how do I troubleshoot a ssh:// link that won't do anything?

Question

I've got a link (in Chrome) that looks like in Ubuntu 11:

ssh://deploy@ec2-snip.amazonaws.com

When I click on it, nothing happens. I can ssh into the instance successfully. But when I click on this link, I get a dialog box for an "External Protocol Request", then I click "Launch Application" and then nada. Is there something I need to setup to get the ssh:// links to work in Ubuntu?

Answer 1

You will need to write a script to handle the ssh://

Put this in ~/bin/firefox-ssh.sh

#!/bin/bash
address=`echo $1 | cut -d / -f 3`
port=`echo $1 | cut -d / -f 4`
if [ "$port" == "" ]; then
    port=22
fi
ssh ${address} -P ${port}

make it executable

chmod a+x ~/bin/firefox-ssh.sh

Then set with

gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/ssh/command '/home/your_user/bin/firefox-ssh.sh %s' --type String
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/ssh/enabled --type Boolean true
gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/ssh/needs_terminal --type Boolean true

Modified from this thread on the ubuntu forums.