Slashdot Mirror
Smartphones For Text SSH Use Re-Revisited
Kainaw writes "This was asked in 2005 and 2008. I think it should be revisited yet again... With iPhone, Android, and Windows smartphones running around, which (if any) of them are well-suited to Unix/Linux server administration on the run? SSH is a must. A good screen resolution. A physical keyboard won't block the screen with a virtual keyboard. Many physical keyboards omit the numeric keys now, making the typing of numbers rather difficult. Nearly every smartphone has WiFi capability now. Some will do an X display through SSH tunnelling. So, pushing through all the bells and whistles that have nothing to do with effective server administration, what is left?"
Hardware keyboard, ships with xterm, has easily accessible number keys, and no jailbreaking needed.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Not sure about android, but MidpSSH works wonders on my Blackberry, they probably have an android version. Used it just last night in a bind!
Walk with Music;
I second this. I have been using ConnectBot and it works great on my HTC Desire. Just don;t leave connections running in the background... it drinks battery like it's going out of style when you do that.
http://bbssh.org/wiki/en/Home
The author just released 2.0 with huge improvements. I've been using it for nearly half a year now, previously on a Storm and now on a Torch. It's great, it even works well with things like screen and irssi. It's great being able to login to my servers remotely anywhere, check screen sessions and even if I want to hop on IRC if need be! For those familiar with MidpSSH this is basicly it on steriods, but done properly.
...and specifically the touch UI one for Symbian S60v5. It's PuTTy. Oh, you want an URL with that... Try http://bd.kicks-ass.net/koodaus/putty/
It runs real Linux with real root (out of the box). It has a real xterm and bash is installable. It runs xorg. It's a fantastic phone. However, it doesn't have separate number keys which can be a pain if you're typing a lot of numbers. A cool feature of the xterm is it puts Ctrl, Tab, Esc, PgUp, and PgDn on-screen to work with the physical keyboard. It's great for remote server administration. I wouldn't want to work on it all day, but it's not meant for that, either.
Life is short; think quickly.
iPhone with iSSH by Zinger-Soft works great for me. You can use an external Bluetooth keyboard. Nice thing is, you can run the iPad version as well for the one price. www.zinger-soft.com
I believe MidpSSH is quite out of date, but Marc Paradise's BBSH is based on it, and it's a vast improvement.
Caveat Utilitor
Honestly, if you SSH in a LOT using a phone will anger you a lot. I got a tiny netbook with a WWAN card (inside!)
Dell mini 10 with a pciE wwan card works great. and it is small enough to carry with me everywhere.
I'd end up killing people if I had to spend more that 30 seconds working in SSH on a phone.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Just prefix each command with :; and the capitalization problem goes away. At first that quirk used to drive me crazy, but there's no need to use a secondary console.
really? apart from the egregious mistake of not including a backtick on anything but one obscure email keyboard
Hold down the apostrophe key for a second or two, it pops up a number of different quotes, including the backtick.
I use ConnectBot on my Samsung Moment. Has a physical keyboard and works great, can do pubkey authentication, all the bells and whistles. Big thumbs up... ConnectBot is an extremely well-designed and open-source app.
My bicyles
As mentioned elsewhere in these posts, give BBSSH a try. It does not have this annoying tendency. What you type in your blackberry keyboard is what you get and if you want to use caps you need to hold down the shift key just like a real keyboard. I cannot stress how amazing BBSSH is, once you start to really get use to it and learn about swipes (literally almost like gestures of a sorts) it's great and quickly I can use it almost as fast as a putty/xterm session.