SSH managers on Linux?

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edited

Curious what folks are using to organise their remote connections? I liked WinSSHTerm and have tried replacing it with Remote Desktop Manager, but it seems a bit broken (fonts look terrible in a terminal, sftp doesn't work, RDP sort of works, but it's not great).

RDP is not a must. Folders, ssh, key auth, sftp and scp are the main things I'm looking for. Currently considering Remmina but though I would check if ppl have strong views on this topic before trying the next app.

I'm using cinnamon with mint 22.

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Odd that you have so many issues with Remote Desktop Manager, I use it all the time from my linux desktop, and both rdp and ssh work flawlessly

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I just use ~/.ssh/config

e.g.

Host website
    Hostname some.hostname.foo
    User bob
    Port 1500
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80

For a shared set of hosts at work, you can check a shared SSH include file into got so changes to the cluster can be updated in one place.

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2

And most secondary apps, e.g. git and sshfs, even Gigolo, recognize these aliases. It's the best.

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And vscode uses them for remote ssh development.

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This is the way. Even if you have a lot, it's not hard to pull up a list of options;

❯ cat ~/.ssh/config | grep 'Host ' | awk '{print $2}'

Or you can make it interactive;

❯ ssh $(cat ~/.ssh/config | grep 'Host ' | awk '{print $2}' | fzf)

ez pz

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Or just use completion: press tab once or twice after the ssh command (and a space). If that doesn't work, install the bash-completion package.

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Shell completion ftw. Once you grok the double-tab you might start using the terminal more than your filemanager.

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Meh. ssh<space><tab><tab> does the same.

Also, useless use of cat. And grep. 

awk '/Host / {print $2}' ~/.ssh/config | fzf
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Not a GUI, but I keep my ~/.ssh/config clean by splitting my configs into folders, and including them in the main ~/.ssh/config.

I have the folder, ~/.ssh/config.d/, and here's what it looks like:

~/.ssh/config.d
.
├── work
│   ├── dev.config
│   ├── staging.config
│   └── prod.config
└── server
    ├── development.config
    ├── containers.config
    ├── home.config
    ├── pis.config
    └── server.config

Then my ~/.ssh/config looks like this:

Include config.d/work/*
Include config.d/server/*
Include config.d/other/*
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Cool, I did it with my git config a couple weeks ago, I didn't know you could do it with ssh too.

for those interested:

[include]
path = ~/.config/git/shared.ini
path = ~/.config/git/dev-machine.ini
path = ~/.config/git/aliases.ini
path = ~/.config/git/self.ini
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Oh well that's just sexy. Never knew ssh config recognized Include.

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(looks at my 230 line config)

yeah.. maybe

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edited

Konsole (KDE's Terminal) has built-in SSH management features:

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/use-kde-plasmas-konsole-ssh-plugin/

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Thanks for the reminder, I always forget about this feature, I should use it more.

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I had to be a KDE user for 7 years or something to first notice it is there.

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Just the old .ssh/config file, works like a charm on all terminals :)

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Konsole has an SSH Manager plugin you can enable.

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[OP]

that is cool. I hadn't tried konsole before - there are menus for days in here, I'll never get any work done lol. Slick, and makes that fedora kde fling I have been considering more tempting.

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Fedora KDE is what I've settled on for the last couple years. I've used Linux a very long time, this setup has been completely painless since I installed, and always very up to date.

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How about XPipe?

https://xpipe.io/

It can even auto-configure itself by parsing out your ~/.ssh/config so you can keep everything defined there for easy CLI access but also use the GUI when desired.

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[OP]

I will check this out - thank you.

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+1 for XPipe. This is pretty much exactly what OP is asking for. It also does SSH tunneling, SSH reverse-tunneling, manages connections into containers, and many other things. I'm a big fan.

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in my terminal I press ctrl + r and then type the name of the machine

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I hear ya on RDP. Sadly I still need to use that at times so reminna is good.

Otherwise, I just use tmux. Colleagues use https://midnight-commander.org/ for SCP and stuff of you like. I prefer simple rsync and whatever but they seem to like it. Something to look into.

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I just install my keys as needed to the machines and then configure aliases for quick connections. For file transfer with SFTP I'm using Filezilla because its queuing functionality and site management are nice.

I think for what you are looking for, both puTTY and Remmina should be capable as well as the other options suggested here

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The reason you are having trouble finding a replacement is because thats not really how the linux world approaches things.

Learn the terminal, scp, ssh (esp key auth if you havent), sshfs, tmux, vim or emacs and you will find you are incredibly effective at modern admin tasks. If you havent already, look into something like saltstack or ansible to make your life even easier.

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[OP]

I use those tools already and have been administering Linux/bsd/docker for years. What's new for me is using it as a desktop. The existence of scp, ssh etc dont solve this problem and while I find it interesting to learn how other admins are essentially making their own central console out of these components, it is a bit much seeing commenters insist that this is the same thing, or suggesting that anyone who wants a central console for their remote systems must be somehow incompetent. Sysadmins can have different workflow and tooling preferences.

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Folders, ssh, key auth, sftp and scp are the main things I’m looking for.

suggesting that anyone who wants a central console for their remote systems must be somehow incompetent

IMHO that's exactly what ~/.ssh/config using its Include directive as shown in https://lemmy.ml/post/29858248/18510482 

       Include
               Include the specified configuration file(s).  Multiple
               pathnames may be specified and each pathname may contain
               glob(7) wildcards, tokens as described in the “TOKENS”
               section, environment variables as described in the
               “ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES” section and, for user
               configurations, shell-like ‘~’ references to user home
               directories.  Wildcards will be expanded and processed in
               lexical order.  Files without absolute paths are assumed
               to be in ~/.ssh if included in a user configuration file
               or /etc/ssh if included from the system configuration
               file.  Include directive may appear inside a Match or Host
               block to perform conditional inclusion.

from https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/ssh_config.5.html

So what I think people are highlighting is not that your need is wrong, rather that you rather than going back to fundamentals (e.g. lower command-line or even configuration here level stuff) you are looking for more complex and specialize tools. That tends to be reasonable in the Windows world where people are often looking for GUI but in Linux, started from Unix and thus CLI, this is a process that will often lead to disappointment. I believe people who are saying things perceived negatively here are pointing out, maybe poorly, a cultural difference that will be problematic in the future, thus why they are insisting.

