09 April 2012

A free ssh client for Ipad


There are a bunch of ssh clients in Apple App Store that costs money. If your looking for a free one for Ipad the number is reduced: a search for the "ssh" and Price = "Free" yields 9 hits. Out of these 9 only 2 is and actual ssh client: zatelnet and Rove Mobile Admin Client.

Out of curiosity I tried Rove Mobile Admin Client. It's main purpose is actually not to be an ssh client, but to be a remote management tool for their commercial server software. But that doesn't matter, since the ssh client part of the app is free to use standalone. I could successfully connect to my home Linux computer:


Don't expect miracles out of this app, since it is free it is probably a lot worse than some "real" non-free ssh clients. But you can do basic things.

Pros:
  1. Can use private key for authentication
  2. Can edit files in nano (requires rather good terminal emulation and the abilities to send Ctrl sequences).
  3. Does maintain connection when you switch to another app
 Cons:
  1. Does not support UTF-8 (since Ubuntu uses this as default it can be a bit frustrating)
  2. Does not support select, copy and paste in the terminal emulation.
  3. Very slow (the time for a key press to "echo" is in the magnitude of 1 s).
  4. Can only have one open connection at a time

A side note: the app also includes an RDP client, but forget about using it, it is painfully slow.



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