mtsh

multiterm shell

Description

Multiterm Shell launches ssh connections to multiple remote hosts. It is compatible with Apple Terminal, iTerm, screen, and tmux.

Usage

The below example creates a new terminal and in it connects to a single host foo.example.com.

mtsh foo.example.com

NOTE: This program invokes the screen, ssh, and tmux executable programs found in the PATH of the originating terminal, and each program will use their respective configuration files.

Of particular note, ssh will use the configuration options for each remote connection that it creates in accordance with the documentation found in man 5 ssh_config. If additional ssh configuration parameters are required for hosts, one typically puts them in their personal ssh configuration file found in ~/.ssh/config.

The below example creates two new terminals and in each newly created terminal connects to one of the hosts specified on the command line.

mtsh foo.example.com bar.example.com

Running a single command on each host

One may use the -c COMMAND command line option to specify a particular command to execute on the remote hosts, in lieu of the user's default login program.

mtsh -c htop foo.example.com bar.example.com

One may use either single or double quotes to quote the command line option's argument when the command string has special characters.

mtsh -c 'tail -F /var/log/messages' foo.example.com bar.example.com

As one might expect, when double quotes are used, the invoking shell on the originating host will interpolate the string before sending the command to the remote hosts. However, when single quotes are used, the invoking shell on the remote connection will interpolate the string. If the default login shell for the local host and remote host were different, the below two commands would yield different output.

mtsh -c 'echo $SHELL' foo.example.com
mtsh -c "echo $SHELL" foo.example.com

Grouping newly created terminals

One may use the -g command line option to group multiple terminals.

mtsh -g -c 'tail -F /var/log/messages' foo.example.com bar.example.com

Grouping terminal behavior is dependent on what terminal program is being used on the originating host. When running screen or tmux inside either Apple Terminal or iTerm, this program applies rules specific to screen or tmux and ignores the fact that that terminal program is running inside Apple Terminal or iTerm.

NOTE: On screen, when not grouping, this program creates a new screen window for each host named after the host. When grouping, each screen window will use the group name as the window name prefix before the hostname.

NOTE: On tmux, when not grouping, this program creates a new tmux window for each host. When grouping, this program creates a new tmux window named using the specified group name, and inside that tmux window creates a new pane for each host.

NOTE: On Apple Terminal or iTerm, and not grouping, a new tab in the current window will be created for each host. When grouping, this program creates a new window, then creates a new tab in that window for each host.

Trimming off a common host prefix and suffix strings from titles

Common Hostname Prefix is used for the window group name

The -p PREFIX argument allows specifying what PREFIX string to remove from each of the host names. When omitted, the common prefix string of all provided hosts will be used.

The -s SUFFIX argument allows specifying what SUFFIX string to remove from each of the host names. When omitted, the common suffix string of all provided hosts will be used.

In the below example, the longest common suffix is .example.com, and would be stripped from each of the host names.

mtsh -s .com foo.example.com bar.example.com