Machines Management

Assign nicknames to your remote servers (such as EC2 instances) such that you can log in, copy files by very simple commands like:

Similar to ssh, we have:

mssh nickename

Similar to scp, we have:

mcp nickname1:path/to/file1 nickename2:path/to/file2

Similar to ls, we have:

mls nickname:path/to/file

Furthermore, you do not need to enter passwords every time after setting up on each machine only ONCE.

The implementation is purely based on python 2.7, with no additional package requirements.

Requirements:

You must have a central server with a static ip or domain name in order to maintain the information of other machines. You can only copy files to a machine with a public ip address (or domain name).

Setup (You only need to do that once for each machine):

Make sure the installation location relative to home directory is the same on every machine.

First, set the central server in config.txt such that it has the following format:

central: yourusername@youripaddress

Make sure the modification of config.txt is visible to every machine you want to add. A simple way is to update your github repository and clone it on every machine.

Then central server needs to be set up, on central server do:

python setup.py --name central

source ~/.bashrc

On machine1 do the following:

python setup.py --name Jacob

source ~/.bashrc

You may be required to enter the password TWICE for your central server. Then the above command will give machine1 a nickname Jacob.

On machine2 do the following:

python setup.py --name Israel

source ~/.bashrc

This will give machine2 a nickname Israel.

Copy files:

Now, you can copy files using the following command:

mcp Jacob:path/to/file1 Israel:path/to/file2

Or copy to your local machine (You must run python setup.py --name nickname and source ~/.bashrc beforehand):

mcp Jacob:path/to/file1 path/to/file2

Copy directories:

mcpr Jacob:path/to/dir1 Israel:path/to/dir2

List files:

Furthermore, you can list files on any machine:

mls Jacob:path/to/file1

Log in to other machines:

You can also log in to any machine by nickname:

mssh Jacob