Your idea for an ssh machine
Hey wonder what you guys think would be a great ssh machine for the times when I want to access my idling servers but don't want/can't be sitting in my home office for whatever reasons?
My current ssh machine is a 2010-ish Sony laptop I got from a pawn shop years ago for 25USD lol. Does the job but it is heavy to carry around, fan runs constantly and have to be plugged in all the time.
Need something with a screen, a physical keyboard, reasonable battery life, lightweight. Don't mind used, OS whatever as long as it can run ssh.
Price around 100USD, the lower the better.
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You can get a reasonable Lenovo Chromebook for under 100 bucks U.S. really any Chromebook would do the job. Brand would be up to you of course.
The Yeti has left the building.
Chromebook with USB-C charging. Check what charging spec it requires, make sure it's not proprietary, and get a portable battery that can power it. You could also just have it trickle charge from a battery that can't deliver as much power whenever you're not using it :P
Decades ago I used a PPC and a phone with OpenMoko specifically for this
"The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hmm. I thought that an "ssh machine" plays "ssh ... ssh ... ssh ... ssh ..." Sounds that help you sleep better.
I ssh to sleep.
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Hi! Hi! Hi! @terrorgen! So nice to see you! I still don't have the AS number we were talking about, but I did get a server inside HE FMT-2. You are welcome to a free account on it if you want. All I need is your ed25519 ssh public key.
About the Chromebooks, I have been using them for years, mostly for exactly the purpose you mention, ssh machines. Plus, for me Chrome browser's High Contrast Accessibility Extension really helps a lot. I can offer some advice, which is that the model numbers are tricky. It's necessary to check more than just the first part of the model number, because things like the LCD screen and other features seem to change. I like the Chromebooks because they are cheap, so I don't have to worry too much about them getting lost or broken or even stolen.
I remember that your family was starting! That's so wonderful! It brings back my memories of my own beautiful daughter. I hope everything continues well for you and yours!
Hey @Not_Oles you are back on LES as well. Daughter is doing fine thank you for asking!
I saw your thread but I was wondering what I can do with a shell account?
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For SSH into idling machines one can use the smartphone. On the smartphone I use an app called Termius (for Android).
If you want a laptop, grab the cheapest one but in aluminium casing and without a fan. This is important so you can unscrew the back and add a thin layer of thermal pad onto the CPU - this way the whole aluminium backplate becomes a huge heatsink to dissipate heat faster after you carry the laptop in your backpack.
Right now I use something cheap from China as laptop: Jumper Ezbook 3 Pro with a somewhat light desktop (Linux Mint MATE).
Cloudcone | Crunchbits | Dartnode | Dedirock | Georgedatacenter | Gigahost | Hostbilby | Host-c | Hostdzire | Hostsailor | Namecrane | Nuyek | Realtoxmedia | Servarica | Terabit | Tnahosting | Virmach
juicessh.
I bench YABS 24/7/365 unless it's a leap year.
I have termius on my phone and android tablet as well. Good for some quick checks on the go. But for anything longer than a 5 minute ssh session I prefer a physical keyboard.
The Jumper is not cheap enough to not give me a heartburn. Looks like a great design though.
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Not exactly what you asked for, but just your current smartphone + Termux (Android) + a portable Bluetooth keyboard combo can get you through a lot of situations if shell is all you need. The best thing is that you can keep this on you even when you are not carrying around any kind of a larger bag.
My only wish is that the foldable keyboards that fit inside your pocket were a little less expensive. And I can't comment on how comfortable they are to use since I got myself a non-foldable one; that one, despite being small, was pretty fine to write on though.
Not rigid enough. Also need a bigger screen.
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Fair enough
Hey! A few ideas: spin up a VPS or two or three; compile stuff; code with emacs or vim or vs codeserver; access website APIs with curl; surf with Lynx, Links, or w3m; study Xv6; set up an email server; have an always-on IRC client; install VNC or Spice and a graphical environment[1] or two or three alternative graphical environments running Firefox Nightly or Chromium; run Docker; run a webserver; look at the state of the node and of your VMs; check how your memory, disks, and network connection are doing.
On Darkstar tons of stuff is already installed and ready to go. Plus, it seems, generally speaking, that everything on Darkstar works great.
