Shell access

Access

You can login to your shell account using ssh:

ssh username@sphinx.mythic-beasts.com

Use the password we provided in your welcome email.

Changing your password

When you are given your username and initial password, the first thing that you should do is change your password to one that only you know. To do this, login and type passwd. You will be prompted to type your old password, and then to enter your new password twice.

Finger information

You can control how much information is given out by our server to remote users by the finger servers. By default, no information will be given out. In order to change this, create a file called .finger in your home directory. This will give out your real name, and whether you are logged in or not, and the contents of the .plan file in your home directory, if you have created one. If a user specifies a long query, eg.

finger -l user@sphinx.mythic-beasts.com

Then the finger service will also return the contents of the .pgpkey file, if you have created one. This is a good way of distributing your PGP/GPG public key.