I want to teach one of my students about ssh keys, logging into a VPS and all that jazz. I was using digital ocean personally, but the bare bones setup is $5.
Is there a free/cheap version of a VPS?
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If you create a DigitalOcean account using this specific link, it gives you $100 credit that is good for two months. You can shut down the server(s) before the two months is up to avoid billing.
Another way to do it is to turn an old laptop or Raspberry Pi into a server and SSH into that.
A third way is to download VirtualBox and create a virtual server on your computer and SSH into it.
A fourth way is to to install Docker, load up a Linux server in a Docker container, and then SSH into it. (If you haven’t used Docker, I could demo it at a meetup. It should be pretty easy to do, and Docker is great.)
There are probably more ways, but those are a few that should work.
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There is also Vagrant:
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One more thing I just thought of — DigitalOcean only bills by the hour, so it’s about 0.6 cents per hour or about 17 cents per day. If you run a server overnight or a couple of days and then shut it down, it’s still just pocket change.
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