Riaan's SysAdmin Blog

My tips, howtos, gotchas, snippets and stuff. Use at your own risk!

LinuxSSH

Linux tabbed SSH connection manager

I like to work in a tabbed SSH connection manager. Especially when I have hundred's or thousands of machines to connect to. A connection manager like putty keeps track of machine names and login info. Using a tabbed interface like MTPutty can make your life a whole lot easier with treeview/groups and side by side terminals. And additionally if you can cluster the terminal commands it can be an added bonus.

So far I have not really liked anything in the Linux world as far as a SSH connection manager. Ubuntu does come with putty which seems to work the same as in the Windows world. Best I could find is an application written in Python called Gnome Connection Manager (gcm). In the Ubuntu 15.10 repos the package is called gnome-connection-manager. Be warned of a few things:

1. Seems the code is at least a few years old and the website does not seem to have documentation or any kind of discussion. The code is all python so you can look at fixing and emailing the owner.
2. Be sure to check the paste-right-click in ~/.gcm/gcm.conf. This can be a nasty setting if you did not expect it. I copy and paste a lot between a Windows desktop and a Linux guest and almost accidentally pasted garbage into a critical device.
3. Also check auto-copy-selection if you like putty style behavior where anything selected in your SSH terminal should be in the copy buffer.

I think if the developer put a little bit more love into gnome-connection-manager it would definitely be a keeper and first rate gnome app. I have looked at some other options like hotssh but worth checking out is Remmina. Unfortunately for me Remmina was very buggy.

admin

Bio Info for Riaan