SDF Public Access Unix System ... est. 1987

100 points by kmstout a day ago on hackernews | 25 comments

Love SDF. They run some great services for members, like a mastodon instance and pixelfed.

These are really cool services but to have a proper blast from the past you need to ssh in and join the chat on com or the discussions on bboard

TedDoesntTalk | a day ago

ssh? Don’t you mean telnet?

yjftsjthsd-h | 22 hours ago

SSH is 30 years old; it's fine

mulderc | 16 hours ago

Telnet is just a better name though.

yjftsjthsd-h | 13 hours ago

Is it? I don't get any intuitive connection from "telnet" to "shell access over the network", personally. Although, by the same token I would be open to reusing the rsh name; "remote shell" does seem obvious.

: mulderc | 13 hours ago
Telnet sounds cooler.

jmclnx | a day ago

Plus you can easily setup your own Gopher and/or Gemini site and you can have your WEB site there too.

FWIW, I migrated my WEB Site to Gemini with Gopher as a mirror. Maintaining those on SDF is far easier than maintaining via *panels.

ChrisArchitect | a day ago

Some previous discussions:

April https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47819410

2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31076886

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940790

2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14134798

mac3n | a day ago

see also theworld.com

fragmede | 19 hours ago

do those dial-up numbers still work?

: mghackerlady | 16 hours ago
Idk, but apparently they still do webhosting

moecables | a day ago

I have an SDF login still and I go in there every once in awhile but don't really know what others use it for

emigre | a day ago

I was hosting a site there, but the administration is unresponsive and I gave up on them. Lovely place, though.

user3939382 | a day ago

It’s great when you want to check on a server or IP from an outside network. You can do that from a phone but with SDF you have your full desktop terminal if you like and a clean cache.

: binaryturtle | a day ago
They allow port scans?
I did use nmap on a Linux VM going over the free ProtonVPN for this purpose, but at some point Proton broke something (it may be related to their VPN accelerator feature) and checking any port always reports "Open" (even if it's not), so sadly that made this cool use case entirely useless for me. It definitely was nice to know you had no open ports other than the ones you purposefully opened. :)

jbaber | 18 hours ago

I still host my site there. I sometimes use it as a private git remote. The people you meet there in bboard and com are necessarily very interesting :)

It's a webhost. It's a BBS. It's one of the largest shared unix systems to learn your way around the shell without a computer.

baruchel | 6 hours ago

I use it for several purposes : a few PHP scripts serving custom RSS files, easy temporary space for exchanging epub books between my phone and my e-reader, etc.

emigre | a day ago

The Interim Computer Museum in Tukwila, WA, is a partner organization.

https://icm.museum/

user3939382 | a day ago

They also have their own streaming radio. Awesome list of tools. One of the few remaining shining lights of our original hacker culture, in the sense of the term from this forum’s name. Absolutely love SDF.

naggie | a day ago

See also www.polarhome.com which has sadly closed shell accounts and shutdown machines.

Discovering SSH, bash, linux etc in 2004 was magical for me. I always liked the idea of SDF and polarhome and did a similar thing with a few friends for a while, albeit with limited success. Proper internet.

iamhamm | 22 hours ago

I love them but unfortunately it’s just not as robust as it once was with regards to support. I’ve been locked out for some time now but can’t get a response from anyone. I know it’s volunteer driven but ultimately if people can’t rely on it, they’ll move on. Still happy I was able to support all these years but absent my account getting fixed, this will be my last year of support.

: sen | 15 hours ago
Yeah I’ve been locked out for something like a year due to a config issue on the server side and haven’t been able to get a fix via email or irc so just gave up.
There’s lots of good retro-style communities around these days so I’ve moved on.
: emigre | 14 hours ago
Exactly my experience with it, and I did the same, which is a pity.

bilbo-b-baggins | 16 hours ago

Still got my account from the 90s