Wed Nov 23 07:54:14 PST 2005 — Shell server upgrade. The new shell server is currently on the Net as “newshell.sonic.net”. After a suitable migration period, it will become “Bolt.sonic.net” (and “Shell.sonic.net”). The server allows customers to execute Linux commands, compile Linux programs (which might be cgi-bin’s), and perform operations generally expected on a Unix timeshare system.
The system sports dual hyper-threaded 2.8GHz Xeon processors bolted in to a motherboard with 2GB of RAM. The system is running our standard production Linux distribution, Redhat 7.3 (with patches to make the system current.)
While we’ve made efforts to provide a shell environment similar to that found on the current Bolt.sonic.net, there will be differences. Indeed, many programs have been updated, while some we did not install on the system to reduce cruft. The idea: anything missing that a customer would like installed on the new system can be installed upon request. Discussions regarding such requests — as well as any problems encountered or questions — can be found on the following Sonic.net newsgroup:
news://news.sonic.net/sonic.net
(Note: not all browsers understand the news:// protocol. One browser that will read news:// is Mozilla/Thunderbird or Mozilla/Mail and News. www.mozilla.org )
-Scott … and Dane, who is a serious shell user.