Re: Way to have terminal/console application stack in gnome like in KDE 3.5's kicker?
on 22:18 Wed 16 Feb, D G Teed (donald.teed@gmail.com) wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 9:13 PM, Dr. Ed Morbius <dredmorbius@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > on 20:51 Wed 16 Feb, D G Teed (donald.teed@gmail.com) wrote:
> > > Having lost KDE 3.5 in the squeeze update, and not being satisfied
> > > with the new KDE 4.* (frankly, I think it is very poorly
> > > designed), I am looking for a desktop which can stack running
> > > terminal sessions.
> > >
> > > Let's say I have 50 Konsole or gnome-terminal windows open, each
> > > to a different remote box. I want to click on the panel area and
> > > select one by name which is already open. I could do that in KDE
> > > 3.5. Firefox and other apps could do this too. How is this done
> > > in gnome or what options are there for managing many open sessions
> > > of something?
<...>
> > What are you doing that requires 50 terminal sessions? How do you plan
> > on managing this when your server count doubles? Increases by an order
> > of magnitude?
> >
>
> This is at a University, so each system is pretty much unique in
> purpose, packages, etc.
Are you administering these systems, using them, or a mix of both?
> There are for example roughly 10 Solaris Sparc. One is financial
> system, another library management, another an Oracle DB, another the
> student system, etc. Most others are Linux. Two of those are cyrus
> mail servers, another two are MX, then one moodle system, 5 different
> systems for Computer Science, one for icecast streaming, lon-capa, and
> many specialized boxes, some for research grants, etc. There are not
> really more than 2 of the same thing except when you get into the Math
> Cluster, and usually I work on only one system from the cluster.
If you don't need a persistent session to each, and you're siimply
running occasional commands to various systems, you can invoke ssh with
the command you want to run:
ssh <remotehost> <command>
... sparing a persistent session.
If a given command is run sufficiently frequently, you could create an
alias / bash function / shell script to assist.
Some tools (vim notably) support remote SSH transports allowing you to
edit files on remote systems. Alternately, you could use one of the SSH
FUSE tools to mount remote systems over SSH.
If you're working on a remote system occasionally and want to leave the
session active, 'screen' remotely is a godsend. That's my first go-to.
It's also very helpful to have a shell prompt which identifies the user
and host you're attached to, and sets the window title to this as well.
If screen isn't installed on these systems, inquire as to whether or not
it can be installed.
As for having 50 sessions open, I've had high-water marks of 80-120
sessions running, and again, WindowMaker makes managing large numbers of
X clients much more feasible than other desktop environments (and I try
altnernatives frequently).
You might also be able to run port-forwards or otherwise tunnel sessions
from the remote systems to your box.
> Anyway, this may be partially misunderstood. I'm not looking for a
> solution to manage the remote systems. I'm not doing something on all
> 50 terminals at once. But over the course of a few days, I end up
> having up to 50 terminals open from work recently done, and it makes
> sense to use the terminal sessions again.
Not so much misunderstood as trying to understand more clearly your
needs.
I've had admin tasks where I needed to run a semi-automated process
across a large number (1000 or so) hosts. I kept a matrix of 9-12
terminals up, my process instructions, and a tracking document (noting
which hosts I had to run, had started, had completed, and/or had run
into issues with. Running 2-3 screen sessions, I could keep 18-36
systems in play at any one time, manage the whole process, and keep
things straight in my own head as to where I was in things. It's one
approach to the problem, but is specific to administering a large number
of substantively identical systems. It also doesn't seem to fit your
needs.
That said: a mix of port forwarding, non-interactive one-offs, screen
sessions, and a few persistent sessions might make your management issue
somewhat more tenable.
> I merely want to pick one terminal session that is already open to the
> system I want to work on, if it exists. Likewise to pick from one of
> my web browser windows from a stack of open windows. Thus, the
> stacking in KDE 3.5's kicker was just the thing.
Right. Or WMaker's windowlist, or grouped windows, or ion's
tiled/tabbed windows....
Lots of options. I'd suggest you give a few a shot and write up which
worked best for you.
--
Dr. Ed Morbius, Chief Scientist / |
Robot Wrangler / Staff Psychologist | When you seek unlimited power
Krell Power Systems Unlimited | Go to Krell!
Reply to: