How do you edit files over SSH? - coding-style

I program with eclipse and sometimes use GUI text editors like SciTE or vim. However, I'm at a point in a project that requires me to edit files over a ssh connection in a 80 column SSH window.
Since I have to (* shiver*) sudo vim before I can open the file I'm not sure how to open the file in an editor outside the terminal (that would allow me to see the text wider than 80 columns). If the command line was larger then I guess using straight vim wouldn't be a problem.
I'm at a loss of how to deal with this situation and how I could turn this nightmare into a manageable coding environment.

Maybe you should simply mount the remote filesystem to your local machine and then use whatever editor you like. If running a Debian derivative, install sshfs
sudo apt-get install sshfs
and then mount the remote filesystem ( issue on your local machine )
mkdir ~/remote_code
sshfs $USER#remote.example.com:/home/$USER/code ~/remote_code
Once this is done you can access the code in ~/remote_code w/ any of your GUI tools and without the bandwidth overhead of using ssh -X (however you still need a good connection w/ a low ping time).
PS: When using ssh I can make the terminal as wide as it fits my screen and then use its full width, so I fear I don't completely understand your issue.

WinSCP is a SSH client ftp-like. The default editor is primitive but can be change.

There are various options.
You can make the terminal larger. ;)
If you have a graphical environment installed on the machine you are ssh'ing into, you can login with ssh -X (or xdeep-putty if you are on Windows) to enable window forwarding. You can then run your favourite editor on the remote machine, whose graphical output is forwarded.
Finally, you can mount the ssh connection into your file system, using for example fuse (similar options might exist for non-linux operating systems). That allows you to access any file on the remote machine as if it were in your filesystem, with your favourite editor, locally.

I'm not 100% sure if this works for files owned by root, but if your desktop is KDE & your remote system is Linux (or pretty much any form of *nix), you can get konqueror to access the remote machine using the "fish://" protocol. From there you can open the file from konqueror using kate, or your preferred editor, and konqueror will take care of copying the file to your local machine and copying it back when you save.
Failing which the X11 forward is a good option, but X11 over ssh to remote sites can be slow. "ssh -X -C" compresses the data stream and can give better performance.

Notepad ++ has a plugin for editing files remotely over ssh. I've used it before, but I definitely prefer Kate on KDE using the fish protocol.
http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/ftp-client-setup/connect-ftp-notepad-plus

Forward your X11 session to your terminal.
http://dragonwall.net/xdeep-putty.html
This probably belongs on superuser.com.

You might try the Komodo editor. It has a feature to load a 'remote file' over ssh. It's really convenient.

Emacs and ange-ftp.

If you're on Ubuntu, go to Nautilus (file explorer), connect to server (adding sftp:// to the hostname), then voila! You can easily launch gedit to edit your files now.

On Windows, you can use MobaXterm ( http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net ): it has a built-in SSH client with a very useful "SFTP browser".
As soon as you connect to your remote server using SSH, you will see your remote files displayed in this graphical SFTP browser. Just double-click on your files and you will be able to edit them directly on your remote server through SFTP.

I use Cyberduck and Sublime Text 2

FileZilla did the trick for me. Notepad++ can be used with it which is awesome.

If you using windows, try Editplus. It's not free but allows you to open files directly over scp. Custom syntax files are coming really handy, too.

Recent versions of ultraedit do exactly what the OP is asking for elegantly (IDM software, v10 and up support SSH iirc). I do most of my coding remotely like that, been using it for years, works great with no intermediate files etc. Obviously it also does FTP etc too if you're so inclined.
I actually found this page whilst looking for a linux equivalent of ultraedit..

If you are more GUI-oriented and use one of the more newbie-friendly Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mint, this is another option and does not require any more installations.
You should have nemo as your default file manager. It may not be called "Nemo" on the menu, so go under Help > About of your file manager ("Files" app) to see.
In nemo, go to File > Connect to server, enter your remote machine's details (SSH's default port is 22), and then open the files just like any file on your local machine, with whatever editor you prefer. You can even close Nemo and continue working in your editor.
From the address bar, it seems to be using the sftp protcol.
Just be aware that if your remote host has an inactivity timeout for the SSH connection, this will also prevent you from saving changes in the editor after the timeout has dropped the connection...

Since sshfs is not supported in WSL at the moment, the tool that worked for me is sshfs-win.
Installation Steps
Go here and click "download winfsp"
Install it
Go here and download the installer
Install it
Open windows explorer and right-click "This PC" > "Map Network Drive..."
Select a drive letter (B:), type in "\\sshfs\debian#10.13.100.36" and click Finish
Boom, done. Now you can have a B: drive on your computer and just do whatever with those files. Open them with VSCode, delete them, whatever you like

If you work in IntelliJ IDEA, you can use Friendly Terminal plugin instead of the native terminal. It allows to open and edit remote files in IntelliJ IDEA editor. Video

Related

Is it possible to restart the server using WinSCP?

