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Mosh: The Mobile Shell

mosh.org

31–40 of 158 posts

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#31

I typically use ssh over wireguard and tmux if I need persistent sessions. Wireguard takes care of the unstable remote link and changing IPs. I can suspend my laptop on one connection, wake it up later on another and still have an active session. I use openssh via Termux for the client on Android or whatever terminal emulator on the laptop. Can mosh offer me anything?

Mosh apparently fixed the lag issue where typing is very slow on far away servers. Trying to ssh a server on the other side of the world is annoying.

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#32
post #2

Some past threads: Blink Mobile Shell for iOS (Mosh Based) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370348 - Nov 2018 (1 comment) Mosh: the mobile shell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429203 - Sept 2016 (49 comments) Mosh: the mobile shell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11572146 - April 2016 (148 comments) Mosh – a robust, responsive replacement for SSH - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8928506…

The title “Mosh: SSH for 2012” is amusing because now in 2021, ssh is still king.

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#33

I typically use ssh over wireguard and tmux if I need persistent sessions. Wireguard takes care of the unstable remote link and changing IPs. I can suspend my laptop on one connection, wake it up later on another and still have an active session. I use openssh via Termux for the client on Android or whatever terminal emulator on the laptop. Can mosh offer me anything?

mosh has very good latency hiding and your connection can actually be interrupted for longer than a TCP session would tolerate.

The latency hiding alone makes it worth it; SSH is miserable over links with any lag, mosh feels as responsive as typing locally until you get into hundreds of milliseconds of latency.

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#34
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i didn't know that, and that bums me out. is what's there good enough to not care that there aren't frequent updates?

Certainly for me it's been good enough, I use it daily and haven't run into any issues. I know people mention there are issues with some Unicode characters. Somehow I've never hit those issues, so I'm happy.

There are some issues with colors too

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#35
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why hasn't someone just forked it and make a "mosh-alt"? seems like the most logical step to me.

Because 99% of open source software has about 1-3 real devs and after they give up there is no one who can be bothered to take over. Several older projects like X11 and CUPS have no real developers anymore.

Yep. It's trivial to fork, not trivial to maintain. Especially when it's something where security is important - mosh will allow anyone to connect to the server directly if there is a bug there.

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#36
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link? Any tradeoffs?

They're talking about Eternal Terminal, I think https://eternalterminal.dev/ I'd be curious about the trade offs too, I'll have to check it out.

The biggest advantage of ET is that it's still in active development and the lead developer gets feedback from reading Hacker News ;-).

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#39
post #4

Note that Mosh has not had release for 4 years, even when pull requests are accepted on github, and the team lead says "we are too busy/burned out". https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/1115

Elsewhere on the thread people recommend et as an actively-developed alternative with scrolling support: https://eternalterminal.dev/

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#40

I typically use ssh over wireguard and tmux if I need persistent sessions. Wireguard takes care of the unstable remote link and changing IPs. I can suspend my laptop on one connection, wake it up later on another and still have an active session. I use openssh via Termux for the client on Android or whatever terminal emulator on the laptop. Can mosh offer me anything?

My setup is iPad + MBP + Linux server. I use mosh to connect, also with a Wireguard VPN, and have tmux running on the server. It's very convenient to pop open Blink on my iPad and have everything right where I left it (modulo changes made while on the MBP) and the reverse when I pull up the terminal on my MBP.

The main benefit for me is mobility, though, not the restore from sleep itself. When I started using this setup I was traveling quite a bit, including just locally (living in a downtown area, I'd start on something in the apartment, then decide to go to the coffee shop, or the growler place, and continue working). Not having to reestablish the connection (even using SSH certs that's still some friction) was very pleasant.

The second is when dealing with an unreliable network. Though this is less common these days, when I started with it I had a lot of issues in my apartment thanks to a neighbor with a noisy microwave oven.

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