Ajaxterm

Ajaxterm is a web based terminal. It was totally inspired and works almost exactly like http://anyterm.org/ except it's much easier to install (see comparaison with anyterm below).

Ajaxterm written in python (and some AJAX javascript for client side) and depends only on python2.3 or better.
Ajaxterm is very simple to install on Linux, MacOS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, cygwin and any Unix that runs python2.3.
Ajaxterm was written by Antony Lesuisse (email: al AT udev.org), License Public Domain.

News

• 2006-10-29: v0.10 allow space in login, cgi launch fix, redhat init
• 2006-07-12: v0.9 change uid, daemon fix (Daniel Fischer)
• 2006-07-04: v0.8 add login support to ssh (Sven Geggus), change max width to 256
• 2006-05-31: v0.7 minor fixes, daemon option
• 2006-05-23: v0.6 Applied debian and gentoo patches, renamed to Ajaxterm, default port 8022

Download and Install

• Release: Ajaxterm-0.10.tar.gz
• Browse src: ajaxterm/

To install Ajaxterm issue the following commands:

wget http://antony.lesuisse.org/qweb/files/Ajaxterm-0.10.tar.gz
tar zxvf Ajaxterm-0.10.tar.gz
cd Ajaxterm-0.10
./ajaxterm.py

Then point your browser to this URL : http://localhost:8022/

Screenshot

Documentation and Caveats

• Ajaxterm only supports latin1 encoding. If you use Ubuntu or any LANG==en_US.UTF-8 distribution don't forget to "unset LANG".

• If run as root ajaxterm will run /bin/login, otherwise it will run ssh localhost. To use another command, use the -c option.

• By default Ajaxterm only listen at 127.0.0.1:8022. For remote access, it is strongly recommended to use https SSL/TLS. It is simple to configure if you use the apache web server using mod_proxy.
  
  Using SSL will also speed up Ajaxterm (probably because of keepalive).
  
  Here is an configuration example:

    Listen 443
    NameVirtualHost *:443

    <VirtualHost *:443>
       ServerName localhost
       SSLEngine On
       SSLCertificateKeyFile ssl/apache.pem
       SSLCertificateFile ssl/apache.pem

       ProxyRequests Off
       <Proxy *>
               Order deny,allow
               Allow from all
       </Proxy>
       ProxyPass /ajaxterm/ http://localhost:8022/
       ProxyPassReverse /ajaxterm/ http://localhost:8022/
    </VirtualHost>

With this alternate VHost-Config you can secure the access with Username and Password, so only you can access the shell from remote:

    Listen 443
    NameVirtualHost *:443

    <VirtualHost *:443>
       ServerName localhost
       SSLEngine On
       SSLCertificateKeyFile ssl/apache.pem
       SSLCertificateFile ssl/apache.pem

       ProxyRequests Off
       <Proxy *>
               AuthType Basic
               AuthName "remote Shell Access"
               AuthUserFile /etc/apache2/htpasswd
               Require user tom
               Order deny,allow
               Allow from all
       </Proxy>
       ProxyPass /ajaxterm/ http://localhost:8022/
       ProxyPassReverse /ajaxterm/ http://localhost:8022/
    </VirtualHost>

To initial create /etc/apache2/htpasswd with an encrypted password for user tom issue the following command:

htpasswd2 -c /etc/apache2/htpasswd tom

• Using GET HTTP request seems to speed up ajaxterm, just click on GET in the interface, but be warned that your keystrokes might be logged (by apache or any proxy). I usually enable it after the login.

• Ajaxterm commandline usage:

usage: ajaxterm.py [options]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -pPORT, --port=PORT   Set the TCP port (default: 8022)
  -cCMD, --command=CMD  set the command (default: /bin/login or ssh localhost)
  -l, --log             log requests to stderr (default: quiet mode)
  -d, --daemon          run as daemon in the background
  -PPIDFILE, --pidfile=PIDFILE
                        set the pidfile (default: /var/run/ajaxterm.pid)
  -iINDEX_FILE, --index=INDEX_FILE
                        default index file (default: ajaxterm.html)
  -uUID, --uid=UID      Set the daemon's user id

• Ajaxterm was first written as a demo for qweb (my web framework), but actually doesn't use many features of qweb.

• Compared to anyterm:
  • There are no partial updates; ajaxterm updates either all the screen or nothing. That make the code simpler and I also think it's faster. HTTP replies are always gzencoded. When used in 80x25 mode, almost all of them are below the 1500 bytes (size of an ethernet frame) and we just replace the screen with the reply (no javascript string handling).
  • Ajaxterm polls the server for updates with an exponentially growing timeout when the screen hasn't changed. The timeout is also reset as soon as a key is pressed. Anyterm blocks on a pending request and use a parallel connection for keypresses. The anyterm approch is better when there aren't any keypresses.

• Ajaxterm files are released in the Public Domain, (except sarissa* which are LGPL).

TODO

• insert mode ESC [ 4 h
• change size x,y from gui (sending signal)
• vt102 graphic codepage
• use innerHTML or prototype instead of sarissa