I transferred the files from my local computer to the remote directory using WinSCP, but I'm curious if I can restart/reboot the server using the same application or i need to do that using PuTTY.
I don’t think you can. WinSCP is a SFTP client, SFTP its a subsystem of SSH, but that does not mean that you can achieve everything you can do with SSH.
Here’s a complete list of commands supported by the SFTP protocol -> https://www.ssh.com/ssh/sftp/#sec-SFTP-Protocol
As you can see there’s no such ‘reboot’ instruction nor anything similar.
EDIT
As other answer says, WinSCP has the ability to issue remote commands https://winscp.net/eng/docs/remote_command
So you can do Commands > Open Terminal and issue a reboot
WinSCP has Console window, where you can execute most shell commands. The only limitation is that the command must not require terminal emulation. What command like reboot typically do not.
Short answer: you need putty to do it.
Long answer: If you know what you are doing you could have a watch of some kind and reboot the server if you copy a special file (via WinSCP) to the server, I would strongly advise against this.
If you use putty to do this you should be aware that the system user root is most likely forbidden to log in via ssh directly. So you have to use putty with some other user and use su/sudo to reboot.
To reboot a linux server
putty
sudo reboot

Cannot create file \\server\printer

I have a module in vfp9 running under windows 7 32bits, this module prints in a local printer using the command COPY FILE file.txt TO \\server\printer, locally works fine, but in other pc of the network doesn't work, the error cannot create file \\server\printer shows.
In windows xp, this works fine, but in windows 7 not, I guess is a permission, wich one? where I can find information about this? I disabed the option "disable sharing with password protection" in advanced config of network and I can see all the shared resources, disks and printers.
I appreciate any help
That's a very 'legacy' way of printing and I wouldn't rely on it. If you have to do it this way, try redirecting an LPT port and then copying to the LPT port. At a CMD prompt:
net use lpt3 \\server\printer /yes
Then in your application
copy file file.txt to lpt3

Start Windows GUI program in the PuTTY shell

I created an SSH session into my localhost through PuTTY. I am running OpenBSD server on the localhost which is a Windows 7 machine. The login was successful. Now I want to start programs in the PuTTY shell for example notepad.exe. I changed the directory to c:\windows\system32. The command start notepad runs without error but I don't see any window.
Is the notepad running in the background without a windows. If yes, how to make the window visible??
Yes, it's quite likely the Notepad is run in an invisible Windows session on the server. Note that it does not make a difference in this case that the server is the local machine.
If you hoped for the window to appear on the "local" machine magically, you are out of luck.
Generally, it's possible to run a GUI application on remote machine and see the GUI locally. On Unix it's quite common. Typically X Window is used for that.
But Windows GUI applications cannot be "tunneled" via SSH session to a local machine.

How to download a file from my server using SSH (using PuTTY on Windows)

When I try downloading a file from my server onto my computer, it actually downloads the file onto the server.
(Note I am already SSH'd into my server before typing this command. I've watched tutorials on YouTube and people are using their terminal without SSHing into any particular server, however I don't think I can do this with PuTTY on Windows?)
scp -r -P2222 kwazy#mywebsite.example:/home2/kwazy/www/utrecht-connected.nl ~/Desktop/
The problem is that I am specifying the location to download the file as only ~/Desktop/
This creates a folder called Desktop in my server, instead of copying the files onto my local desktop.
I am able to use this command on Linux.
I have successfully download the folder onto my desktop:
I still need insight onto how I can do this on a Windows machine.
There's no way to initiate a file transfer back to/from local Windows from a SSH session opened in PuTTY window.
Though PuTTY supports connection-sharing.
While you still need to run a compatible file transfer client (pscp or psftp), no new login is required, it automatically (if enabled) makes use of an existing PuTTY session.
To enable the sharing see:
Sharing an SSH connection between PuTTY tools.
Even without connection-sharing, you can still use the psftp or pscp from Windows command line.
See How to use PSCP to copy file from Unix machine to Windows machine ...?
Note that the scp is OpenSSH program. It's primarily *nix program, but you can run it via Windows Subsystem for Linux or get a Windows build from Win32-OpenSSH (it is already built-in in the recent versions of Windows 10 and in Windows 11).
If you really want to download the files to a local desktop, you have to specify a target path as %USERPROFILE%\Desktop (what typically resolves to a path like C:\Users\username\Desktop).
Alternative way is to use WinSCP, a GUI SFTP/SCP client. While you browse the remote site, you can anytime open SSH terminal to the same site using Open in PuTTY command.
See Opening Session in PuTTY.
With an additional setup, you can even make PuTTY automatically navigate to the same directory you are browsing with WinSCP.
See Opening PuTTY in the same directory.
(I'm the author of WinSCP)
try this scp -r -P2222 kwazy#mywebsite.example:/home2/kwazy/www/utrecht-connected.nl /Desktop
Another easier option if you're going to be pulling files left and right is to just use an SFTP client like WinSCP. Then you're not typing out 100 characters every time you want to pull something, just drag and drop.
Just noticed /Desktop probably isn't where you're looking to download the file to. Should be something like C:\Users\you\Desktop
OpenSSH has been added to Windows as of autumn 2018, and is included in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019.
So you can use it in command prompt or power shell like bellow.
C:\Users\Parsa>scp parsa#192.168.100.11:/etc/cassandra/cassandra.yaml F:\Temporary
parsa#192.168.100.11's password:
cassandra.yaml 100% 66KB 71.3KB/s 00:00
C:\Users\Parsa>
(I know this question is pretty old now but this can be helpful for newcomers to this question)
if you install git with git bash, you get SCP available on windows.
You can use WinSCP : https://winscp.net/eng/download.php
Or MobaXterm : https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/download.html
It feels like FTP client. Also I don't remember setting up anything on my machine for this. It just fresh install and install SSH server (IDK if it matters though).
For MobaXterm :
If your server have a http service you can compress your directory and download the compressed file.
Compress:
tar -zcvf archive-name.tar.gz -C directory-name .
Download throught your browser:
http://the-server-ip/archive-name.tar.gz
If you don't have direct access to the server ip, do a ssh tunnel throught putty, and forward the 80 port in some local port, and you can download the file.
You can use the WinSPC program. Its access to any server is pretty easy. The program gives its guide too. I hope it's helpfull.
If you need something with GUI you can use FileZilla. it support SFTP.
It's perfectly working with ssh and you can even edit files and it will automatically upload the changes.

