ttyd - Share your terminal over the web

ttyd is a simple command-line tool for sharing terminal over the web, inspired by GoTTY.

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

Installation

Install on macOS

Install with homebrew:

brew install ttyd

Install on Linux

Ubuntu 16.04 as example:

sudo apt-get install cmake g++ pkg-config git vim-common libwebsockets-dev libjson-c-dev libssl-dev
git clone https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd.git
cd ttyd && mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make && make install

NOTE: You may need to compile libwebsockets from source for ubuntu versions old than 16.04, since they have outdated libwebsockets-dev package (Issue #6).

Install on Windows

ttyd can be built with MSYS2 on windows, The build instructions is here.

NOTE: Native windows console programs may not work correctly due to pty incompatibility issues. As a workaround, you can use winpty as a wrapper to invoke the windows program, eg: ttyd winpty cmd.

Install on OpenWrt/LEDE

opkg install ttyd

NOTE: This may only works for LEDE snapshots currently, if the install command fails, compile it yourself.

Usage

Command-line Options

ttyd is a tool for sharing terminal over the web

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

VERSION:
    1.3.1

OPTIONS:
    --port, -p              Port to listen (default: 7681, use `0` for random port)
    --interface, -i         Network interface to bind (eg: eth0), or UNIX domain socket path (eg: /var/run/ttyd.sock)
    --credential, -c        Credential for Basic Authentication (format: username:password)
    --uid, -u               User id to run with
    --gid, -g               Group id to run with
    --signal, -s            Signal to send to the command when exit it (default: SIGHUP)
    --signal-list           Print a list of supported signals
    --reconnect, -r         Time to reconnect for the client in seconds (default: 10)
    --readonly, -R          Do not allow clients to write to the TTY
    --client-option, -t     Send option to client (format: key=value), repeat to add more options
    --check-origin, -O      Do not allow websocket connection from different origin
    --once, -o              Accept only one client and exit on disconnection
    --browser, -B           Open terminal with the default system browser
    --index, -I             Custom index.html path
    --ssl, -S               Enable SSL
    --ssl-cert, -C          SSL certificate file path
    --ssl-key, -K           SSL key file path
    --ssl-ca, -A            SSL CA file path for client certificate verification
    --debug, -d             Set log level (default: 7)
    --version, -v           Print the version and exit
    --help, -h              Print this text and exit

Visit https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd to get more information and report bugs.

Example Usage

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:

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.

Credits

GoTTY: ttyd is a port of GoTTY to C language with many improvements.
Libwebsockets: is used to build the websocket server.
Xterm.js: is used to run the terminal emulator on the web, hterm is used previously.

kidolphin/ttyd