Hi all —
Approved by @jbiloh on 2026-05-19 (ticket #RHI-533539). Posting per Giveaways & Freebies category rules.
Same crew as tb.tahio.eu (free IPv6 tunnel broker we ran the April 2025 freebie for) — different scope, same "non-commercial community project" energy. Full breakdown of who-and-why on the About page.
shellter.me is a small, free FreeBSD pubnix shell host run by two old IRCnet enthusiasts in their spare time. Free by design: no paid tier, no upsell, no affiliate, no autoaccept bot.
🐚 What you get
- Bash account on FreeBSD 15
- 60 MB ZFS dataset (lz4 compressed, refquota enforced) — enough for dotfiles, configs, small logs
- 3× dedicated IPv6 addresses out of our
2a03:94e0:257e::/48 — bind your bots, ZNC, weechat-relay each to its own
- Self-service reverse DNS on each of those IPv6 addresses 🌐 — set a PTR right from the dashboard at
shellter.me/dashboard, or with ptrup <addr> <hostname> from your shell. Not common on free pubnixes; we built it because we wanted it on tb.tahio.eu first.
- Inbound TCP/v4 slot (50 ports per user) — enough for an eggdrop or two
- IRC + multiplexer stack out of the box: irssi, weechat, znc, eggdrop, erssi, repartee, tmux, screen
- Hardened by default 🛡️: per-user pf anchors, ZFS-isolated homes, default-deny egress (HTTP/HTTPS pass-through only — no SMTP, no scanning)
🔑 Sign-up flow
- Pick a username at shellter.me/signup and confirm your email (or sign in with GitHub).
- Your request lands on
#shellter @ IRCnet. A human admin reads it.
- One of us types
!accept your-username — the daemon provisions the shell and you get the generated password by email.
ssh [email protected] -p 2222 — and you're in.
No card. No autoaccept bot. Signups are reviewed by me or yooz manually.
🤝 Fair use
- One human = one account.
- No SMTP egress, no scanning, no abuse.
- Idle accounts get a polite warning before pruning — no quiet shutdown.
- 60 MB is real. If you outgrow it, you've outgrown free.
✅ Trust + transparency
- Just got the Host Rep tag (ticket #YNI-721703, 2026-05-21).
- Track record on tb.tahio.eu — over a year live, with a security incident along the way that we disclosed openly on the LET thread and fixed promptly. Full disclosure is how we operate.
- People behind it: see /about — Jerzy Dąbrowski (@elusiVeRPG on LET,
kofany on IRCnet) and Dominik Juźwikowski (yooz on IRCnet). Hobby, not a business.
💬 Contact
- IRC:
#shellter @ IRCnet
- LET: ping @elusiVeRPG
- This thread
Hope to see some of you in #shellter soon. Don't be a stranger. ✌️
