Hi!

A few days ago, I bought a Linode 1024, and I've been doing a few tests with it. Obviously, when you first access to your VM, you must do that using the Lish tools in "Remote Access" inside Manager.

And when you do the initial configuration stuff in a server, it isn't so rare to create basic users, assign them passwords... The problem is, it appears that, at least, "Lish via Ajaxterm" tool doesn't seem to allow other characters than the ones included in basic 7-bit ASCII table. Why am I saying this? Because, when you type normal text, it's obvious that this occurs, but when you introduce passwords for users, the characters are not shown and you don't know what's being recognized. And one of the most basic rules about passwords, is that you should use symbols and not-only-letters characters.

Them problem is that, later, you may want to change those passwords using SSH access, which has no problems with these symbols. So, if you set a password with these extended characters at Lish, you won't be able to log in using SSH, and viceversa.

And... What if you change the root password using SSH and you make a mistake configuring your virtual machine, so you're not able to connect via SSH? In that case, you can't access Lish neither, so your VM is inaccessible.

All this happened to me. Because I live in Spain, I have a non-US keyboard, and I have symbols on it that are not 7-bit ASCII. And I'm not talking about rare Unicode characters, I'm talking about common extended ASCII characters such as:

Ç ç [all-kinds-of-letters-with-accents] £ º ª ¡ ¿ ñ Ñ

These characters (and/or others) may be present in most keyboards outside USA (or English speaking countries).

This should be solved in some way. Or, at least, a message in big, bold, red letters should be shown in the Manager.

Bye!

First of all, I don't think you actually have to use Lish. As I recall you get to pick a root password as you deploy, and can then ssh directly to the Linode (as root, with said password, as per the information available in the remote access tab).


As for Lish, I would strongly recommend using ssh as the primary means of accessing Lish as well (instructions available in the Remote access tab), the Ajax terminal is not fully functional and in my opinion is only suitable for an emergency situation where ssh is for some reason not an option.


Edit: I should also add that you can change your root password of you linode from the Rescue tab in the manager.

Yes, you can choose a root password when you deploy. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to log in to the system. But this is not the problem, as this password is introduced using a HTML form. I'm talking about changing the password from the system's console, or adding other users.



If that's the case, they should warn about it. They should put a message saying "hey, this is experimental, be careful when introducing non US ASCII symbols".



Sincerely, there's only one thing I can say about this: oooopsss

I just don't see why you would need or even want to do this from the system console specifically when you could just as well log into your linode normally via ssh and do the same thing there...?




Agreed. In my opinion the Ajaxterm is way too prominent in the Lish section in the manager considering it has some fairly major flaws (and varying results depending on the browser in use).

The problem is that Linode offers methods A, B and C of doing this. You could think method A is the most obvious, and I don't deny that. I just say that, if methods B and C are available, maybe other users (less experimented?) could use them. And if method B has problems, they should solve this, warn about this, or stop offering method B, so A and C are the methods available.

One of the reasons I chose and stick with linode is the SSH LISH, lots of companies have the ajax terms which are PANTS.

Another worthy note is that linode runs lish on port 22,443 and 2200 so if you're somewhere weird that restricts port access 443 is going to be open since it's the https port.

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Or look at the "problem" as it really is. Linode is a provider of virtual servers, you install, setup and maintain your server, including controlling remote access to it; SSH or what ever floats your boat. The LISH console is your equivalent, as close as it's going to get, to physical console access. If it makes you feel better, pretend you're sitting in a noisy server room when using LISH and you want to get out of there as quickly as possible and do the rest of your stuff remotely from the comfort of your nice, quite office.

It's as simple as this: Linode provides you a tool to manage your server, but that tool has errors. This is a forum to report bugs, so I report it. Even considering your explanation, the error I'm reporting is comparable to a noisy server room with a keyboard that has dead keys. Yes, I could use my own keyboard, but the one provided by Linode has dead keys. And I warn about that.

Ajaxterm is freeware that (a) is a bit sucky and (b) hasn't been updated in nearly three years. There's not much than Linode can do apart from post a warning or stop using it.

_________________
/ Peter

USians can also experience this random-buttons-don't-work-right behavior by using Chrome.

I pretty much treat it as a read-only quick-peek-at-the-console tool, especially if it's a new/temporary Linode and I don't yet have ssh access to lish set up. Once I start typing, she's gonna break.

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Yes, that's another "feature" of the tool. And I use Firefox, under Ubuntu. It's specially remarkable when using combinations of keys, like CONTROL+(something), etc. You must insist to get them recognized.



That's the idea

Well, yeah, there is something that they can do. They're running a commercial service that uses ajaxterm; they can throw some dev time at it and fix a few of the more glaring bugs. It's not an unreasonable expectation. I'm of the opinion that Linode should either fix ajaxterm, or discontinue using it (or plaster some warnings about the various showstopper bugs like not working in Chrome or with non-ASCII characters).

Even just not showing it as the first alternative in the Lish section in the manager would probably be a good start.

little off-topic, sorry.

usr01, without taking into account this question, are you satisfied with the service of linode? Are CPU and IO speed enough?
Do you feel positive changes in comparison with previous provider?

Just because I was one of these users who gave you advice to try Linode.

I'm fully satisfied, there's a HUGE leap in CPU and IO speed from my old Liquidweb VPS. But I haven't completed the migration of my website, so I must wait a bit more to be 100% sure about this (now, I'm 95% sure).

Thanks for your advise