Segfault offers free unlimited Root Servers. A new server (inside a Virtual Machine) is created for every SSH connection.
- Dedicated Root Server for every user.
- Pre-installed tools on Kali-Linux.
- Outgoing traffic is routed through NordVPN/CryptoStorm/Mullvad.
- Reverse TCP/UDP port on a public IP.
- Transparent TOR to connect to .onion addresses.
- Log in via .onion, .gsocket or direct ssh (port 22 or 443).
- Encrypted DNS traffic (DNS over HTTPS).
- Pre-configured .onion web server. Just put your files in /onion.
- Encrypted storage in /sec and /home with your password.
- Encrypted storage is only accessible while you are logged in. Keys are wiped on log out.
- Only the user can decrypt the data. We do not have the key.
- No Logs.
This is fascinating idea. I created an idea like this on top of firecracker and custom golang ssh client to build something like this for my own personal use case (the abstraction part of pricing and how to connect it seemed the more difficult part for me atleast)
What stack does this use underneath?
Good luck with launch, this idea is similar to railway in terms of pricing model. I discussed about it a few comments back and I think its an interesting idea and we are seeing alternatives within such pricing model
Also are you using some cloud provider itself or building it yourself, I'd be interested in so many details to discover
Have a nice day and looking forward to ya response! Good luck with your project!
This is all written in python and the AsyncSSH package. Firecracker for VMs with memory mapped files for ram. Paddle for billing. Caddy as a reverse proxy for certificates.
It works on top of very large bare metal instances.
I'm thinking maybe open sourcing but it will take some more work on the code to make it publishable w/o embarrassing myself :)
I am interested in which bare metal instances from which provider are you using if I may ask since I had a similar idea (as mentioned before) and I wanted to deploy it on hetzner but I was always worried that hetzner's policy might be too harsh for it even though they are one of the cheapest options out there
Which server provider did you end up using?
Thanks once again for your in depth response, these are the things I come to hackernews for! cheers and looking to ya response
Do you do something similar to the modifications codesandbox has done to firecracker, regarding mmap ram? (They have multiple blogposts about it on their blog)
As others pointed out, this isn't a very strong offer, but I'm wondering, if it would be competitive (price/performance wise), does anyone have a use-case for this? I mean, I can name quite a few if it would offer me some hardware that my laptop I'm using to access it just doesn't have, like some A100-level GPUs and stuff, then it would be fantastic: login, do your job, forget about it until the next time you need it. But for anything else it feels like I'd just prefer something more… traditional? Like, DigitalOcean droplet, AWS instance, Linode VPS, you get the idea. At least a managed Docker container. Even if it's technically more expensive and less performant, we are talking like $5/mo, and you can pretty much always easily scale-up or buy additional storage volume, all these things. And it's all yours, for pretty much all practical intents and purposes.
Does anyone have a legit use-case when it would be actually nicer to use this on-demand type of service? (Once more, unless we are talking some serious on-demand hardware.)
For these kinds of services, I think the main value would be UX improvements, such as offering an environment preconfigured with a certain set of tools (e.g. nmap, tmux, curl, etc.) and other defaults. SSH in, and don't deal with a web panel. They may also be valuable in a learning environment where you don't want student servers running 24/7.
Other than those points, offering access to more powerful hardware is probably the best use-case.
A legit use-case is long-lived but infrequently accessed sessions.
Think debugging, learning environments, or experiments where the hard part is recreating state, not paying for compute. A VPS can do it, but suspend/resume avoids either leaving it running or constantly rebuilding it.
$36/mo for 2/4/50 VPS without public IP... Ok, I get the idea that the service is for non-regular use, but I think even $0.005 per hour ($3.6/mo) of suspended state is too expensive. The same config in Hetzner is just $4.09/mo for 24/7 working VPS with public IPv4 address
Have fun racing to the bottom. If I can get an unsuspended VM at 5$ a month, the suspendable one has to be significantly faster or significantly cheaper. Then again, take my gnawing with a boulder of salt for I will not be a customer. I have my own server that is running 24/7 already.
Yeah this is a cool idea but the pricing is way too high. For anything I would use this for I could just set up any VPS from any provider for cheaper and it’s stateful in the sense that it’s my own VPS and my files/applications/tmux sessions/whatever will be there the next time I SSH in.
The UX here seems really nice, but after spending a couple minutes setting up the VPS, I essentially get the same UX (aka just ssh in and so stuff).
I’d potentially be willing to pay some premium over a standard VPS, but certainly not a 10x premium…honestly probably not even 2x.
Maybe I'm being dense, but could someone kindly explain to me the "Web App" example on that Sprites page?
"30 hours of wake time per month (~5 concurrent users avg), averaging 10% of 2 CPUs and 1 GB RAM"
Does that mean it would sit available but using 0% when there's nobody on the site, and just bill for usage when web traffic is causing the server to do work? So if the web app went a month with no visitors it would cost nothing (except for the file storage fees)?
Sort of, but maybe not quite? When you spin up an EC2 spot instance, it's a fresh instance with whatever AMI you load into it, and it's a fresh boot at that time. (You can save persistent data to an EBS volume that you create once up front and then attach to each new instance, of course.)