On fmt, it's just getting started. Not much is installed except the Alpine base system, tmux, and Lynx. So, help get more stuff installed on fmt? Much more! Hope you have a great day!
[1]Even if you have proof from this post, and even though I am writing this in Chrome on a Chromebook, I will deny that I said "install a graphical environment" on a server!
Nokia N900 running updated PostmarketOS.
BITD I also used my BB Torch 9800 with BBSSH terminal. Worked quite nicely with the BB keyboard.
You need to give me sudo
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If you are not just joking, could you please post in the Free Alpine Linux Shell Account thread? It's okay if you are just kidding around. So, no worries! 😸
I saw A LOT of these while I was at Microcenter last time:
https://www.microcenter.com/product/646649/evolve-iii-maestro-116-laptop-computer-dark-grey
$59 laptop that runs FULL Windows 10 with an LTE MODEM!
The Windows license alone is worth more than the laptop
I am a representative of Advin Servers
That's pretty good! I wonder how heavy it is - I may Google it.
[Edit] 1.4Kg!
For under 1Kg:
My favourite Toshiba Click Mini picked up second-hand. ~8 hours battery life charged (2A preferably) by USB-B. Running Linux Mint/Win10. ((Goes off to charge it up.))
Trickier to find and relatively chunky charger, is my fallback Sony VGN-TZ11.
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
Damn, thats a good deal. I use a 12" 2015 Macbook for my lightweight SSH machine. Its only 0.92Kg and still more than quick enough for most tasks.
Probably due an upgrade though, I've owned it for 7 years....
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/tk6hdp/evolve_iii_maestro_ebook_116/
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
no longer carried by my neighborhood Microcenter
Great while it lasted!
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Almost similar specs for Coconics laptop I paid 4x the price. But used for a project that earned 10x of that, so all good 👍
(Or that’s how I convince myself)
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$14.99 Dell Chromebook 11 P22T 11.6" N2840 2.58GHz 4GB 16GB ChromeOS: https://www.ebay.com/itm/115096653039
Light. Battery life is fantastic. It has a hackable firmware, so you can easily install *nix if you want (I did). Uses the classic "big jack" (7.4mm diameter) Dell power adapters.
Buy 2 (or 4), and have a backup ready to rage. Lowend af.
does the lack of Super key annoy you in any way?
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Aye. I could never use this keyboard for daily activities. The other big downside is that the "power" button is where "backspace" should be. I highly recommend re-mapping that nonsense.
+1 for Chromebook. Mine has incredible battery life, is snappy and fast, has Linux container built-in (debian; enable easily), is quiet (fan-less) and can be charged with USB-C. Light-weigth, great wifi chip. Cost me like 130€. I've got an Acer CB-315.
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Can you show me what power adapter would be suitable for this Chromebook? The listing doesn't come with one I realize.
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Lenovo Duet 5 Chromebook with 8 GB RAM and 128 GB disk was $100 off for Black Friday at Best Buy, $399 instead of $499. Still too expensive! But maybe worth it because of very wonderful OLED touchscreen. Also it's aarm64 so I can run Xv6 on it a biit more easily. Shipping took a long time. I've had it a couple of weeks now. One big difference is main filesystem now mounted read only. Even /usr/local is read only. It used to be that whatever you put in /usr/local survived OS reloads and powerwashes when switching Developer Mode on and off. Maybe it still does, but I haven't yet tried switching /usr/local back to writeable. Seems fast and well made overall. Excellent battery life. @terrorgen Works great for ssh! Can use ChromeOS ssh client or (I believe) any Android ssh app. Friendly greetings from Sonora!
Dear Tom @Not_Oles,
Still way above what I am willing to spend 😃
I am hooked on the Dell, just need to know if I have the right adapter before I make the jump.
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Amazon is asking $235. Pirates!
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Dell makes at least 6 different adapters of at least 4 different wattages that I know of (all 19.5V, which is all that matters) that work with that Chromebook. That Chromebook, from factory, comes with a 45W adapter. You can use the 45W, 65W, 90W, or 130W adapters. ANY Dell big barrel (big end/jack of 7.4mm) of those wattages will work. Most IT nuts (or computer shops) will probably give you one from their box. The Dell 65W & 90W adapters are some of the most common (and longest lasting) laptop adapters in North America.
