Forem: Shohei Kameda

Use Powerline to make the appearance even cooler

Shohei Kameda — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 22:46:56 +0000

This article is the 6th day of the Advent Calendar 2021 of Wazaterm, an online Linux terminal for hackers.

Yesterday, I explained how to change the appearance of Wazaterm using its theme options. Today, let's make it even cooler by using Powerline.

What is Powerline? It is something that changes the appearance of the prompt line for a command like the one in the picture below.

It uses a special font, which can be troublesome to install in local consoles and applications, but Wazaterm includes the font by default, so you can use it just by installing the package.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install powerline

The powerline package comes with binding, so add it.

$ echo "source /usr/share/powerline/bindings/tmux/powerline.conf" >> .tmux.conf

Then reload .tmux.conf.

$ tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf

Now you would see like this. it's very cool, isn't it?

Customize the appearance of your terminal

Shohei Kameda — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 01:07:10 +0000

This article is the 4th day of the Advent Calendar 2021 of Wazaterm, an online Linux terminal for hackers.

It's easy to change the appearance of the terminal in Wazaterm.

After you click the hamburger menu on the top right in the terminal window, the sidebar shows up.

In the sidebar at the bottom, you see the select box. You can select your terminal theme from 250+ themes.

Also, you can overwrite the color when you change RGB.

Clicking "Save" will save the terminal colors and font size, along with the OS and browser information. And the order in which they are displayed using that information is the below.

def current\_terminal\_option(os, browser)
  self.terminal\_options.find\_by(os: os, browser: browser) ||
  self.terminal\_options.find\_by(os: os) ||
  self.terminal\_options.find\_by(browser: browser) ||
  self.terminal_options.last ||
  self.terminal_options.new
end

It looks for the OS and Browser, and if they are not there, it shows only the OS, and if they are not there, it shows the Browser, and if they are not there, it shows the latest settings, and if they have never been set, it shows the default.

The system is designed for multi-device use, so you can save and recall settings with different font sizes for iPad and desktop.

Use tmux, an essential tool for remote development

Shohei Kameda — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 22:57:04 +0000

This article is the 4th day of the Advent Calendar 2021 of Wazaterm, an online Linux terminal for hackers.

Wazaterm comes with tmux installed by default. tmux is software that

Tmux stands for “Terminal Multiplexer.”

It allows you to split a Linux-style terminal screen into multiple sessions, windows, or panes.

A terminal can have multiple sessions.

A single session can have multiple windows.

A single window can have multiple panes.

The session is maintained even when the terminal is closed. You can avoid the tragedy of running a command and then getting logged out and ending up with no command result.

Tmux maintains the session, which is essential to open an editor and develop it remotely. It’s hard to set it up every time you connect. Please image if you use windows or mac, every time you unlock the screen, you need to relaunch the software or apps and adjust/arrange the window size and location. This can not be done.

And in the case of browsers, some OS will immediately kill the session when the main page goes to background (yes, it’s iPad!

So, since it is an indispensable tool in the server-side world (some people may be using “screen” for similar functions), I think there is no harm in learning how to use it.

In this article, I would like to explain the minimum necessary settings.

All operations are done with the keyboard only (cool, like a hacker!). It is necessary to distinguish it from regular input. This is why we have the prefix, which is an alphanumeric character that can be typed after the prefix to call a tmux action.

The prefix; default is ctrl-b. Here are some excerpts of the actions I often use.

Ctrl-b c Create a new window (Create)
Ctrl-b number Go to the window specified by the number
Ctrl-b n Go to the next window (Next)
Ctrl-b p Go to the previous window (Prev)
Ctrl-b & Exit to window name (with confirmation)
Ctrl-b “ Split pane vertically
Ctrl-b % Split pane left/right
Ctrl-b o Move to the next pane
Ctrl-b ? Show list of key bindings (q to return)

Tmux allows you to add plugins by using tmux-plugin/tpm freely. I’m using the

tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible - configures settings that everyone else uses (saves you the trouble of extra configuration)
arcticicestudio/nord-tmux - theme
tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect - Save your session. You can also reboot from there. If you lose all your tmux sessions because of a reboot, you can restore the whole saved session.

Once you learn about 10 of these, you’ll be able to use them freely! Let’s take this opportunity to learn how to use them.

Let's start using Wazaterm

Shohei Kameda — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 01:39:11 +0000

This article is the 3rd day of the Advent Calendar 2021 of Wazaterm, an online Linux terminal for hackers.

