ttyd/man/ttyd.man.md

ttyd 1 "September 2016" ttyd "User Manual"

NAME

ttyd - Share your terminal over the web

SYNOPSIS

ttyd [options] <command> [<arguments...>]

Description

ttyd is a command-line tool for sharing terminal over the web that runs in *nix and windows systems, with the following features:

• Built on top of Libwebsockets with C for speed
• Fully-featured terminal based on Xterm.js with CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and IME support
• SSL support based on OpenSSL
• Run any custom command with options
• Basic authentication support and many other custom options
• Cross platform: macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenWrt/LEDE, Windows

OPTIONS

-p, --port Port to listen (default: 7681, use 0 for random port)

-i, --interface Network interface to bind (eg: eth0), or UNIX domain socket path (eg: /var/run/ttyd.sock)

-c, --credential USER[:PASSWORD] Credential for Basic Authentication (format: username:password)

-u, --uid User id to run with

-g, --gid Group id to run with

-s, --signal Signal to send to the command when exit it (default: SIGHUP)

--signal-list Print a list of supported signals

-r, --reconnect Time to reconnect for the client in seconds (default: 10)

-R, --readonly Do not allow clients to write to the TTY

-t, --client-option <key=value> Send option to client (format: key=value), repeat to add more options

-O, --check-origin Do not allow websocket connection from different origin

-m, --max-clients Maximum clients to support (default: 0, no limit)

-o, --once Accept only one client and exit on disconnection

-B, --browser Open terminal with the default system browser

-I, --index Custom index.html path

-S, --ssl Enable SSL

-C, --ssl-cert SSL certificate file path

-K, --ssl-key SSL key file path

-A, --ssl-ca SSL CA file path for client certificate verification

-d, --debug Set log level (default: 7)

-v, --version Print the version and exit

-h, --help Print this text and exit

Examples

ttyd starts web server at port 7681 by default, you can use the -p option to change it, the command will be started with arguments as options. For example, run:

ttyd -p 8080 bash -x

Then open http://localhost:8080 with a browser, you will get a bash shell with debug mode enabled. More examples:

• If you want to login with your system accounts on the web browser, run ttyd login.
• You can even run a none shell command like vim, try: ttyd vim, the web browser will show you a vim editor.
• Sharing single process with multiple clients: ttyd tmux new -A -s ttyd vim, run tmux new -A -s ttyd to connect to the tmux session from terminal.

SSL how-to

Generate SSL CA and self signed server/client certificates:

# CA certificate (FQDN must be different from server/client)
openssl genrsa -out ca.key 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -out ca.crt
# server certificate
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout server.key -out server.csr
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out server.crt
# client certificate (the p12/pem format may be useful for some clients)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout client.key -out client.csr
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in client.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 02 -out client.crt
openssl pkcs12 -export -clcerts -in client.crt -inkey client.key -out client.p12
openssl pkcs12 -in client.p12 -out client.pem -clcerts

Then start ttyd:

ttyd --ssl --ssl-cert server.crt --ssl-key server.key --ssl-ca ca.crt bash

You may want to test the client certificate verification with curl(1):

curl --insecure --cert client.p12[:password] -v https://localhost:7681

If you don't want to enable client certificate verification, remove the --ssl-ca option.

Docker and ttyd

Docker containers are jailed environments which are more secure, this is useful for protecting the host system, you may use ttyd with docker like this:

• Sharing single docker container with multiple clients: docker run -it --rm -p 7681:7681 tsl0922/ttyd.
• Creating new docker container for each client: ttyd docker run -it --rm ubuntu.

AUTHOR

Shuanglei Tao <tsl0922@gmail.com> Visit https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd to get more information and report bugs.