Examples:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/234841949246
https://www.ebay.com/itm/354490570287
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Dell-Chromebook-11-Regulatory-Model-P22T-65W-Genuine-Original-OEM-Laptop-Charger-AC-Adapter-Power-Cord/314825940
Here you can see one such (3rd party) adapter for sale. Notice it has the big jack and an adapter to neck it down to Dell's modern small tip:
https://www.amazon.com/Powseed-Replacement-Chromebook-Inspiron-Latitude/dp/B0784FK71L/
Sounds good, but personally, anything above 300€ I'd get a "regular" Windows/FreeDOS laptop. Chromebooks are great for what they do, but also for their competitive browsing. I'm sure they have and will continue to improve a lot, but for me not worth spending more than 300€ on it now. Just my two cents though. OLED and touch sound great though. I'm sure you'll have fun
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
I bought the cheapest Dell laptop I could find a few years ago prior to travelling in China for a couple of months. In part, because I wanted to not care at all about having it stolen and/or lost, but also to get a completely fresh machine as I didn't want any risk of accidentally leaking any important authentication tokens/passwords, and I wanted a machine that I knew I wouldn't particularly want to use when I was back home in case it got filled with malware (who knows what random malware might get injected into web pages on unknown networks).
I found something for just over £100, even included a Windows licence and CD drive, but that thing was so heavy at well over 1kg. So, while it did fulfil its purpose, I never took it out of my hotel room and I've never wanted to lug it on holiday anywhere else since. It was also horrifically slow, but fine for price and doing only very basic tasks and it was incredibly useful having a real computer so I could backup photos, videos and Garmin GPS logs (I was doing a lot of walking in scenic places and up mountains), and also for making an additional copy onto an external drive in case the laptop was lost.
So, overall, I'd recommend a cheap laptop solution, but mostly because it can be considered throwaway. The weight can be a real nuisance though.
I used E4200 laptops for years, before the current Toshiba Z930. Lightweight & generally very reliable: old DualCore though.
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
Yeah, my main laptop is a Dell XPS 13 from 2015. Has the amazing high DPI touchscreen and it's pretty light. I also now have a MacBook Air M1 for work, and it's the same form factor. It's actually quite handy that they both fit into the same carry case.
It's actually quite weird how the prices on this range have gone though. When I bought this in 2015, when the new model was just launched, it cost £1000. The updated version available now has a much better CPU and more memory, but for the model with the same screen it's over £1500 now.
Just for fun
I’m using crouton right now. Might be better to install directly on the hardware… 🤔
@hornet how did you install Linux?
The rest of my gibberish notes:
"
Now, how to get sound & touchpad working in LXDE & OpenBox….
How to get touchpad working in LXDE & OpenBox…..
create a file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Elan Touchpad"
Driver "libinput"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Option "Tapping" "on"
Option "NaturalScrolling" "true"
Option "ClickMethod" "clickfinger"
EndSection
*I deleted the last line: - Option "ClickMethod" "clickfinger" - after I discovered that it disabled the right-click button. Some of those options/variables/names/values are a bit cryptic: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/libinput
Sound:
alsa-base/alsa.conf not needed. Just the SOF bin thing: sof-bin-v2.2
https://github.com/thesofproject/sof-bin/releases
More:
Papirus icon theme
Install SUDO, rsync, Firefox-ESR, nm-tray (that it?), lxappearance, Leafpad, Xarchiver, VLC
"
Oh, thinking about it, somewhere I have one of the original Asus Aspire EEE things. I guess it must be in the house somewhere, but I've not seen it for about a decade!
I traveled all around Asia for a year with an Aspire One about a decade ago. Had Ubuntu 10.04 running so nice on it with XFCE. I miss that little machine, it was perfect for me then.
To keep it short, buy compact foldable keyboard and connect to your phone.
Just want to provide a closure for those who have helped.
I got a Dell Chromebook 11 for $30-ish without the charger as i have a few lying around, install UEFI from mrchromebox and installed Linux.
Cute little machine with 8-9 hour battery life.
Did not regret the purchase.
Thanks guys!
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