Let's start using Wazaterm

Now, let's get started. you need to follow the steps below before you can start a terminal with Wazaterm.

Purchase credits
Start the terminal.
1. Choose your hostname and user name.
2. Choose a region
3. Choose the storage size
4. Select CPU and Memory
5. Launch 🚀

Now let's look at them one by one.

1. purchase credits

Click the icon in the upper right corner to open the Billing page.

Wazaterm is a prepaid system. $1 USD = 1.00 credit. You can use the Pricing page to see how much you need. For example

$1.81 USD / month

Memory:1G, CPU:2 Cores, Storage:10G, 160 hours (8 hours* 20 days), Ohio region.

$7.3 USD / month

Example 2 (Development for medium size of the project) Memory:4G, CPU:2 core, Storage:30G, 160 hours (8 hours* 20 days), Tokyo region.

Let's start with the minimum purchase price of $5.

Right now, we're giving away a free $3 (expires in 3 days) credit to a few people a day! Try it out! 2

2. Launch the terminal

Now, go back to the top page and click on the "Launch new terminal" button. We will now configure the terminal we are going to launch.

1. Decide the host name and user name.

The host name will be your domain name. The user name is the username on Linux. By default, your Wazaterm user name (github user name) is entered, but you can change it. For example, if your user name is shohey1226 and your host name is foo, you can access the server as follows

$ ssh shohey1226@foo.wazaterm.com

2. Region selection

There are currently 5 regions supported, try the one closest to you. As long as you don't mind the latency, you should be able to use Terminal without any stress. (Since it is a CLI, the amount of transfer is small)

3. Determine the storage size.

Storage includes the OS and the swap area. The size of the swap is the actual memory size. Note that storage will be charged even if Terminal is not running. The size of the OS is small at first, but if you install a lot of packages, it will grow quickly, so it is better not to make it too small. You can increase the size of the OS, but you can't decrease it later. As I will explain later, I hope you will save money by archiving your unused files to Google Drive.　In the past, HDDs were slow and you could work with NFS home directories, but now that I have experienced SSDs, I can't work with any other storage. It will cost you more, but I hope you will bear with me.

4. Select CPU & Memory

You need to stop Terminal, but you can change it later. It's also good to switch between them depending on your project. I'm developing on 2CPUs and 8g memory.

5. Launch 🚀

Press "Launch" to start it up. After a few minutes, you should be able to use the terminal. (Depending on the number of cores in your CPU, it may boot faster or slower. (Depending on the number of CPU cores and other factors, it may be faster or slower to start.) There is a lot of load at boot time, so you may see a lot of loading at uptime, but it will stabilize soon.

Wazaterm Features

Shohei Kameda — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 01:42:03 +0000

This article is the 2nd day of the Advent Calendar 2021 of Wazaterm, an online Linux terminal for hackers.

Wazaterm Features

If you want to access from various platforms, you can use VPS+SSH, but Wazaterm has the following advantages over VPS+SSH.

CPU and memory can be freely selected

You can freely choose the CPU and memory of the instance running Terminal, so you can use different machine power for different projects. For example, you can use 8G of memory and 2 CPU cores for a Rails project for the last 3 months. In the other project, use less memory for a node. Note that when you change the specs, you have to shut down the instance and start it up again, which takes a little time (about 5+ minutes).

SSH is available 🙌

With SSH, you can do almost anything: not only terminal use, but also secure tunneling with port forwarding, SCP, SFTP, and even mount with SSH. Local port forwarding and drive mounting are essential to developing in a local environment. I'll explain how to do this later.

You have root privileges

The OS is Ubuntu, so you can use sudo apt install to install packages and tweak /etc/systemd. (It's your own responsibility if you can't boot). This is necessary for normal development, such as adding imageMagic libraries.

Suspend, Resume can be automated

You can save money by suspending instances when not in use (and at the same time reduce carbon dioxide emissions, so it's earth-friendly!). Suspend/Resume can take about 30~seconds, depending on the size of the memory. This waiting time is a bit stressful, so I made it possible to automate it with a webhook, and by combining it with an iOS shortcut app, you can make it so that I can resume terminal when I arrive at the office and suspend the terminal when it's time to go home. This way, you can start working without waiting.

Take backups

You can back up your entire OS. You can back up your entire OS, even if you rm -rf /. （This is an optional feature, so please use it only if you need it)

What do you think? Can't wait to use it? I'll explain how to start tomorrow.

