MacOS – Set iTerm2 as the ssh:// URL handler

I was curious about the same problem. After reviewing the source code, I found in iTerm2 v1.0.0.20111020 is hard-coded to open a new session as a tab if a session already exists, when it receives nearly any "launch this URL with a handler" command.

My Xcode and Objective-C skills are still rather weak, but if you want to give it a shot I believe the problem is related to the source file iTermController.m. On lines 789 to 870 the launchBookmark:withURL method has the following code:

// Where do we execute this command?
BOOL toggle = NO;
if (theTerm == nil) {
    [iTermController switchToSpaceInBookmark:aDict];
    term = [[[PseudoTerminal alloc] initWithSmartLayout:YES
                                             windowType:[aDict objectForKey:KEY_WINDOW_TYPE] ? [[aDict objectForKey:KEY_WINDOW_TYPE] intValue] : WINDOW_TYPE_NORMAL
                                                 screen:[aDict objectForKey:KEY_SCREEN] ? [[aDict objectForKey:KEY_SCREEN] intValue] : -1] autorelease];
    [self addInTerminals: term];
    toggle = [term windowType] == WINDOW_TYPE_FULL_SCREEN;
} else {
    term = theTerm;
}

id result = [term addNewSession: aDict withURL: url];

I suspect that when theTerm == nil, addNewSession works as expected by launching a new window, since one is currently not running. Perhaps you can modify the code to force the first block to always run, regardless of theTerm's contents.

I hope this helps!! .. It may be worth filing a bug report or contacting the author if you're still having problems.

The default TERM type iTerm reports is xterm and that should be sufficient from your Mac's end of things to see colours. The problem is there are two things in play here: your local iTerm terminal and the remote machine and it's shell configuration. If you haven't setup your shell to show colour, it doesn't matter what your iTerm is reporting for TERM.

It sounds like the problem is on the remote end and that you haven't configured ls on your Linux system to output colours.

Try setting LS_COLORS in your environment after you ssh in to your Linux machine. Here is one way to do it:

export LS_COLORS='rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:mh=00:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:mi=01;05;37;41:su=37;41:sg=30;43:ca=30;41:tw=30;42:ow=34;42:st=37;44:ex=01;32'

That should give you a fairly good chance of ensuring you see colours when you run ls on any directory. If you like the settings, make them permanent by adding that line to your ~/.bash_profile file on the Linux machine.

You can also use the newer, more generic, COLORS environment variable and point it to the /etc/DIR_COLORS file that should exist on most modern Linux installations. More tools will key off this than just ls so you'll see colour in tools like grep too. Add the following to your ~/.bash_profile:

export COLORS=/etc/DIR_COLORS

to add colours to more tools.