OMNITTY MULTIPLE-MACHINE SSH MULTIPLEXER
Copyright (c) 2004 Bruno T. C. de Oliveira
Licensed under the GNU General Public License
See the COPYING file for more details on the license terms.
[[ AUTHOR AND PROJECT HOMEPAGE ]]
This program was written by Bruno Takahashi C. de Oliveira, a
Computer Science student at Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
The project home page is:
Old http://omnitty.sourceforge.net
New git@github.com:sdo-ops/omnitty.git
[[ WHAT IS IT? ]]
Omnitty is a curses-based program that allows one to log into several
machines simultaneously and interact with them, selectively directing
input to individual machines or groups of selected machines. You can run both
line-oriented and screen oriented in the target machines, because Omnitty
has built-in terminal emulation capability. When the terminal is large
enough, Omnitty also displays a "summary area" for each machine,
in which it shows what the latest output from the machine was.
[[ REQUIREMENTS ]]
To compile omnitty, you need libROTE (http://rote.sourceforge.net),
ncurses and of course libc.
[[ CONTRIBUTIONS ]]
Thanks to the following people for their contributions to the project
in the form of patches, suggestions, testing or otherwise:
* Richard Palmer <richard.palmer@gmail.com> - for the patch that allows
the user to rename machines
[[ MORE DETAILS ]]
Multiple-host network administration usually involves running the same
set of commands on several different machines. An administrator might
ssh into each of the machines in his network individually to perform
the required tasks, but the process soon becomes repetitive and
prone to errors. Scripts might help in the case of noninteractive
programs and when the administrator knows exactly what commands are
to be given. Error handling in these scripts is also difficult to
code, and the process becomes especially tedious if these tasks
have to be done regularly.
Omnitty tries to present a different approach to manipulating several
machines remotely. It simultaneously logs you into all the machines you
specify and then presents a screen in which you navigate through
the list of machines. When you select a machine, its "terminal" is shown
onscreen and they keypresses you type are sent to that machine while
it is selected. The user may freely navigate the list, interacting
with the machines in any order.
Another feature is that you can 'tag' machines on the list and enter
a mode where the input you provide is directed to ALL the machines
you tagged, simultaneously. Thus you might tag all the machines in
which you need to run a particular command and then type the command
once to have all machines execute it.
Omnitty not only works with regular commands, but also with visual
programs. For example, you might run 'vi' remotely on several machines
simultaneously, and every keystroke you supply will be reproduced
in every machine you tagged. Thus you might interactively edit
files in several machines at once.