Support for Eternal Terminal

[MisterTea]

Hey! I'm the creator of Eternal Terminal ( https://eternalterminal.dev/ ), a replacement for ssh that persists connections over ip changes and network disconnects. We have over 1000 engineers using ET at Facebook. ET supports IP tunneling and most of the same core functionality that ssh provides.

Would it be possible to build an extension for remote development using ET? I would be happy to help build this.

Thanks!
Jason Gauci

[Avery-Whitaker]

This would be great. The current experience when the ssh connection drops is unnecessarily intrusive. I would love to see the option to use ET instead of ssh in vscode remote.

[xgdgsc]

Also hoping we can persist python/julia processes using remote.

[ampresent]

Any progress? ssh losing connection frequently when in poor network condition drives me crazy. Glad to see this potential solution.

[MisterTea]

Hey @kieferrm happy to work on this with you, feel free to email me.

[MisterTea]

@ampresent A temporary solution is to use et's port forwarding to forward your ssh port and then ssh to localhost on the forwarded port.

[varunchopra]

@MisterTea Can you tell me what the exact command is? I get a "port is already being used" error which is odd because it's not being used.

[MisterTea]

et -x -t "2222:22" (host)

Then in another terminal:
ssh localhost -p 2222

[varunchopra]

Thank you! For anyone else reading this (tested on MacOS):
et -x -t "2222:22" workstation (I have workstation set in ~/.ssh/config)

And to connect to the remote instance (I use ec2):
ssh ec2-user@localhost -p 2222 (:2222 doesn't work)

[lrnv]

@MisterTea, @egamma, @wxdao : #334 was closed since mosh does not support port forwarding, which ET definitely does. Is there some other things that are needed for this to take place ?

Can we make the whole remote session use ET instead of ssh, and not just one terminal ?

[stiang]

@MisterTea Thanks for suggesting the forwarding trick while we wait for official/native support. It seems to work well during the day, but I’m still finding that my VS Code Remote SSH connections are disconnected every morning after my Mac Mini has been in sleep mode during the night, so I still have to do the whole "Reload Window" dance for every window using Remote SSH.

The forwarded et/ssh connection is alive, but it looks like VS Code perhaps loses connection to the local ssh port while the computer sleeps? Does this not happen when you do this?

[MisterTea]

Yep this is happening to me too.

…

On Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 1:03 AM Stian Grytøyr ***@***.***> wrote: @MisterTea <https://github.com/MisterTea> Thanks for suggesting the forwarding trick while we wait for official/native support. It seems to work well during the day, but I’m still finding that my VS Code Remote SSH connections are disconnected every morning after my Mac Mini has been in sleep mode during the night, so I still have to do the whole "Reload Window" dance for every window using Remote SSH. The forwarded et/ssh connection is alive, but it looks like VS Code perhaps loses connection to the *local* ssh port while the computer sleeps? Does this not happen when you do this? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1790 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AACK5P5BM65J7NJIHIOK7F3UNXNVHANCNFSM4JJDVUGQ> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>.

[naturedamends]

Is there a pull request for this? or a map of any place where ssh usage would need to be removed and replaced with ET, with ET being a machine requirement if the option is used? is there something else that needs to be changed?

[castelln]

Did anything ever come of this? ET would be a gamechanger for my workflow, since spotty train wifi is a source of constant frustration that leads me to just develop in local when I could be using my sweet, sweet VSCode remote setup.

[DeeeeLAN]

I think accessing over a local ssh forwarded through ET is as good as you are going to get, and honestly it is sufficient in my opinion.

I don’t think there is much you can do about vscode disconnecting during sleep, I think that is just how they set up the remote ssh plug-in because typically when a computer sleeps it loses the remote connection anyway, and they do extra handshaking between the client and server and when those stop and get out of sync I imagine that is what triggers the reload prompt.

[catskul]

Why should a local ssh forward be as good as it can get? And why would it be sufficient?

I think the whole point of supporting something liked ET (or mosh) is to escape the stale connection issue.

Why support ET at all if not to resolve stale connections?

[bhusalashish]

Any updates on this?

[ColCh]

Some offtopic (sorry for that), but may be this would be interesting to you, I figured out how to setup persistent remote access in vscode, please see related issue #3096 (comment)