= Ajaxterm - Web Based SSH Terminal Client =

If you are behind a firewall, and only have internet access through a restrictive proxy server, you will have to use a Web Based SSH terminal client. Note: the performance is severely below that of Putty. I suggest you exhaust all possibilities of using any available Socks and Http Proxies from within Putty.

Ajaxterm ( http://antony.lesuisse.org/qweb/trac/wiki/AjaxTerm ) is in the upcoming Debian Etch. It is an alternative to Anyterm (discussed here) and Mindterm (this is in Debian Sarge Stable, however runs as a java applet). How-to below works with etch, lenny and debian squeeze

apt-get install ajaxterm

/etc/init.d/ajaxterm start|stop

The config file is: /etc/default/ajaxterm . You can change the default port been used. Default=8022.

The ajaxterm Debian docs are located at: /usr/share/docs/ajaxterm <br>

Depending on your setup etc. you may have to do the following: vi /etc/ssh/ssh_config //uncomment: PasswordAuthentication yes Otherwise you may see the following error:<br> Permission denied (publickey,password).

telnet localhost 8022 Browse in an Internet Window to http://localhost:8022

Note: By default, ajaxterm will only bind to localhost, on port 8022, and thus will not be accessable from any other computer apart from localhost. Ajaxterm only runs in http and is not secure.<br> To help alleviate these problems, we configure Apache to serve out Ajaxterm over https.

Put the following in an Apache vhost file: <VirtualHost *:80>

       ServerName ajaxterm.website.com
       Redirect 301 / https://ajaxterm.website.com
       CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
       ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>

       ServerName ajaxterm.website.com
       HostnameLookups Double
       CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined env=!dontlog
       SetEnvIf Request_URI "^/u" dontlog
       ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log
       Loglevel warn
       SSLEngine On
       SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/apache.pem

ProxyRequests Off

       <Proxy *>
               AuthUserFile /srv/ajaxterm/.htpasswd
               AuthName EnterPassword
               AuthType Basic
               require valid-user

Order Deny,allow

               Allow from all
       </Proxy>
       ProxyPass / http://localhost:8022/
       ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8022/

</VirtualHost>

Enable the proxy and proxy_html modules in apache. ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy.conf /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/proxy.conf ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/proxy.load ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/proxy_http.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/proxy_http.load or a2enmod proxy proxy_http

That should do it. Check auth.log and apache logs etc.

The reasons I have chosen Ajaxterm over Anyterm is because Anyterm is not yet in Debian Packages. Anyterm is difficult to complile correctly. When I did manage to compile anyterm, I recieved apache threading errors ( see Anyterm ).

Although Mindterm is in Debian Sarge, it will not be in etch, as the free version of Mindterm does not support SSH v_2. Also Mindterm requires a user/client to have a JRE, and may possibly require port 22 access open (which is the main problem).

Ajaxterm, while slow, works quickly and effectively out of the box with little work. Again, I have Ajaxterm on a secondary box which is not mission critical.

To get ajaxterm using a larger terminal window within the browser, the following files need to be edited: vi /usr/share/ajaxterm/ajaxterm.html window.onload=function() {

              t=ajaxterm.Terminal("term",100,40);
      };
      </script>

vi /usr/share/ajaxterm/ajaxterm.py def init(self,width=100,height=40):

You may have to restart ajaxterm for the above to work.