Open ssh in terminal by clicking on "ssh://user@host" links in browser

Question

I found a nice way to open a terminal with SSH to user@host if you click on a link that looks like this:

ssh://user@host

I guess the above solution works. It is great.

I need to get this working on many PCs. Is there already a package which does the enable SSH URLs?

Answer 1

No, there is no package for this because there is already support for it, you just have to enable it.

To enable it in a gnome desktop: (How to open ssh://username@hostname link)

gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/ssh/enabled true
gconftool-2 --set --type=string /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/ssh/command 'gnome-terminal -e "%s"'
gconftool-2 --set --type=bool /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/ssh/needs_terminal false

My script to install the handler application:

#!/bin/bash
# We need root to install
if [ "$(id -u)" != "0" ]; then
  echo "This script must be run as root" 1>&2
  exit 1
fi

# In case file exists
if [ -f "/usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler" ]
then
  echo "Found an old install, moving to ssh-url-handler.old"
  mv /usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler /usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler.old
fi

# Install handler file
touch /usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler
echo '#!/bin/sh' >> /usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler
echo 'd=${1#ssh://}' >> /usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler
echo 'x-terminal-emulator -x bash -c "ssh $d" &' >> /usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler
chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/ssh-url-handler

# Check that it is there
type ssh-url-handler >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "Warning: the ssh-url-handler could not be found! Please check that /usr/local/bin is in the PATH"

# Now for the desktop piece:
if [ -f "/usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop" ]
then
  echo "Found an old desktop handler, moving to .old"
  mv /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop.old
fi

touch /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
echo "[Desktop Entry]" >> /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
echo "Type=Application" >> /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
echo "Name=SSH URL Handler" >> /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
echo "Exec=ssh-url-handler %u" >> /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
echo "Icon=utilities-terminal" >> /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
echo "StartupNotify=false" >> /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
echo "MimeType=x-scheme-handler/ssh;" >> /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop
chmod a+x /usr/share/applications/ssh-url-handler.desktop

Just drop that into the install.sh of any debian package. You can easily do this using https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm/wiki to make your own package and distribute that.