Linux – How to have multiple windows in a SSH terminal session

linuxmacossshterminal.app

From Mac OSX I login to a remote server that handles parallel computing jobs. I am not able to install anything on this server as it is administered by the university.
I have multiple jobs running and want to monitor the log file in the following way:

tail -f logfile.log

Right now I have four jobs running, I open four terminal windows, SSH four times into the server, and do the tail command four times for the different logfiles (which are in different folders on the server).
I have the feeling that I'm doing this in a sub-optimal way and am looking to just SSH once, then from one terminal window open all the four log files in separate windows (or tabs) with the tail command.

Is this possible? Or is it mandatory to sign in four times?

Best Answer

The screen utility will allow to have multiple windows in a session. (You will have to install it on the server end)

This guy shows you the commands for how to split your views within the same terminal window.

It's also useful for re-connecting to a dropped session.

UPDATE:

Note that screen and tmux sessions will all "live" within one session which will still only give you one window or tab on OSX terminal app itself (even though these utilities allow you to have multiple "windows/views" within that view). See comments from this user:

ssh connections are a single process running in one shell, and when you create a new tab you are creating a new local shell that will not be running this process. Furthermore the remote server will not accept a duplicate connection from you without authentication. In essence, this is impossible to do. The closest thing you can do is make use of the bash history, and press the up arrow to scroll through your most recent commands until you get to the ssh command you used for your current connection, and then execute it.

If you still desire to have multiple windows/tabs in the OSX terminal app itself you will need to "login" multiple times. Several users have created scripts to try to aid this process.

This users solution might work best for you. This user creates a menu for his remote connections.

Other solutions I've seen only work with local sessions, but the idea is similar.

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Multiple command prompts with one SSH connection

Screen and tmux offer you the answers you're looking for, but to expand your question a bit, I would like to suggest you look into the matter of SSH key-based authentication so that you don't need the username and password every time you SSH into your remote server :-)

Linux – Open file in local text editor from within an SSH connection

You might be interested in sshfs. With that package you can mount a remote directory via SSH and use it like a local one:

sshfs user@ubuntu:/var/log /mnt/ubuntu_logs

It works completely transparent and you can use in principle every program which is installed on your local machine.

In order to use sshfs you'll need also a package that provides a Filesystem in Userspace, on OSX it's obviously called OSXFUSE (http://osxfuse.github.com).

You'll find some more information at that answer on SO and the installation procedure seems to be rather standard as two dmg packages are provided at the above linked Github site.

Best Answer

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Multiple command prompts with one SSH connection

Linux – Open file in local text editor from within an SSH connection

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