a very challenging question?

[Tim Chase]

On December 23, 2014, Karen Lewellen wrote:
> 1. I love shellworld and cannot conceive of needing  to change to
> an either or circumstance.  both is the only thing I will consider,

No sweat -- I'm very much from the school of "whatever works for you
to get things done".  The biggest reasons to hang onto the shellworld
account would include (1) that's where your email already comes so
you wouldn't have to update all your contacts with a new email
address, (2) somebody else manages the headache of administering and
backing up your space there, and (3) if something gets screwed up,
it's someone else's headache. That 2nd one is usually worth the price
alone (and part of why I have a hosting service).

Advantages of migrating some of the services from shellworld:

- If you migrate all of them, you can cancel your shellworld
  account and save the cost you were paying.  I don't know what that
  costs, but given that I would generally want to keep my email
  address the same if I could, it would have to be a pretty steep
  cost for me to consider switching.

- you can install whatever you want and aren't beholden to whatever
  limitations that shellworld might impose on you.  Though if
  shellworld really is running FreeBSD and it's a somewhat modern
  version, you might be able to get the admins to create a jail in
  which you can play and install whatever you want.

- security of keeping your data locally rather than entrusting it to
  some other 3rd party

- it's a learning experience and can be a lot of fun.

I think if I were in your situation, I'd do what you suggest and keep
both.

> having elinks working with java scripting in place alone is worth
> the price I pay  for shellworld.

I was reading through how to activate javascript in elinks and it
does seem to require jumping through some hoops.

> the dos ssh telnet package is called ssh2d386.

Okay, cool.  It's easier to help when I know for certain that it
actually is SSH instead of telnet.

> 3.  the problem with the Linux box is that it is not configured for
> dsl at all, no ip address or anything *that I can tell*

Can you connect to it on your local network but not get it to connect
to the internet?

A common situation I've found is that an ISP will only give out one
IP address.  If you have that coming into a switch (rather than a
router with NAT, Network Address Translation), the first device on
the network gets the one allocated IP address, and anything else is
hosed.  Usually you need a router connected into your DSL modem.  The
router takes that one public IP address and then hands out private
internal IP addresses to all the devices that connect to it (your
DOS machine, your Linux box, any mobile devices you might have, your
coffee-pot, fridge, etc). If that's what you already have configured,
then it would take some more detective work.

But that would be my first stop in trouble-shooting since Linux
home-networking usually comes up with zero fuss.

> no screen reader that is usable, it must be checked in person, by
> someone knowledgeable in debian. Although I have  been on the
> debian discussion list for years, I have not found anyone in
> Toronto with either the skill, or the ability to understand the

Hrm.  A shame that Dallas and Toronto are so far apart.  It sounds
like a fun undertaking to me.  If you/we can manage to get the
Linux machine online, I'd be glad to remote into it to help in
whatever way I can.

-tim