
Ask HN: Web-based personal terminal options? - jhow15
I&#x27;ve just needed to ssh into a VPS to fix something pretty urgently but my laptop was on the fritz and held me up. Obviously a big single point of failure problem!<p>I don&#x27;t have any other physical machines that I could give ssh key access as backup..<p>There must be a web-based personal terminal provider that you can set up on a permanent basis? Then you could access it from anywhere, even when out with mobile etc. But I&#x27;m not sure which to go with&#x2F;trust.<p>Or do most people just have a cheap secondary laptop?
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imhoguy
I use android phone with termux or juicessh and hacker keyboard app. Also
pretty much every phone should work with tiny foldable Bluetooth keyboard.

If you want a mobile kit for hotel room without carrying laptop there you can
try some HDMI screen mirroring dongle (Google Cast).

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ntw1103
There are a lot of potential security problems with setting something like
what you describe, but it is very possible.

If you wanted, you could run
[https://github.com/huashengdun/webssh](https://github.com/huashengdun/webssh)
on the sever you are trying to access, or something equivalent to a Boston
server. This is something you should definitely host with TLS, and some form
of authentication.

You could use something like this:
[https://github.com/PHPAuth/PHPAuth](https://github.com/PHPAuth/PHPAuth) You
could also use Okta.

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fabiomaia
What are these security problems?

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ntw1103
A good place to start looking would be
[https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Top_Ten_Proje...](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Top_Ten_Project)

The steps I described would mitigate most of those.

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fasturdotcom
I built my own, Using codemirror.

NodeJs for the server which spawns a process to execute bash commands.

[https://twitter.com/fasturdotcom](https://twitter.com/fasturdotcom)

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a-saleh
I use my phone. I have termux on android, with password protected ssh-key and
it did save me a few times.

I assume there is something like that for iOS, or other phones.

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dinkleberg
I use google cloud shell all the time and it works really well. It spins up an
ephemeral container, but it persists the home directory.

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garmaine
What you described would be hideously insecure. Get a backup laptop.

~~~
jhow15
Alright - thank you!

