Live data from Hacker News

SDF Public Access Unix System

sdf.org

81–90 of 93 posts

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody needs or wants a unix shell account in this day and age I do. But I do not need just any Unix shell account, I need old and weird ones! I develop and maintain a portable utility (rlwrap) that is aimed at users of older software, who are often also using older or even obsolete systems. For years, I used Polarhome ( http://www.polarhome.com/ ) as a "dinosaur zoo" of obsolete systems (thans, Zoltan!) For every…

one of these days, I want to buy: a powerpc xserve (running OSX server) a sparc box (on solaris) an alpha box (on either VMS or Digital Unix) a pa-risc box (hp-ux) a modern power box (Rocky or AIX) an itanium box (running either VMS or NT depending on what the alpha is running) a pi cluster (plan 9) and a commodity x86 server (running OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Debian, Hurd, Redox, Serenity, reactos, and AROS). and make a MOA…

What, no SGI?

I have a Sparc, Alpha, NextStation, and SGI in my collection. I'd like to add an AIX system, ideally with PowerVM/LPAR support. I used to work at a place that built everything on AIX (this was 20+ years ago) and the virtualization functionality was pretty neat.

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one of these days, I want to buy: a powerpc xserve (running OSX server) a sparc box (on solaris) an alpha box (on either VMS or Digital Unix) a pa-risc box (hp-ux) a modern power box (Rocky or AIX) an itanium box (running either VMS or NT depending on what the alpha is running) a pi cluster (plan 9) and a commodity x86 server (running OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Debian, Hurd, Redox, Serenity, reactos, and AROS). and make a MOA…

What, no SGI? I have a Sparc, Alpha, NextStation, and SGI in my collection. I'd like to add an AIX system, ideally with PowerVM/LPAR support. I used to work at a place that built everything on AIX (this was 20+ years ago) and the virtualization functionality was pretty neat.

ay, knew I was forgetting something. In fairness those were always more specialty machines that happened to run unix on a cool arch than unix machines on a cool arch. You bought a sun because you wanted solaris on sparc, you bought an sgi because your art department outgrew their macs

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#83

I've been fortunate enough to know Stephen Jones of SDF through his running of the local Seattle retro computing event (now rebranded as VCF PNW) He's an absolutely kind soul who is deeply interested in all kinds of retro projects. I wish there were more folks like him in tech generally

TIL there’s such a thing in Seattle! That’s very good to know!

We're actually hosting it in just under two weeks! Free event, but donations to SDF are appreciated

https://vcfpnw.org/

(Disclaimer: I'm an exhibitor. So I'd love more attendees!)

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only ever read about VMS in an historic context, like Wikipedia articles and blog posts. DEC and VMS are not well known. That's a shame, considering how much influence they had, especially on WinNT.

I don't know about VMS specifically (more people will just know it as the thing the VAX runs), but DEC is very well known to anyone in the computer space. The PDP series brought us Unix and GNU, and the VAX was the only mainframe capable of competing with IBM. DEC was the largest terminal manufacturer (they made the vt100 and vt220. if you've ever run a terminal emulator, chances are it's emulating one of those or a…

CP/M was created by Digital Research, a completely different company. There is no direct relation to DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.)

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shall wait. It's a volunteer powered system and while the ops are silent and terse in their mails, they're nice people. Their plate is already quite full and they operate a whole universe of services, so cut them some slack. It's not an ordinary service which is exposed to internet trying to turn a profit. They run SDF, two Mastodon instances, a mail server, a Git server, trying to salvage/keep alive living compu…

I get that it's a volunteer system, but having donated for 2 years to help support their Lemmy instance, it's frustrating it's been down for 2 weeks without much of an update, just a hint "there's a good chance" it will come back. To me that seems lacking of transparency, not terse. How much disk space is it using? Maybe others in the community could help? How can they if they don't respond to emails? It was a nice t…

Their notification says they're out of disk for Lemmy. For my part, I sent them $50 for more.

I agree with you that the social downtime is bad. People just won't use the service.

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about VMS specifically (more people will just know it as the thing the VAX runs), but DEC is very well known to anyone in the computer space. The PDP series brought us Unix and GNU, and the VAX was the only mainframe capable of competing with IBM. DEC was the largest terminal manufacturer (they made the vt100 and vt220. if you've ever run a terminal emulator, chances are it's emulating one of those or a…

CP/M was created by Digital Research, a completely different company. There is no direct relation to DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.)

well nevermind

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CP/M was created by Digital Research, a completely different company. There is no direct relation to DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.)

well nevermind

Even without CP/M, DEC still had incredible influence! The first multi-user system I used was a VAX, back in the late 80's.

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well nevermind

Even without CP/M, DEC still had incredible influence! The first multi-user system I used was a VAX, back in the late 80's.

Oh, I'm not in any way saying it didn't haha. Every other point still stands. Besides, even if it didn't directly influence DOS it did heavily influence another Microsoft operating system (NT)

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#89
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had many of these machines at various points in time, some even running on the public internet. They are a giant PITA to keep running and alive. This is why they don't usually last very long if they ever even get to public access(most don't). Unless it's a super fun hobby for you, I wouldn't plan on this being very fun after the first dozen random crashes.

I'm mainly doing it for selfish reasons, I want build farms for these platforms. The pubnix is just a way of giving back to this wonderful community

I wish you lots of success. That's a giant amount of work though. Good Luck!

Re: SDF Public Access Unix System

#90
post #80
post #7

I found a way to escape their shell (so you can run whatever you want), if you're not verified, it involves multiple steps to archive this. I mailed them 2x to their membership address, but since today no reaction. I asked also in their IRC. Just a question to HN: should I wait more, try again? Or should I simply publish the vulnerabilities somewhere? If yes, where? It's my first time that I found a vulnerability at…

Can you share more detail on the exploit itself? Does the shell escape give you access to programs that require a paid account, or does the shell escape give you root access?

When escaping, you can invoke custom commands and binaries. If a tool is not available, just place them (mail yourself there, use zmodem, ...), via chmod. But you have a disk quota of 20mb, so you're limited as unverified account.

But the whole thing is: if you can escape as non verified user, than you can mass automate it to do ddos etc...

Post reply on HN