ssh-xdg-open 🐧

tids and bits needed to enable ssh-links (ssh://) in the web browser (Chromium, Firefox)
...or any desktop application.
I found both tids and bits lying gently on the Internet, so thank you kindly Internets.

Installation
Usage
Tips

installation

You can run the included, primitive but interactive install.sh

$ ./install.sh

Run with -h for options:

$ ./install.sh -h
Usage: ./install.sh [-h|-p <prefix]
  -h  This.
  -p  Install prefix. Defaults to /home/<username>/.local

...or you can do it manually. Files involved are mimeapps.list, ssh.desktop and ssh-handler:

Copy ssh.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/

$ cp ssh.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

Add to mimeapps.list in ~/.local/share/applications/

$ [ -f ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list ] && sed 1d mimeapps.list >> ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list \
  [ -f ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list ] || cp mimeapps.list ~/.local/share/applications/

Now xdg-open knows what to do when it encounters links of type 'ssh://my.remote.host'
...but we still need a handler! ssh.desktop defines ssh-handler, so you should put that in your path. I have mine in ~/bin/ (must be in your PATH)
Use the included script:

$ cp ssh-handler ~/bin/ && chmod +x ~/bin/ssh-handler

or

$ cp ssh-handler.minimal ~/bin/ssh-handler && chmod +x ~/bin/ssh-handler

...or write your own ssh-handler script 😺

Now test with

$ xdg-open ssh://localhost

usage

After having set up mimeapps.list and ssh.desktop, the rest is up to the ssh-handler script:

Usage: ./ssh-handler [-h|-c <command>|-m <mode>|-t '<terminal> [<terminal>]'] <ssh://my.remote.host>
  -h  This.
  -c  Command used to connect to remote host. Defaults to 'ssh'
  -m  Mode. Defaults to 'default'
  -t  Space separates list of terminal emulators. Defaults to 'urxvt xterm'

Available modes:
  default, tmux

The following variables can be set in /home/<username>/.ssh-handler.conf:
  mode="default"
  command="ssh"
  terminals="urxvt xterm"

Examples:
  ./ssh-handler ssh://my.remote.host
  ./ssh-handler my.remote.host
  ./ssh-handler -m tmux ssh://my.remote.host
  ./ssh-handler -c 'remmina -n --protocol=SSH -s'
  ./ssh-handler -t 'gnome-terminal xterm'

If you, like me, have a web application where server information is being documented, you can now render ssh hyperlinks like so:

<a href="ssh://remote.host">remote.host</a>

I've slightly modified the Racktables interface like this, but it works equally well with any kind of Wiki / Puppet External Node Classifier UI (Puppet Dashboard, Foreman) / Whatever.

tips are for trix

By default the ssh client will use your local username when logging in remotely - use ~/.ssh/config extensively to get the most out of this. While you could find other mechanisms - i.e. if you have control of your web application and your environment you could render ssh hyperlinks with the right user for the given box/environment (or use the username of the logged in user) - I recommend using ~/.ssh/config for least pain and maximum flexibility.

Add entries like these to ~/ssh/config :

Host *.domain
  User username

Host *.test.domain
  User otherusername

Using ProxyCommand is also a very good idea.