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 libuv for speed
• Fully-featured terminal based on Xterm.js with CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and IME support
• Graphical ZMODEM integration with lrzsz 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/OpenBSD, 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: 1, SIGHUP)

-a, --url-arg Allow client to send command line arguments in URL (eg: http://localhost:7681?arg=foo&arg=bar)

-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

-T, --terminal-type Terminal type to report, default: xterm-256color

-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

-b, --base-path Expected base path for requests coming from a reverse proxy (eg: /mounted/here)

-6, --ipv6 Enable IPv6 support

-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 2048
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=Acme Root CA" -out ca.crt

# server certificate (for multiple domains, change subjectAltName to: DNS:example.com,DNS:www.example.com)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout server.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=localhost" -out server.csr
openssl x509 -sha256 -req -extfile <(printf "subjectAltName=DNS:localhost") -days 365 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out server.crt

# client certificate (the p12/pem format may be useful for some clients)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout client.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=client" -out client.csr
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in client.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -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.

Nginx reverse proxy

Sample config to proxy ttyd under the /ttyd path:

location ~ ^/ttyd(.*)$ {
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:7681/$1;
}

AUTHOR

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