[mosh-devel] Have you considered cases where people cannot open ports or not permitted to run servers yet still need control..

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

On Thu, Sep 05, 2013 at 10:59:31AM +1000, Peter Dolding wrote:
> Subject: Have you considered cases where people cannot open ports or
> not permitted to run servers yet still need control..

Just to be sure: You are aware that mosh needs no permanently running
server other than an SSH daemon (which in most cases runs anyway) for
the session initiation?

> Mosh by xmmp or equal would be useful when both of these restrictions
> apply.   This removes the computer being controlled from requiring a
> static IP address or open ports to everyone.   Only friends of the
> xmmp account that is the server could be limited to control it.

There is an implementation of SSH over XMPP called "SSH Contact". See
e.g. http://packages.debian.org/unstable/ssh-contact

(The official site was at
http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/SSH-Contact but vanished,
probably due to the wiki conversion mentioned on
http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/conversion/. The upstream git
repo is still there, though:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/telepathy/telepathy-ssh-contact/)

Nevertheless the idea to run mosh over XMPP sounds to me like getting
"SSH Contact" with some of mosh's nice non-ssh-ish features.

Tempting. But than again I never found a single case where SSH Contact
would have been of use for me...

> Yes this provides a different solution to forwarding. In fact ssh
> forwarding has it hazards. Like what happens when the forwarding
> dies.

AutoSSH handles that case quite nicely IMHO:
http://www.harding.motd.ca/autossh/

		Kind regards, Axel
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