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Your Account's Command Line Interface

Internet Connection's Linux and Unix hosting accounts all include a shell account that you can use to connect to your hosting account and use as if you were on a terminal physically connected to the server. You can access this command line interface via two different protocols, Telnet and the Secure Shell (SSH). As the name implies, SSH is more secure as all data sent to and from your server is encrypted. It is for this reason that Internet Connection recommends that SSH, rather than Telnet, be employed by its customers.

Using SSH you can set up CGIs, modify your mailboxes, change file permissions and perform many other tasks. Below is a list of SSH clients available for you to download:

PuTTY - a free terminal emulation program for Windows.
F-Secure - SSH client for Macintosh.
There are many other SSH clients available, just use your favorite search engine to find them.

Once you have your SSH program, launch it and connect to your account by specifying your domain name (i.e. YourDomainName.com) as the host.

PuTTY Settings Window

The program should connect and display a login: prompt. Supply your login name, hit enter, then you should see a password: prompt. Again, supply this information and hit enter. If you login successfully you'll see the shell prompt next.

Shell Pompt Upon Successful Login

From the shell prompt you issue commands to control programs, manipulate and edit files, configure features of your account such as email and security, and much, much more. We recommend that you now read our UNIX Basics tutorial to get your feet wet moving around the system. However, if you want to log out of the system for now, type exit (Ctrl + D).