I’ve been working with Remote System Explorer (RSE), a terminal and ssh session manager that runs in the Eclipse SDK. This is very cool – the thing is, eclipse runs on Solaris, Linux, Windows, MAC OSX, IBM AIX (of course – IBM created the eclipse framework). It as close to an OS-agnostic framework as anything I’ve ever experienced.

I had primarily intended to use it on windows to add ssh terminal capacity – replacing console2 and cygwin – to connect to UNIX servers. But the interface is so good, I find I’m using it on both UNIX and windows – the konsole terminal is better in some ways at history and at cut-and-paste using mouse buttons directly. So far the context menu from a right-click is the only cut-and-paste that functions within the terminal windows themselves.

On the other hand – in konsole each separate terminal window is a separate authentication – password-response – whereas in eclipse RSE, one authentication can be kept and spawn as many terminal sessions as needed. The organization is better. You can close the terminal sessions down, and leave a connection still intact. Then bring back terminal sessions as needed. That ability alone makes it worth losing the double-click select and middle-button paste from konsole sessions. I’m not yet convinced I can’t find a way to get that working either, that and an unlimited history or at least 10000 lines…

If I can get that back somehow in the terminal sessions it will be not just slightly better, but a huge amount better than any other session management I’ve used.

Install

You need java. On windows that can be an issue. On UNIX, not so much, pretty much there by default.

Download RSE and eclipse SDK.

Untar or unzip the eclipse package. In windows I unzip to c:\eclipse_3.4.2. In UNIX /usr/local/eclipse.

Unzip the RSE package layered over the eclipse install.

In windows I point a shortcut to c:\eclipse_3.4.2. In UNIX I move /usr/local/eclipse to /usr/local/eclipse_3.4.2, and create a symbolic link /usr/local/eclipse -> /usr/local/eclipse_3.4.2.

Open eclipse. Go to window -> open perspective -> other and open Remote System Explorer.

Configurations are stored in the workspace folder. Right-click in the left-hand pane and select “New Connection to create connections. Within eclipse you can add software respositories and update and add software from Help -> Software Updates.

— doug