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Introductory

If we often use the command line, and if we have to work in several windows at the same time, it is essential to have a multi - tab terminal application that is comfortable to use and has the right knowledge. In this little user tutorial we can learn about Asbrú Connection Manager Linux application and its basic functions.

I have been using this program on Debian for a few years now and I am happy with it. It knows everything I need - and even has many features that I don’t use - so it effectively helps me with my daily tasks on Linux, making it convenient and easy to access. SSH my contacts. For those of you who already know, you obviously don’t need a presentation, but for those who haven’t, I would love to recommend this little tutorial for my enthusiast, in which I will install this useful program on my laptop.

Short description

Asbro Connection Manager is a user interface that helps you manage remote terminal sessions and automate repetitive tasks.

features

• Simple graphical user interface for managing / starting connections to remote machines
• X11 transmission
• Scripting options similar to SecureCRT.
• Execute configurable local commands before or after a connection
• List of configurable macros (commands) that can be run locally when connected or sent to a connected client
• List of configurable conditional executions on the connected machine using 'Expect':
  • Forget SSH certificates
  • Concatenate multiple SSH connections
  • automates the creation of tunnels
  • queue transmission with delay capabilities
• KeePassX integration
• Ability to connect through a proxy server
• Manage cluster connections
• Tabbed / window terminals
• Wake On LAN capabilities
• Local and global variables, such as entering a password once that can be used in multiple locations, and so on. Areas of application:
  • Password storage
  • Reuse connection strings
• Smooth Gnome / Gtk integration
• Right-click taskbar icon to quickly start managed connections. Screenshots and statistics.
• The program is also available in the form of DEB, RPM and .tar.gz packages

Obtaining / Installing the Program

Asbro Connection Manager does not include Debian or Ubuntu official in your luggage, so we need to add a repository run by the developers of the program to our system. To obtain the Asbrú Connection Manager, visit official site, and follow the steps described here. So to install Debian / Ubuntu, run the following commands:

curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/asbru-cm/asbru-cm/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/asbru-cm/release/cfg/setup/bash.deb.sh' | sudo -E bash

sudo apt install asbru-cm

The program doesn't take up much space, I only have 19,4 Mb of packages installed on my laptop. Of course, this can be different in other environments, depending on how many of the program's package dependencies were already on the system before that.

How to Use

After installation, you can find the program icon in the Accessories menu or start it with the asbru-cm command from the command line.

Home screen

When you start for the first time, you receive empty panels on the home screen:

In the left part of the window you can see the list of contacts, which is still empty. In the middle at the top is an information panel about getting started, followed by a little statistics on usage. Below you can manage the captured screenshots. And in the bottom bar is a quick menu from which you can conveniently access some functions, including, for example, the local Shell window can be opened here with the middle icon of the bar.

As there is no Hungarian translation for the program, for the sake of accuracy we will proceed with the English menus / subtitles in the description.

The basic settings of the program can be accessed by clicking on the button labeled "Preferences" in the middle of the bottom bar. To get started, let’s go over what this menu contains.

Preferences menu

Entering the menu of the main settings of the program, you can see a very rich settings panel. In the left bar of the panel are the main setting groups, some of which even have additional tabs horizontally. "?" At the top right of the window. Clicking on the icon opens the program's web help, where you can get detailed information about the settings of the given panel. At the bottom of the window you can reset everything to the default settings (Reset to DEFAULT values), export your settings so that you can easily reset your settings during a later installation or another copy of the program, and exit without saving or saving the settings.

Main Options

The main settings group contains 3 additional tabs, the first one shows the contents of the Behavior.

Behavior ear

Here you can make the basic operating settings of the program. You can select the layout of the window, the icon theme, and how the program window appears on startup, how it behaves on exit, and CTRL + TAB key combination what to do. In addition, you can set up password protection, among other things, and customize the tabs on the terminals.

Look and Feel tab

In this panel you can set things related to the appearance of the program, such as what to display at startup, what to show, and I think we can also set a very useful function here, namely to copy the selected part to the clipboard as soon as the mouse is selected. Of course, this can be turned off if you don't need it by turning off the "Mouse selection copies content to global clipboard" option. And below, we can customize our contact list panel on the left to see what and how it will appear on it, of course the font installed on our machine and font size selection, and to appear sticking to the left or right edge of the window. Even further down, you can set whether the terminal windows appear in the main window frame with a tabbed layout, or open as separate windows, and so on. Finally, the panel indicates that these settings will not take effect until the application is restarted.

Advanced tab

Here, regular expressions can be set for the various prompts, which help the Asbra Connection Manager recognize the prompts that occur in the terminal. For example, you can enter your login password instead, if you remember it, when the remote server asks you, or when you log in for the first time and the server asks you if you don't know the connected machine and if you want to continue logging in. etc. You can also set other things, such as full-word selection characters and an image viewer to use for screenshots.

Terminal Options

In the next configuration group, you will find many tools for fine-tuning terminals.

Behavior ear

Here you can control whether the terminal window (or tab) closes when the connection to the server is disconnected, and set timeouts. Down you can turn on to save sessions automatically, and even down you can set new connections to open with a tab or in a separate window, and what key combination to switch between tabs, and if you set to open in a window, the window you can also set the width and height of your new terminal.

Look and Feel tab

In this section you can control the appearance of the terminal windows. For example, whether new terminal windows appear at the maximum window size, whether each terminal window has a status bar, or whether you want to change the title of the main application window to the terminal window title, and how to display macros. Below you can set the colors and position of the tabs, as well as the colors and font set of the terminals. You must restart the program here for the settings to take effect.

Advanced tab

Here you can set the character encoding, the backspace character, what the program sends to the server when the backspace is pressed, the debug mode, the hiding of the connections submenu, enabling the terminal ring, the behavior of chaining connections, the F11 disabling the key to not switch to full screen, and finally enabling the login shell in case of problems with the behavior of the terminal due to the lack of environment variables.

Local Shell Options

The local Shell function (with the center icon at the bottom of the main screen) allows you to open a local Shell window like any other terminal emulator program in your desktop environment. Here you can make settings for this.

Behavior ear

Here you can set whether to open a local Shell window for us automatically when the program starts, and you can specify the parameters of your Shell.

Look and Feel tab

Here you can disable keyboard assignments and turn on the bell. Below you can customize the look of your local terminal.

Network Settings

In the network settings panel, you can configure the proxy settings. If you do not use a proxy or do not know, leave it at the "Do not use proxy" option. If you connect to the Internet through a proxy server, you must select the "SOCKS proxy" option and enter the proxy server access information. There is also a third option, the Jump Server using which you can set a SSH-Tunnellike a gateway - for example, if you only reach the outside world through an intermediate machine. This proxy server must have SSH access and a public key installed.

Global Variables

By default, the Global Variables panel has only one "Add" button, which, when clicked, allows you to create global variables to which you can assign values ​​and then access them later in the terminal, for example, as follows:

echo <GV:_variable>

So here you can use these global variables as defined by Asbrú Connection Manager.

Local Commands

You can also use the "Add" button in the local commands panel to set various common commands, which can be found in the right-click pop-up menu in the terminal and run from there. This feature acts as a kind of "speed dial". In the pop-up menu, press Description The menu items for the commands appear according to the name entered in the field. As of Asbro 6.3, you can also assign key combinations to commands, making it even more convenient to run your configured commands.

Remote Commands

Remote commands work similarly to the local commands section, only what we add commands here cannot be run in this view, and the configured commands are displayed in the terminal in the "Remote Commands" menu item of the right-click pop-up menu.

KeePass Integration

A KeePass is an open source, free program that allows us to securely store our passwords. THE KeePassX one of more than 30 applications based on the original KeePass application. Asbrú Connection Manager supports the latter at the integration level, which means that we can use our KeePassX or KeePass databases (compatible with each other) in the program to store our various SSH accesses, for example. When used, passwords will not be stored by the Asbrou Connection Manager, but by the KeePassX plug-in (keepassxc-cli) opens our KeePass database, from which passwords are read. While it is not as if it is not secure to store your Asbrú Connection Manager password, if you know and use one of the KeePass programs and want to store your SSH passwords in its database, you can connect your existing KeePass password database here.

A next page we continue with starting the local Shell and managing and configuring SSH connections.

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