[FEATURE REQUEST] SSH Implementation

Finally we are getting somewhere! I was at the point of thinking that this thread was already dead and I was at the point of abandoning it until you finally budged. If I find an alternative for SSH, is it possible for me to post it? Also, I am really exited about the external git deploy system you are working on. Be sure to tell us about when you are going to release it and if you are considering of adding a beta program (you really should ). By the way, are you saying that you could add anything to InfinityFree as long as it doesn’t have to do anything with iFastNet?

What happened to Infinity = Free ? Isn’t everything supposed to be free? ;D (JK)

Is this the post where everybody is getting all these ideas? Why not next we try to do Laravel? That’s actually a pretty good framework to implement.

We want composer, laravel and git deploy system.


Also, a quick side note, when do you estimate your service will become fully independent?

Yes, everything that InfinityFree has is free, but giving you every possible feature that any web host could ever include for free is literally impossible. It has to be paid for somehow, after all, hence why some features (like SSh access) simply don’t exist here.

I hate to say it, but it might not ever be fully independent. As someone who has tried iFastNet’s MOFH service before, I don’t know if there was a feature to export or transfer client’s hosting accounts to another service (it’s been a few years however, so even there wasn’t it could’ve changed but perhaps not). Also, running a hosting service on your own servers yourself is expensive, hence why the Admin chose to work with iFastNet in the first place (explained earlier by them).

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Just to be clear: the idea I shared was just a thought. I think it could be a very interesting feature, but there are still many questions which need to be answered and many technical challenges which will need to be tackled. I’m not even sure this feature would ever see the light of day, let alone when it would and what exact shape it will take.

Basically, yes. I’m primarily limited by the possible interactions with the hosting platform, both programmatically and manually. But that doesn’t mean I can’t make any features myself. The Let’s Encrypt integration in the client area is a good example of something that’s possible: it makes creative use of existing features (custom SSL certificates and CNAME records) to work.

Vendor lock-in and cost are two important issues.

The other issue is that it’s simply very complicated. iFastNet has a team of developers and two decades of experience building a free hosting platform. While there are many design decisions I don’t agree with, it’s hard to argue that many of the core features of the platform are stable and battle tested.

I would say I have enough industry experience and technical knowledge to be able to design a good free hosting platform, but the amount of labor it would take to make it a reality is just too much. And even then it’s debatable whether the end result is actually an improvement.

So for the foreseeable future, InfinityFree will stick with iFastNet.

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You could add a python server too like that wise

I’m sorry, but you’ve lost me here. How exactly do you figure SSH access could give you the option to host other programming languages? Even if you could get access to a Python interpreter, how would you make this application accessible from the internet?

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Like, instead of js we could use Python and some commands like pip, etc

Interesting. But as far as i know JS is client side unlike Python. Commands are disabled due the security purpose, So pip is also disabled and Cannot be enabled.

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Which part of “js” do you mean? We do “support” client side Javascript (as in, our servers can distribute JS script files for the browser to run). But we don’t support Node.js (server side Javascript), nor do we have any plans to do so.

The thing is that we would also need to offer a server component to actually run web applications with it (like Passenger), not just the ability to run commands.

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They did say that it cannot be excessive usage of disk space or bandwidth though. Plus they have to share the CPU power fairly.

It is free, but iFastNet gets to manipulate what is free, so they can offer you or convince you to pay for their plans. ‘There ain’t no free lunch.’ Understand the meaning? There is always a price for something free. It might not be obvious but there always a price.

The admin needs enough capital plus enough income to mantain it’s independance, plus he needs to earn money. Disk space and storage space are the main factors plus CPU in cost.
Laravel is possible to implement, it just a headache to (I seen people doing and asking about it in the forum).

@shreejalmaharjan What do you mean by a python server? A simplehttp server that acts like an actual server? Or an interpreter. Plus giving shell access is a bit risky. There are always almost at least a security hole. (Security holes are discovered every day.)

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Hey @Admin . What about being able to use python in your websites? That sounds like a pretty cool feature you could add.

Also, what would it take to make a cPanel of your own?

I’m confused, is this Python in Web pages? It’s Django not Python itself.

Python support is available on premium hosting as part of CloudLinux. It might be possible to offer this on free hosting too. But I personally find the cPanel experience for anything other than PHP to be quite frustrating, due to the harsh limitations caused by trying to fit the language to a web hosting platform.

The only benefit to cPanel’s implementation is that it’s much cheaper to find cPanel hosting with Python support than it is to host an application on a proper application hosting platform like Heroku. Because in terms of features and easy of use, cPanel’s implementation doesn’t come close.

A lot of time and effort, primarily. As in, many thousands of hours.

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Well, as with what the Admin said, it pretty much not really possible right now. But you could have a compiler which turns python into PHP for execution.

That’s why. I meant Django.

I know this might be like a very trivial feature, but what about adding a feature where you can
change / import themes to the cPanel?

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