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I've been using Linux for almost 30 years, and I agree with you completely. There should be a plethora of tools to organize SSH hosts, but unfortunately none of them are great, or at least I've never particular gelled with any. I just remember the hostnames and what user I happen to use for each, and copy my keys around, because I jump around between a lot of computers.

I did use SSHwifty for a while because then I could just jump into a browser and go to a webpage with all of them. Dunno why I got away from that, it was handy.

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Muon.

Does SSH, SFTP and other stuff.

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I really like Asbru and have been using it for a couple of years. I used Remmina for a little while but never liked its look and feel.

Not too much active development has been going on lately, sadly, but the latest version still works very well.

https://www.asbru-cm.net/

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[OP]

This looks great - thanks!

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Take a look at PortX. Just installed it today in Windows and Fedora 42. I have a Synchthing server where I store a Veracrypt vault with the public keys.

Remmina is great but no Windows option.

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[OP]

That looks pretty good, cheers. Another comment mentioned Tabby, also cross platform.

Both PortX and Tabby seem a whole lot nicer than winsshterm. Shout out to guacamole for a dockerised jump sever solution.

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XPipe is what I use, supports syncing via git, SSH, sftp, RDP, vnc, etc.. And can manage docker containers too. It also has scripts you can define that automatically work on any SSH connection.

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Use Tabby. It is, by far, the closest to a Linux terminal experience. Likely because it's cross platform. I say this as someone that absolutely despises Windows terminal experiences.

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[OP]

tabby looks neat. already has an mcp plugin - impressive.

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[OP]

update to say that tabby is nice for ssh including key auth, and with profiles and groups it gets most of the job done. There is an sftp "plugin" but all it does is summon sftp. Will see if I can get it to open filezilla and use the env vars in calling the command. Setting aside RDP for now as guac looks like a good fit there.

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ssh.serverdomain scripts that immediately can do things like turn on the required vpn. In combo with SSH keys and non port 22, it's ideal

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I would say, like many others, Remmina.

Putty also has a Linux version, so you can use that as well. Its session management is a bit clunky, but it works and it offers some fairly good functionalities.

But ssh is first and foremost a command line tool. As others have said, invest some time to learn its commands and configuration files.

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I'll be watching this discussion, as I'm currently using Remmina. It meet the bare minimum of SSH & RDP, but it doesn't have a clear method to organize connections and instead uses a big list. I also find the interface a tad counterintuitive, so maybe I'm just using it wrong.

It also seems to have a bug where it launches twice whenever I start my computer. So I have to close one.

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[OP]

Portx, tabby and guacamole are my contenders so far. Guac would be needed for the graphical stuff - it's sort of like a jump server running in a docker container that you would vpn into I guess? Neat concept.

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It has groups FYI. Set it under your specific connection settings.

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Uh, I just type ssh or rsync into the terminal and that's it. It's a manageable amount of computers/servers I connect to, so I can remeber their names. Regular ssh stores all the keys or custom ports / IPs in its config. What's the advantage of using some manager?

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Termius?

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[OP]

It is $120 per year for a single user. And to be fair I didn't specify a budget.

Curious though if you use terminus and think that it's worth it? It looks slick but it costs more than my IDE.

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The free tier is pretty decent as is (at least I think there’s a free tier, unless I was grandfathered in or something). I did pay the $120 and it is pretty handy for mobile usage. The iOS app is great. Although, my poor impulse control is not a good measure of value

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SecureCRT. Expensive but my work paid for it.

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I bought it personally but I would hardly call it expensive. The three year license is like ~67 USD a year for both CRT and FX.

I love it mainly because it's multi-platform but I wish it had more features. They boast their great integration with VShell but it would be much better if they just had better support for OpenSSH, like being able to push ssh keys to a host.

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Don’t know why I thought it was like 150. $67 isn’t bad.

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I use Apache Guacamole, which works great for just about any kind of remote access and has a dead simple to use Docker Container.

It supports folders, copy/paste, uploading/downloading files, multiple open connections at once, and alternative mouse modes for touch screens. Best of all, it's completely free and open source.

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[OP]

This looks seriously impressive - and with a docker. Nice. Thank you.

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I currently run it with Keycloak for Auth and previously had it behind a Nginx Proxy Manager reverse proxy, but have since switched to using a Cloudflare tunnel.

It works great and allows me to provision limited and controlled access over various game servers to admins of those servers. They can access what they need and nothing more, and only on the servers that they have been granted access.

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If youre on windows, mremoteng is very comprehensive: https://mremoteng.org/

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Mobaxterm?

Stupid windows only.

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[OP]

I meant for Linux. I am not brave enough to ask for windows app recommendations on Lemmy in the Linux community

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I didn't realise it was windows only. I assumed it was like royal TS where they also have a cross platform client.

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Remmina proves a reliable solution for remote desktop access when a graphical interface is required. However, for more streamlined operations, terminal-based SSH access ssh username@remote_host remains the preferred method. Establishing passwordless authentication is, naturally, a matter of convenience. The command ssh-copy-id username@remote_host facilitates this process. It’s a rather elegant solution, isn't it? A testament to the power of minimalism.

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