SSH for Days

Mosh - the mobile shell. This remote terminal let's you roam with intermittent connectivity without breaking your SSH tunnel.

The package must be installed on both the client and server and does not need to be run as a super user.

It replaces interactive SSH. Instant keystroke response, robust roaming but you'll need working UDP.

It supports intermittent connectivity:

• Put your computer to sleep, wake it up and your connection is alive.
• Leave your connection running and it won't break the pipe.
• Change between networks - Wi-Fi at the coffee shop, Ethernet at the office, LTE at home - and you will stay logged in.

It provides intelligent local echo and line editing of user keystrokes. You get an instant response to typing, deleting and line editing.

Mosh can run in xterm, gnome-terminal, urxvt, Terminal.app, iTerm, emacs screen or tmux. It's mostly designed from scratch and supports one character set: UTF-8.

It's freely available on GNU/Linux, BSD, macOS, Solaris, Android, Chrome and iOS.

Credits go to Keith Winstein, along with Anders Kaseorg, Quentin Smith, Richard Tibbetts, Keegan McAllister, and John Hood who wrote Mosh.

Installation

• Install Mosh on your platform.

Usage

• Connect a user mosh chewbacca.norad.mil Mosh will log the user in via SSH, then start a connection on a UDP port between 60000 and 61000.

• Connect with a different username mosh potus@ackbar.bls.gov

• Connect with server binary outside path mosh potus@ackbar.bls.gov The user can specify an alternate path for the mosh-server on the remote host. The server binary can even be installed in the user's home directory.

• Select a Mosh UDP port mosh -p 1234 darth Useful when the server is behind a port-forwarder or NAT.

• Select an SSH port mosh --ssh="ssh -p 2222" figrindan

• Add other SSH options mosh --ssh="~/bin/ssh -i ./identity" fett

• Disable instant echo mosh --predict=never niennunb The -n switch is a synonym. By contrast, passing --predict=always or -a will enable instant local echo even on low-delay links.

• With a command mosh pello -- screen -dr This reattaches to a long-running screen session.

Cheat sheet

Firewall

Open the selected port between 60000 and 61000 if you have a firewall. Open the range if you want Mosh to decide -p 0.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-port=60000/udp
firewall-cmd --reload
firewall-cmd --zone=public --list-ports

Server connection

Start Mosh server on port 60000 enabling 256 colors for TERM on the local interface 127.0.0.1 and print debugging information before detaching.

mosh -v -i 127.0.0.1 -p 60000 -c 256

Client connection

The unicorn. Connect to the server on port 60000 using a specific user.

mosh -p 60000 user@awesome.sauce

Ending the connection

Normally, logout or exit on the remote host will close the session. Mosh accepts the escape sequence Ctrl-^ . (typically typed with Control-Shift-6, then a period) to end the connection forcibly. To send a literal Ctrl-^, type Ctrl-^ ^.

Man Pages

• mosh(1)
• mosh-client(1)
• mosh-server(1)

References

• Getting Mosh - Mosh
• Technical Info - Mosh