DataPlayer
GitHub

SSH

A server you reach over SSH. You browse its folders and work with its files as with your own: tables, SQL over files, the editor, archives, search, copying between connections, and a terminal. It signs in with a password or one of your SSH keys, and only to the server whose key you confirmed. How connections work in general is on the Connections page.

What you can see

  • The server’s folders and files, from where you choose
  • Tables in CSV, TSV, Excel and Parquet files, and in logs
  • Documents, code, images, PDFs, recordings and the insides of zip archives
  • Files found by name, or by the text inside them
  • SQL run over tables kept in files

What you can change

  • Files in a text editor
  • The rows and columns of CSV and TSV files
  • Files and folders: create, upload, rename, delete, download
  • Archives: pack files into one, or unpack one
  • Files copied or moved between folders and connections
  • Anything else, from a terminal on the server

Connecting

The Connection page of the window asks for:

  • Host and Port, 22 unless the server says otherwise;
  • User: the account to sign in as;
  • Folder: where browsing starts. Empty is the account’s home folder;
  • Server key: what the server proves itself with (see below);
  • Authentication: a password, or Key, one of your SSH keys.

A connection string such as ssh://ann@files.example.com:22 pasted into URL fills the host, port and user. A password is never part of it.

The server key

Nothing is sent to a server until you have confirmed its key. This is what stops a password or a key going to a machine that only pretends to be yours.

  1. Fill in the host and port, then press Fetch from the server.
  2. The server’s fingerprint is shown. Compare it with the one the server’s administrator gives you, or with what ssh-keyscan prints.
  3. Press Trust this key.

A server that later presents a different key is refused, with a sentence saying so. If the server was reinstalled, fetch its key again, compare, and press Trust the new key. Only the connection’s owner can do this.

A server started from Start SSH server here trusts the key it presented first, because this application started it.

SSH keys

Your SSH keys are on the Preferences page, apart from connections, so one key serves as many connections as you point at it.

  • New key makes a key on this server: ED25519, or RSA for servers that refuse ED25519. Import takes a private key you paste or choose as a file.
  • Copy the public key copies the line to add to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server. It ends in dataplayer, so the server’s owner can tell which line it is.
  • The private half of a key is never shown again, to anybody.
  • A key can have a passphrase, kept one of three ways: none; stored beside the key; or asked for when the key is needed and held for 15 minutes, an hour or eight hours. Lock it now forgets it early.
  • A key that is locked stops its connections. Every screen that reads the connection then offers Unlock the key in place of an error.
  • A key used by a connection cannot be deleted. Point the connection at another key first.

The catalog and the files

An SSH connection is browsed exactly like a Files connection: the same catalog, the same search by name and inside files, the same viewers, the same editor, the same actions (New folder, New file, Upload files, Rename, Delete, Download, Archive, Extract, Copy, Cut, Paste), and the same SQL over files.

Nothing runs a command on the server for these: everything goes through SFTP.

Differences from your own files:

  • Connect folder is not offered.
  • A file larger than 200 MB is not opened as a table, a workbook, an archive or in SQL: download it instead. Text, pictures, PDFs and recordings open whatever their size.
  • A search inside files skips files over 1 MB and stops after 32 MB in total, because every byte crosses the network.

The terminal

Terminals, on the left rail, opens a terminal in the panel at the foot of the screen: the login shell of the connection’s account, on the server.

  • Only the connection’s owner can open one. People the connection is shared with cannot.
  • The shell starts in the account’s home folder, not in the connection’s Folder.
  • Closing the terminal, closing the page or losing the network ends the shell. It is not reattached; open another.
  • Several terminals can be open at once, up to eight. Switching to another tool in the panel keeps them running.