SSH Commands

[apratt]

Newb question

I'm very familiar with using SSH but was quite surprised to discover that wget and tar didn't work in the shell. Is there a list somewhere of what commands do work?

[tonychung]

After I logged into SSH I entered the "help" command to find the commands available. Unfortunately with shared hosting there aren't many beyond the usual file copy and move commands.

The limited command set is apparently a security measure. Personally, I'm surprised that even "man" is disabled.

I sent a couple of messages to support, asking for them to consider adding basic commands like tar, wget, rsync, man... to the command set, as they are some of the more useful terminal commands. I even gave them the link to your forum post. The only response I received was "you need to sign up for VPS to enable full SSH command set."

Hope this helps. Back to FTP for me.

[tonychung]

MyHosting SSH access on shared webspaces is more locked down. I guess they consider SSH to be a security risk, to which I question why bother providing that access at all? I was surprised that I couldn't even create a duplicate of a folder using the "cp" command.

Blocked commands that would make my life easier are: "rsync", "wget", "tar", "mv", the aforementioned "cp", and even "man".... They don't even allow "man".

Anyway, to obtain a list of the available SSH commands, log into the terminal and enter "help" without quotes on a blank line. The command returns the list of shell commands, but remember you can't get documentation on them because... no "man".

[tima]

Hi Tony,

Sorry you've had difficulty. Is there any particular commands you're looking for? Unfortunately in a Shared Hosting environment we have to be careful what is enabled and what isn't so we can mitigate any security risks.

Regarding VPS hosting, there are options available for under $20, even as little as $14.41, so having a fully customizable environment is easy to achieve.

[apratt]

I agree with tony's short list - tar, wget, rsync would be extremely useful. I work a lot with Drupal and it sounds like I should really be looking at VPS for my clients. I now have three on your system and am really pleased with everything but this aspect of the hosting.

[tonychung]

Hi Tima,

I've had numerous discussions with your support team about some of the security features imposed on shared hosting clients. However, some of these decisions seem to be without regard. For instance, simple terminal commands like 'man' are missing from the list. Often I forget how to use a command and would like the 'man'ual guidance. (pun intended).

I can understand, based on the unlimited file space offering, MyHosting's unwillingness to offer 'rsync' to prevent excessive disk usage by remote copying.

Instead, why not at least allow 'tar'? That way we could compress our development websites into a single archive, upload them to the server, and extract them into the specific locations through the terminal. Copying a 3MB archive is faster than copying 30MB of individual files. Plus, this workflow, while not perfect, reduces the room for error.

I've looked into VPS hosting, but I don't have the server skills I need to manage an entire server. All I need are a good list of copy commands. 'rsync' would be nice to have on first setup when I'm transferring sites from one host to MyHosting. After that, I don't mind if it gets disabled.

BTW: Since I posted my first two messages (the second being because I didn't realize the first hadn't been moderated), I found that 'cp', 'mv', and some others are now available. When logged into the home folder above "webspace", a directory list displays a current set of available commands.

Just so you know, the 'scp' command runs but triggers an error that it cannot open a shared security library.

Thanks for the replies, all!

[jeremya]

In terms of uncompressing files on your hosting space, it's currently possible to do so through your control panel via the File Manager. I believe tar files should work but zip files work for sure.

[tonychung]

Jeremy, thanks for the tip. However, I still submit that if SSH access is offered, then a useful set of commands consistent with other hosts should be permitted. By all means, disable "sudo", "apt-get", "port", etc. But allow "rsync", "scp" (without error), "tar", and "man"...! If those commands aren't offered, then just dump SSH because most of the other tasks can be performed through ftp.

Also, those who purchase a higher plan ($20/month instead of $5) should have fewer restrictions imposed. Apparently all users are limited to 2 concurrent ftp sessions. Most other web hosts allow 4. I find my file/directory compare utility breaks the 2 concurrent sessions simply by changing the base directories. But that's the topic of another thread.

[jeremya]

Hello Tony, we're looking into this further for you to see what we might be able to do.

[Stoddard]

What does the scp command do??

[suwunk]

What does the scp command do??

you can use the scp command to copy files and directories securely between remote hosts without starting an FTP session or logging into the remote systems explicitly.