattach to it from anywhere.

Bouncers to stay connected, bots to hold a channel, and the certificate problem everybody hits.

Setting up ZNC: Run a bouncer so you stay connected to IRC while you are away.
Setting up psyBNC: The classic bouncer, built and configured on this box in about a minute.
Setting up shroudBNC: The maintained C++ bouncer: multi-user, TCL scripting, real configuration.
Setting up an eggdrop bot: Build an eggdrop from source and keep it inside your plan limits.
Setting up EnergyMech: The other classic IRC bot. Lighter than eggdrop, and it needs no port.
Self-signed certificates in irssi: Why irssi refuses your bouncer certificate, and the three supported ways to tell it which one to expect.

The web space every account gets, pointing your own domain at it, and databases.

Your web space: Every account has one at /home/~you. Putting a page on it takes about a minute.
Your own domain: Point a domain you own at your web space, with a certificate, in about a minute.
MySQL databases: Create one from the panel, connect to it from your code, browse it in phpMyAdmin.

Moving files, building software, mail and the web from a terminal.

Getting files in and out: scp, sftp and rsync, archives, finding where your disk space went, and logging in without a password.
Building software from source: Install into your own home directory with --prefix, and finish the build inside your memory limit.
Email from the shell: mutt and alpine: Read and send mail in a terminal, against your own IMAP and SMTP provider.
Browsing the web in a terminal: w3m, lynx and links2, what actually works without JavaScript, and following sites with newsboat.