With this service, it seems like the VM underpinning your session is suspended (like as if you were to suspend-to-RAM or hibernate your laptop), and then resumed the next time you sign in, so not only is the filesystem in the same state as it was during your last session, but any background processes that have spun up since then are resumed as well, and are still running.
I think this is mostly true functionally, but not experientially.
A VPS gives you persistent state, but it still assumes you’re willing to manage that state. The distinction here seems less about what’s possible and more about who carries the ongoing operational burden: the user or the service.
It's funny to me as well. Being initially inspired by Yelp's dockersh I wrote a functional MVP of the same concept around 2 years ago. It used a custom Go sshd-proxy to spawn kata-container backed pods in kubernetes. I used it personally for a very brief period of time, and found it useful as a small timesaver for testing things. I wasn't comfortable with monetizing it though. After seeing a few of these pop up, I realize maybe I missed my chance to be early.
As far as self-hosting goes, it looks like there are some FOSS projects now, eg https://containerssh.io/
i looked at containerssh once and it was way to featureful for me. I came up with a simple ssh daemon that basically does spawn arbitary containers on ssh login and destroys on exit: https://github.com/abbbi/sshcont
Pretty sure shellbox.dev has been around for at least 2-3 years though - EDIT nm they have a show HN from two days ago. I must be thinking of a similarly named/sounding service
This is a very cool idea and I like the simplicity of the business model! SSH has a ton of great features and its ergonomics are excellent for terminal enthusiasts. Most of us want to ssh into our cloud compute anyway. As a founder of an ssh platform (https://pico.sh) I just wanted to say welcome and good luck!
Also If you ever want to chat about ssh feel free to reach out!
I've been trying to come up with a hypothetical use case for this. I can't use this as a server without keeping an active session right? I wonder if you could get around this by sshing into itself from inside the primary session. Is that an edge case you've considered?
Maybe this and other future extended features could be configured via some host-accessible mounted conf.d? Otherwise if I forget to use that command on every login, I might just forget, logout, and go on thinking my server is still running.
Readit News
Segfault offers free unlimited Root Servers. A new server (inside a Virtual Machine) is created for every SSH connection.
Different 'tilda' services: OG shell access:What stack does this use underneath?
Good luck with launch, this idea is similar to railway in terms of pricing model. I discussed about it a few comments back and I think its an interesting idea and we are seeing alternatives within such pricing model
Also are you using some cloud provider itself or building it yourself, I'd be interested in so many details to discover
Have a nice day and looking forward to ya response! Good luck with your project!
This is all written in python and the AsyncSSH package. Firecracker for VMs with memory mapped files for ram. Paddle for billing. Caddy as a reverse proxy for certificates.
It works on top of very large bare metal instances.
I'm thinking maybe open sourcing but it will take some more work on the code to make it publishable w/o embarrassing myself :)
I am interested in which bare metal instances from which provider are you using if I may ask since I had a similar idea (as mentioned before) and I wanted to deploy it on hetzner but I was always worried that hetzner's policy might be too harsh for it even though they are one of the cheapest options out there
Which server provider did you end up using?
Thanks once again for your in depth response, these are the things I come to hackernews for! cheers and looking to ya response
Would love to chat about details there
Does anyone have a legit use-case when it would be actually nicer to use this on-demand type of service? (Once more, unless we are talking some serious on-demand hardware.)
Other than those points, offering access to more powerful hardware is probably the best use-case.
Think debugging, learning environments, or experiments where the hard part is recreating state, not paying for compute. A VPS can do it, but suspend/resume avoids either leaving it running or constantly rebuilding it.
Still, there is the advantage of simplicity not having to deal with the web console etc. Some people may enjoy this
The UX here seems really nice, but after spending a couple minutes setting up the VPS, I essentially get the same UX (aka just ssh in and so stuff).
I’d potentially be willing to pay some premium over a standard VPS, but certainly not a 10x premium…honestly probably not even 2x.
"30 hours of wake time per month (~5 concurrent users avg), averaging 10% of 2 CPUs and 1 GB RAM"
Does that mean it would sit available but using 0% when there's nobody on the site, and just bill for usage when web traffic is causing the server to do work? So if the web app went a month with no visitors it would cost nothing (except for the file storage fees)?
With this service, it seems like the VM underpinning your session is suspended (like as if you were to suspend-to-RAM or hibernate your laptop), and then resumed the next time you sign in, so not only is the filesystem in the same state as it was during your last session, but any background processes that have spun up since then are resumed as well, and are still running.
A VPS gives you persistent state, but it still assumes you’re willing to manage that state. The distinction here seems less about what’s possible and more about who carries the ongoing operational burden: the user or the service.
CX23 is €3.49/mo, but you can save 0.50€ if you forgot ipv4.
I really need to share a blog post on doing this exact thing with a VPS, 2 commands to install and setup lxd.
And then client side bash function to just make and connect via tmux and delete when you're done.
Self hosting these services is too easy to do and you can have more control of your data and better specs.
As far as self-hosting goes, it looks like there are some FOSS projects now, eg https://containerssh.io/
Work in progress/alpha, but the core functionality works as a proof of concept. Super exciting working on this kind of stuff.
Also If you ever want to chat about ssh feel free to reach out!
ssh shellbox.dev keepalive box1