Your first connection

User manual/Chapter 2

Creating a connection

Click + in the sidebar to open the new-connection dialog:

• Name: the label shown in the connection list.
• Host / port / user: the target; the port defaults to 22.
• Authentication: password or private key; a key file can be browsed for and given a passphrase.
• Start directory: optional, cd into it after connecting.
• Group: pick an existing group or create one; leave empty for “Ungrouped”.
• Note: optional.

A connection is stored in connections.json, which is encrypted and also holds workspaces. The application opens SSH sessions with password or SSH-key authentication and requests an xterm-256color PTY whose size follows the window.

Connection settings are also used by the terminal-focused panels: Docker, Kubernetes and Git choose their host from the terminal you have focused (details in chapters 7–9).

SSH sessions

• Transport: implemented in Rust with russh; no external ssh command or OpenSSH binary is required.
• Authentication: password or SSH key.
• Terminal: xterm.js rendering, xterm-256color PTY, window-size synchronisation.
• Keepalive: configurable interval and retry count.
• Reconnect: a reconnect action reuses the same tab instance; a monotonically increasing session_id keeps stale background tasks from contaminating the new session.

Connection health

Each tab shows a status dot driven by three backend events:

• connection-ok — connected; the dot is green.
• connection-suspect — keepalive failures suggest a problem; the dot turns yellow.
• connection-closed — the session ended; the dot turns red.

Use the reconnect action to reuse the tab rather than opening a new one.

Telnet, serial and local sessions

• Telnet: plain TCP with a built-in IAC negotiation state machine (ECHO, SGA, TERMINAL-TYPE, NAWS). Auto-login is optional and off by default because the protocol is plain text.
• Serial (COM): port enumeration with USB device friendly names and VID:PID, plus configurable baud rate, data bits, stop bits, parity and flow control. Baud-rate auto-detection tries each rate and ranks the results by how much the output looks like terminal text.
• Local terminal: the local shell can be opened as a top-level tab or as a split pane beside remote tabs.

Network scan

The Scan network button above the connection list finds open SSH / Telnet services in a range:

• Targets: CIDR (192.168.1.0/24), a single IP (10.0.0.5) or a last-octet range (192.168.1.10-192.168.1.20).
• Ports: comma-separated, e.g. 22,2222.
• Group: optional destination group for the results.
• Advanced: timeout in milliseconds and concurrency.

The result table lists open ports only and shows IP, port, detected service (SSH / Telnet / unknown), banner and latency; add rows individually or add them all as connections.