Ok, this isn’t exactly a a real shell, but it supposedly does a good giving you some shell-like features. Neat. I really just wanted to post this link so I’d have it when I get some time to install it and check it out. It can be found by clicking right here. I’ve done a cut-n-paste of the features :

* What can CGI-Shell do, what can’t it do?

CGI-Shell allows the execution of any application and any command on the web-server. Various “comfort-features”, such as a history and auto-completion with the tabulator are included – CGI-Shell offers in principle the same comfort as any other shell does. Unfortunately, applications interacting with the user (those that ask for input from the user), e.g. passwd are still a problem.

* Which rights do I have on the server?

You have the rights of the CGI-directories owner – normally user-rights.

* Can I do “bad things” with CGI-Shell?

You can do “bad things” with almost everything – but that’s not why I wrote CGI-Shell. Rather, it intends to help webpage-owners to maintain there page comfortably. If CGI-Shell also makes webhosters pay a little more attention to their server’s rights-management – or even better – gives you SSH-access, I’m happy, too.

* How does CGI-Shell work?

CGI-Shell consists of 2 parts. One is a little CGI-script placed on the server. It gets commands as parameter, executes them on the server and returns their output.
The other part is on your own computer and simulates a shell. All commands you put in, are sent to the script on the server – and the returned output is presented in the shell.
If you want to know it more exactly you have to read the source code.

* Is CGI-Shell secure?

At the moment, CGI-Shell is more like Telnet than like SSH. The password-protection is realised with htaccess – so username and password fly without encryption through the web. Also all other communication between you and the web-server not encrypted right now. But I will change this soon.

* Which operating systems are supported?

Until now, I tested CGI-Shell only with Linux. Actually, it should run everywhere Perl is running and some Perl-modules are available – e.g. with BSD or maybe even Windows.