• Bob Smith
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    11 months ago

    About 90% of what I know about ssh, terminal multiplexing, scripting, and diagnostic programs grew from an optimization project.

    I had a vague desire to build a one-stop dashboard where I could monitor, update, and control a half-dozen linux computers at once. It was just for fun, but it kept me reading through the manpages for weeks.

      • Bob Smith
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        11 months ago

        I didn’t, but only because my solution wasn’t novel or generalized for other people. I made a script to fire up tmux on a ‘primary’ computer with key-based access to my other computers, load up a set of windows and panes, and ssh into each computer. One window would be computers in one section of my home, another window would be computers elsewhere. The only challenge was getting a baseline grasp of the tmux scripting syntax.

        I initially set it up to run htop on each computer (dashboard goal, plus easy ability to terminate programs), but the basic setup was flexible. I could set other programs to run by default or and send terminal command updates to each computer from any device that could ssh into the primary computer. Automating updates on a computer-by-computer basis is a better solution, but the setup let me quickly oversee and interactively start multiple system updates at once, from a phone, tablet, or laptop.