Live data from Hacker News

Mosh: The Mobile Shell

mosh.org

141–150 of 158 posts

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#141
post #140
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use screen/tmux, but they’re both more complicated and less good when it comes to this specific use-case. Personally I use both - mosh (or et) for the seamless automatic-reconnect, and tmux as a console window-manager.

What? Instead of ./command you type screen ./command.

Will `screen ./command` automatically and seamlessly reconnect my ssh session when I roam between different wifi networks? Or do I need to reconnect to ssh for myself, and then run a second command to reattach to the screen session?

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#142
post #112
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use screen/tmux, but they’re both more complicated and less good when it comes to this specific use-case. Personally I use both - mosh (or et) for the seamless automatic-reconnect, and tmux as a console window-manager.

> You can use screen/tmux, but they’re both more complicated... In what way are they more complicated? Granted screen is legacy, but tmux is just an executable on the server with sane defaults that Just Works OOTB.

> In what way are they more complicated?

When you change wifi networks you either have to remember to manually disconnect in advance, or wait for ssh to time-out the connection, then you have to create a new ssh connection, then you have to run an extra command to re-attach to the {screen/tmux} session you started earlier.

It’s not insurmountably difficult work - but for the specific use-case of roaming across wifi networks, “doing a small disconnect and reconnect dance” with tmux is way more complicated and annoying than “open your laptop and all your connections are still working” with mosh.

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#143
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a VERY useful tool that I have used every day for at least 3 years. There are two really annoying niggles that I have with it, but both I have solved by using a Screen session on the server: - Scrolling turns out to be very important to most workflows. The choice to start mosh in Append mode (with chance of output corruption) rather than replace mode would be a cool thing. - There is no easy way to pick up a se…

We have the "append mode" -- run `mosh --no-init` and it does what you'd like.

Thank you, this is better, but if I cat a 1000 line file I can only scroll up about 150 lines, I think this has something to do with the speed of the output(?); how does this work under the hood?

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#145
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

I think the truth is that we don't feel like we need a release. We've never had a security hole, our track record speaks for itself, and I wouldn't really want us to rush anything and blow that. There are some features that it would be really nice to have in a release (like 24-bit color support, and working around a recent MacOS clock bug), but I handed over the maintainership to somebody else about six years ago and…

> I think the truth is that we don't feel like we need a release. We've never had a security hole, our track record speaks for itself, and I wouldn't really want us to rush anything and blow that. There are some features that it would be really nice to have in a release (like 24-bit color support, and working around a recent MacOS clock bug), but I handed over the maintainership to somebody else about six years ago and that person is currently, I think, dealing with a bunch of stuff (look around the world the last year...). I'm not eager to step back in and bigfoot them -- especially when I'm no longer particularly familiar with the codebase (and recent commits) as I used to be.

I can appreciate that, but what do you say to e.g. the contributor that added true color support nearly 4 years ago?

cgull also hasn't authored or committed anything in mosh in more than two years, so his inactivity predates the pandemic by quite a bit.

Everyone loves your software, and that's the reason they want to see another release with the many improvements already in git, most for multiple years. I really don't think you're going to step on any toes by making a new release.

Pretty please?

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#146
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

There needs to be a trust with a deed indicating the beneficial purpose of Mosh. Then the devs would be in a trust management corporation and could get paid for managing the project in the interests of the computing public.

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#147

Mosh original author here -- fun to see us back here yet again. Happy to answer any questions.

Such an indispensable tool! I’m running mosh+tmux 24/7 on my remote desktop and every day just open my laptop, connect to VPN and continue where I left off the previous day

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#148
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

I think the truth is that we don't feel like we need a release. We've never had a security hole, our track record speaks for itself, and I wouldn't really want us to rush anything and blow that. There are some features that it would be really nice to have in a release (like 24-bit color support, and working around a recent MacOS clock bug), but I handed over the maintainership to somebody else about six years ago and…

Great answer! I'm adding this comment to my favorites.

Re: Mosh: The Mobile Shell

#150
post #90
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

Finally, software that is considered finished and no "featuritis" taking over. I love that! KISS all the way!

Personally, I believe a good software should end up not in "we stopped releasing as we feature complete" but "from now we do only maintenance releases as we are feature complete" because the rest of the world is still evolving: apps, environments, OSes, some bugs could be sleeping for decades waiting to be discovered, etc. It's unfortunately an endless process to adapt even a finished project to a rapidly evolving world.
Post reply on HN