NAME

ttyd - Share your terminal over the web

SYNOPSIS

ttyd [options] <command> [<arguments...>]

Description

ttyd is a command-line tool for sharing terminal over the web that runs in *nix and windows systems, with the following features:

Built on top of Libwebsockets with libuv for speed
Fully-featured terminal based on Xterm.js with CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and IME support
Graphical ZMODEM integration with lrzsz support
SSL support based on OpenSSL
Run any custom command with options
Basic authentication support and many other custom options
Cross platform: macOS, Linux, FreeBSD/OpenBSD, OpenWrt/LEDE, Windows

OPTIONS

-p, --port <port> Port to listen (default: 7681, use 0 for random port)

-i, --interface <interface> Network interface to bind (eg: eth0), or UNIX domain socket path (eg: /var/run/ttyd.sock)

-c, --credential USER[:PASSWORD] Credential for Basic Authentication (format: username:password)

-u, --uid <uid> User id to run with

-g, --gid <gid> Group id to run with

-s, --signal <signal string> Signal to send to the command when exit it (default: 1, SIGHUP)

-a, --url-arg Allow client to send command line arguments in URL (eg: ⟨http://localhost:7681?arg=foo&arg=bar⟩)

-R, --readonly Do not allow clients to write to the TTY

-t, --client-option <key=value> Send option to client (format: key=value), repeat to add more options

-T, --terminal-type Terminal type to report, default: xterm-256color

-O, --check-origin Do not allow websocket connection from different origin

-m, --max-clients Maximum clients to support (default: 0, no limit)

-o, --once Accept only one client and exit on disconnection

-B, --browser Open terminal with the default system browser

-I, --index <index file> Custom index.html path

-b, --base-path Expected base path for requests coming from a reverse proxy (eg: /mounted/here)

-P, --ping-interval Websocket ping interval(sec) (default: 300)

-6, --ipv6 Enable IPv6 support

-S, --ssl Enable SSL

-C, --ssl-cert <cert path> SSL certificate file path

-K, --ssl-key <key path> SSL key file path

-A, --ssl-ca <ca path> SSL CA file path for client certificate verification

-d, --debug <level> Set log level (default: 7)

-v, --version Print the version and exit

-h, --help Print this text and exit

Examples

ttyd starts web server at port 7681 by default, you can use the -p option to change it, the command will be started with arguments as options. For example, run:

ttyd -p 8080 bash -x

Then open ⟨http://localhost:8080⟩ with a browser, you will get a bash shell with debug mode enabled. More examples:

If you want to login with your system accounts on the web browser, run ttyd login.
You can even run a none shell command like vim, try: ttyd vim, the web browser will show you a vim editor.
Sharing single process with multiple clients: ttyd tmux new -A -s ttyd vim, run tmux new -A -s ttyd to connect to the tmux session from terminal.

SSL how-to

Generate SSL CA and self signed server/client certificates:

# CA certificate (FQDN must be different from server/client)
openssl genrsa -out ca.key 2048
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=Acme Root CA" -out ca.crt
# server certificate (for multiple domains, change subjectAltName to: DNS:example.com,DNS:www.example.com)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout server.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=localhost" -out server.csr
openssl x509 -sha256 -req -extfile <(printf "subjectAltName=DNS:localhost") -days 365 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out server.crt
# client certificate (the p12/pem format may be useful for some clients)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout client.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=client" -out client.csr
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in client.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out client.crt
openssl pkcs12 -export -clcerts -in client.crt -inkey client.key -out client.p12
openssl pkcs12 -in client.p12 -out client.pem -clcerts

Then start ttyd:

ttyd --ssl --ssl-cert server.crt --ssl-key server.key --ssl-ca ca.crt bash

You may want to test the client certificate verification with curl(1):

curl --insecure --cert client.p12[:password] -v https://localhost:7681

If you don't want to enable client certificate verification, remove the --ssl-ca option.

Docker and ttyd

Docker containers are jailed environments which are more secure, this is useful for protecting the host system, you may use ttyd with docker like this:

Sharing single docker container with multiple clients: docker run -it --rm -p 7681:7681 tsl0922/ttyd.
Creating new docker container for each client: ttyd docker run -it --rm ubuntu.

Nginx reverse proxy

Sample config to proxy ttyd under the /ttyd path:

location   ^/ttyd(.*)$ {
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:7681/$1;
}

AUTHOR

Shuanglei Tao <tsl0922@gmail.com> Visit ⟨https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd⟩ to get more information and report bugs.