SSH hangs on Mac Book Pro; AFS and Network Preferences?

I am having an issue with SSH hanging on my Mac Book Pro. This only happens to me once I get home from work after I have used SSH while at work. The three factors I have narrowed the issue down to are SSH, our work AFS network drive and the method of network connectivity.
At work we use an AFS drive with Kerberos Authentication to do all of our software development work on. I authenticate with Kerberos in order to gain access to the AFS drive where all my source code lives, but I open a local editor (Eclipse) which references the files on the AFS drive. Whenever I need to compile my code, I SSH in to my development server (which is also authenticated to the AFS drive) and compile from there. (Sanity Note: I know that it is a super wacky setup, but I promise I had NOTHING to do with it. I'm just making do with what I've got.)
For my Network Preferences, I use the Automatic location all the time. For that configuration I have Built-in Ethernet en1 configured to use DHCP and our company's DNS server for when I'm at work (there is no wireless available). When I go home I connect to my home network via wireless, again using DHCP.
I have a hunch that the AFS connection/Ethernet configuration is somehow the culprit here. Restarting the SSH daemon doesn't correct the problem. The only way I have found to correct the issue is by restarting the computer each time I want to use SSH. Keep in mind that I have no other (known) networking issues while at home after I've had the laptop at work.
I have a co-worker who has reported to me the same issue on his MBP.
I'm truly stumped on this one. Please provide some guidance. Thanks!
Can you be more specific about "SSH hanging"?
It sounds like your ssh client hangs after losing the connection and you are unable to do anything in the terminal. To get around this, you can use the ssh escape character (default: ‘~’) to begin an escape sequence, and use the the '.' to terminate the connection.
You can get a list of other ssh escape sequences using ~?, here's the one for OpenSSH SSH client:
Supported escape sequences:
~. - terminate connection
~B - send a BREAK to the remote system
~C - open a command line
~R - Request rekey (SSH protocol 2 only)
~^Z - suspend ssh
~# - list forwarded connections
~& - background ssh (when waiting for connections to terminate)
~? - this message
~~ - send the escape character by typing it twice
(Note that escapes are only recognized immediately after newline.)
If typing ~. does not work, it could be that you have the escape character disabled, in which case you can put
EscapeChar ~
inside ~/.ssh/config or /etc/ssh_config
Even when the escape character is disabled, you can simply pull up another Terminal window and type
killall ssh
to end all running ssh processes, allowing you to connect out again.
Restarting the SSH daemon would not correct this problem because sshd allows other clients to connect in to your machine, and does not affect your ssh clients connecting out to some other machine.
It appears that the fix for my issue is to delete my Kerberos tokens that are valid while at work, but not valid when at home. Hope this can help anyone having a similar issue.
Just a shot in the dark:
I recently had problems using ssh after installing Rogue Amoeba Audio Hijack Pro.
I could only use ssh as super user (sudo).
An Update to 2.8.1 resolved the issue...
Also see http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/03/19.8.shtml for the issue.

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