SSH Menu - Save and Open SSH Connections from the Panel August 17, 2007
Posted by Carthik in applications, gnome, packages, ubuntu.trackback
I was looking for a replacement for SecureCRT in Ubuntu. Something that would let me save all my SSH connections and make it possible to open a connection with the least effort.
As is often the case, I found something better than SecureCRT - a panel applet for GNOME that gives me a drop-down list of SSH connections. SSHMenu is cool, way too cool.
Above, you can see my list of ssh accounts in all their glory. A connection is just a click away.
When you set up the connections, you can specify the geometry - ie, where on your desktop you want the gnome-terminal window to pop up, as well as a “profile” for the gnome-terminal instance - very handy if you want to have different color schemes for different ssh accounts to be able to distinguish between them better.
What’s even better is, in the “Hostname (etc)” field, you can prepend ssh options to the hostname. The figure below shows my port forwarding setup for IRC at school, since I can’t chat using port 6667 at school.
There’s a Debian/Ubuntu repository for SSHMenu, and of course, nothing stops you from downloading the .deb packages and installing them if you don’t wish to add another repository to you list of repositories. I wonder how long before SSHMenu finds itself into the Ubuntu repositories 
Once you get SSHMenu installed, you can add it to your panel by right-clicking on your GNOME panel, and selecting “Add to Panel”. SSHMenu should be listed as “SSH Menu Applet” under the “Utilities” section. Then all you have to do is use the tool to add accounts that pops-up when you install the applet, or add the accounts later by clicking on the “SSH” in your panel. However, this still doesn’t take us to “one-click” login, since you will be prompted for your password by the server you are trying to connect to.
To make the connections truly one-click (or two-click), you might want to setup password-less logins using ssh-keygen and ssh-copy-id. A quick overview of that process follows:
On your local computer, type:
$ssh-keygen -t rsa
When prompted for a password, you may want to enter none. If you enter a password there, you will have to enter it everytime you try to use the “passwordless” login, which kind of defeats the purpose.
Enter a password here. Then when you try to connect to the accounts using SSHMenu, you will asked for the password only once, the very first time. (Thanks to Grant, SSHMenu’s author for the explanation in the comments).
Once your RSA key-pair is generated, you need to add the public key to your server’s ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. You can do this very easily by typing (on your local computer):
$ssh-copy-id ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@example.com
This will copy your public key for the just-generated RSA keypair to the example.com ssh account, where your username is “username”.
Of course, for this passwordless login to work, the server needs to accept this method of authentication. There’s an old article at the Debian Administration blog that describes the process in a little more detail, and countless others have written about this, so you won’t have trouble finding info.
Good find! Thank you.
[...] applet for GNOME that gives me a drop-down list of SSH connections. SSHMenu is cool, way too cool. (more&hellip
This was written by . Posted on Saturday, August 18, 2007, at 1:37 am. Filed under Ubuntu. [...]
Instead of the password-less login, use the ssh-agent.
Give a password for your key, and add the ssh-agent it to your Gnome session and run ssh-add before your first ssh session.
And thats it, try to ssh from any terminal inside gnome and no password is required!
This also works for Nautilus “Connect to Server” using SSH. Not sure if it will work with SSH-Menu.
Keys+ password is safer than password-less login, but don’t forget to lock your screen if you step away from your machine.
Is there a KDE version of this applet? That would be sweet…
That tool looks like it will be quite useful. I manage hundreds of Cisco switches, and the sub-menus should allow me to catagorize the devices.
Thanks for letting us know about it!
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Ruby. People who tote Python just haven’t tried it.
(And yes, I have a good number of Python programs under my belt).
Awesome find!
I’ve found I’m happy enough with a submenu in my Gnome main menu and creating menu entries there by hand. gnome-terminal’s profile feature can be used to launch ssh automatically. Allows me to avoid having yet another applet in a crowded menu bar.
[...] SSH Menu - Save and Open SSH Connections from the Panel I was looking for a replacement for SecureCRT in Ubuntu. Something that would let me save all my SSH connections and […] [...]
Let me add that I think, most people underestimate .ssh/config in combination with bash completion. When having a fine .ssh/config-file and bash completion enabled you are a heave command line ssh user. All you have to do to connect is to type “ssh (letter)[TAB]” and you get a list of possible targets. Of course you can use aliases for connections instead of hostnames and also use these names for scp and even other applications like svn clients using ssh (!). This saves you a lot of time and it’s only one text file readable by every openssh client everywhere you are.
Here is an example for a .ssh/config:
http://www.ubuntuusers.de/paste/13952/
You see how easy it is to add options for usernames, tunneling and stuff. Even a global section (*) is available.
So all you have to do after having switched on bash completion (if you don’t know how, just type “source /etc/bash_completion”
you can type “ssh test1″, “ssh t[TAB]2″ and so on for connection or using urls like svn+ssh://test1/ in svn applications and so on.
So though I know how nice it is to have a gui the only perfect gui would be the one enabling you to manage and use .ssh/config - every non standard config file is - in my eyes - a waste of time as you are starting to duplicate efforts.
When you use ssh-keygen, you definitely should enter a passphrase - even if you want password-less logins. The first time you connect to a host using SSHMenu, it will prompt for your password to unlock the key and add it to your agent. Each connection after that will proceed without a password prompt.
SSHMenu also provides an option to remove the key from your agent.
Hi Grant - First off, thanks a LOT for SSHMenu. You rock.
Second - thanks for that bit about SSHMenu saving the password - that is real neat, too. I updated the post to note this.
This sounds like a great app for those of us that use ssh on daily basis. Can’t wait to give it spin!
$ssh-copy-id ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@example.com
Should be
$ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@example.com
another feature i really miss from securecrt is zmodem upload/download, any idea of how it could be used natively in a ssh session?
thanks
g.
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MMM … Interesting decision known problem. Indeed, thanks!
[...] As is often the case, I found something better than SecureCRT - a panel applet for GNOME that gives me a drop-down list of SSH connections. SSHMenu is cool, way too cool. (more…
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[...] applet for GNOME that gives me a drop-down list of SSH connections. SSHMenu is cool, way too cool. (more…
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good efforts
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Very nice
Thanks dude
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