If you ever find yourself in a hurry to get access to a Linux shell but don’t easily have one at hand (e.g. a workstation or a raspberry pi or a VPS), it’s possible to quickly get access to an ephemeral instance in the cloud.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of trusted providers:
Google Cloud Shell
Welcome to Google Cloud Shell, a tool for managing resources hosted on Google Cloud Platform! The machine comes pre-installed with the Google Cloud SDK and other popular developer tools.
Your 5GB home directory will persist across sessions, but the VM is ephemeral and will be reset approximately 20 minutes after your session ends. No system-wide change will persist beyond that.
Type “gcloud help” to get help on using Cloud SDK. For more examples, visit https://cloud.google.com/shell/docs/quickstart and https://cloud.google.com/shell/docs/examples
Type “cloudshell help” to get help on using the “cloudshell” utility. Common functionality is aliased to short commands in your shell, for example, you can type “dl ” at Bash prompt to download a file. Type “cloudshell aliases” to see these commands.
Type “help” to see this message any time. Type “builtin help” to see Bash interpreter help.
See also: https://cloud.google.com/shell
Github Codespaces
👋 Welcome to Codespaces! You are on our default image.
- It includes runtimes and tools for Python, Node.js, Docker, and more. See the full list here: https://aka.ms/ghcs-default-image
- Want to use a custom image instead? Learn more here: https://aka.ms/configure-codespace
🔍 To explore VS Code to its fullest, search using the Command Palette (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P or F1).
📝 Edit away, run your app as usual, and we’ll automatically make it available for you to access.
See also: https://github.com/codespaces
Tip: Replace https://github.com/username/repository with
https://github.dev/username/repository to automatically open the
repository within a github codespace. Alternatively, if you have
github shortcuts enabled, press . while in the repository page.