WeTTy = Web + TTy

Terminal over HTTP and https. WeTTy is an alternative to ajaxterm and anyterm but much better than them because WeTTy uses xterm.js which is a full fledged implementation of terminal emulation written entirely in JavaScript. WeTTy uses websockets rather then Ajax and hence better response time.

This fork was originally bug fixes and updates, but has since evolved in to a full rewrite to use xterm.js to have better support and make it more maintainable.

Install

WeTTy can be installed from source or from npm. To install from source run:

$ git clone https://github.com/butlerx/wetty
$ cd wetty
$ yarn

or install it globally with yarn, yarn -g add wetty.js, or npm, npm i -g wetty.js

Running WeTTy

Wettu can either be run as a standalone service or from another node script. To see how to use WeTTy from node see the API Doc

$ node index.js

Open your browser on http://yourserver:3000/ and you will prompted to login. Or go too http://yourserver:3000/ssh/<username> to specify the user before hand.

Flags

WeTTy can be run with the --help flag to get a full list of flags.

WeTTy runs on port 3000 by default. You can change the default port by tunning with the --port or -p flag.

If WeTTy is run as root while the host is set as the local machine it will use the login binary rather than ssh. If no host is specified it will use localhost as the ssh host.

If instead you wish to connect to a remote host you can specify the host with the --sshhost flag and pass the IP or DNS address of the host you want to connect to.

You can specify the default user used to ssh to a host using the --sshuser. This user can overwritten by going to http://yourserver:3000/ssh/<username>. If this is left blank a user will be prompted to enter their username when they connect.

By default WeTTy will try to ssh to port 22, if your host uses an alternative ssh port this can be specified with the flag --sshport.

https

Always use https especially with a terminal to your server. You can add https by either using WeTTy behind a proxy or directly.

If you don't have SSL certificates from a CA you can create a self signed certificate using this command:

$ openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 30000 -nodes

To run WeTTy directly with ssl use both the --sslkey and --sslcert flags and pass them the path too your cert and key as follows:

node index.js --sslkey key.pem --sslcert cert.pem -p 3000

Behind a Proxy

As said earlier you can use a proxy to add https to WeTTy.

Note that if your proxy is configured for https you should run WeTTy without SSL

Nginx

Put the following configuration in nginx's conf:

location /wetty {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000/wetty;
  proxy_http_version 1.1;
  proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  proxy_read_timeout 43200000;

  proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
  proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
  proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
}

Apache

Put the following configuration in apache's conf:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}  ^/wetty/socket.io [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} transport=websocket [NC]
RewriteRule /wetty/socket.io/(.*) ws://localhost:3000/wetty/socket.io/$1 [P,L]

<LocationMatch ^/wetty/(.*)>
  DirectorySlash On
  Require all granted
  ProxyPassMatch http://127.0.0.1:3000
  ProxyPassReverse /wetty/
</LocationMatch>

Dockerized Version

WeTTy can be run from a container to ssh to a remote host or the host system. This is handy for quick deployments. Just modify docker-compose.yml for your host and run:

$ docker-compose up -d

Visit the appropriate URL in your browser ([localhost|$(boot2docker ip)]:PORT).

The default username is term and the password is term, if you did not modify SSHHOST

In the docker version all flags can be accessed as environment variables such as SSHHOST or SSHPORT.

Run WeTTy as a service daemon

Install WeTTy globally with global option:

init.d

$ sudo yarn global add wetty.js
$ sudo cp ~/.config/yarn/global/node_modules/wetty.js/bin/wetty.conf /etc/init
$ sudo start wetty

systemd

$ yarn global add wetty.js
$ cp ~/.config/yarn/global/node_modules/wetty.js/bin/wetty.service  ~/.config/systemd/user/
$ systemctl --user enable wetty
$ systemctl --user start wetty

This will start WeTTy on port 3000. If you want to change the port or redirect stdout/stderr you should change the last line in wetty.conf file, something like this:

exec sudo -u root wetty -p 80 >> /var/log/wetty.log 2>&1

FAQ

What browsers are supported?

WeTTy supports all browsers that xterm.js supports.