What is Wazaterm?

Shohei Kameda — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 23:42:17 +0000

This article is the 1st day of the Advent Calendar 2021 of Wazaterm, an online Linux terminal for hackers.

What is Wazaterm?

I'm developing a web application called Wazaterm, which is a browser-based Linux Terminal application. Wazaterm is a web app that allows you to use a Linux Terminal as a web app from your browser. It seems to be part of the Online Linux Terminal genre that gets a lot of traffic from search keywords, but the best way to describe it is a combination of VPS + SSH + α.

In this year's Advent Calendar, I'd like to introduce how to use Wazaterm and Terminal software to make the best use of Wazaterm.

The following is a video demonstration. In addition to using the shell from the browser, you can also use it as a PWA as one independent application so that you can switch between applications with Command+Tab.

https://youtu.be/CU82KSZ4Ev4

Since it is used in a browser, it works from any platform (Windows, macOS, iPad, Chromebook) without installing an SSH client, and you can use an SSH client since an SSH port is available.

I use a Mac in my shared office, an iPad at home, and a Chromebox at the headquarter office to do my Rails, React, and React Native development on a single Wazaterm terminal. You can go to your workplace without anything and work in the same environment, or you can take your iPad and a keyboard on a trip and do light work. I also think that browsers will be (or are) included in devices like VR and AR in the future. I haven't tried it myself yet, but it is possible to use a single terminal for such new devices.

There is also a development style called Remote Development that is gaining attention. For example, VS Code Remote development allows you to set up an IDE process on the server-side and access it remotely for development. Many developers prefer emacs or Vim to IDEs (I am one of them). You can also use it as an IDE with Wazaterm+ssh+code server.

The M1 Mac is quiet with no fan running, but Wazaterm is remote and doesn't even use local CPU/memory. It is absolutely silent. It works fine even with low spec devices.

As you can see from the Price page, you can start with less than $2/month.

That's it for Wazaterm for now. Tomorrow, I'll explain the features of the service in more detail.

Apple Silicon for developers?

Shohei Kameda — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 01:56:48 +0000

It seems that the performance is great on Apple Silicon macs. iOS developer can jump in the new hardware but what about others, like Web developers? Homebrew is not fully Arm'ed yet and CLI tools via terminal app runs through Rosseta?

Then virtualization? It might be hard at this moment.

And more importantly, our production services are running on x86 servers. It may be a discrepancy between servers and the dev environment.

Or go with VPS+SSH? This doesn't use Apple silicon architecture at all but you can show off your new mac devices to your friends without worrying about the development environment.

Any thoughts?

P.S. As an indie developer, I created Online Linux Terminal, Wazaterm which you just need a browser to have a Linux terminal. You can check this out if you choose VPS+SSH :)

Coding with Vim on iPad

Shohei Kameda — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 08:04:16 +0000

When you search on the web about programming by Vim on iPad, you would see either use iOS vim app or use ssh to a server that you have.
The first option, to use the iOS app, which you need to copy the file to some other devices from iOS. The second option, you need to have the server you connect to.

I introduce Wazaterm here. You only need a browser to use Vim. Let me explain how to use them.

1. Follow the Getting started page

Go to https://www.wazaterm.com and sign up. (You may get $3 worth credits)
Purchase credits (if you could not get)
Start terminal by selecting instance.
Start tmux to keep the sessions.

2. Install Vim with apt

The terminal is ubuntu instance so you can use apt or apt-get to install vim.

$ sudo apt-get install vim

3. Launch Vim

You can keep the terminal running but for the cost, you can shut down the terminal every time you finish the work on the day. Wazatem has Webhook so you can use IFTTE or cron to launch or terminate the terminal. (see here or here for more detail)

$ vim hello_world.rb

Due to iOS limitation, key repeat doesn't work :S
I use "e" to skip the word s. I hope Apple fix this soon...

Have a happy hacking with Vim on the iPad!

Created iPadOS/iOS browser to operate without touching

Shohei Kameda — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 03:11:23 +0000

I bought iPad Pro and found that I need to touch screen to move pages. I know there is browser extension, like Vimium to operate with only keyboard. To move page, use "hit-a-hint". I like this idea and wanted to have the app. I looked for App store but I unabled to find it. Ok, it's time to develop it by myself. I spent 5 months to build this. I used React Native as I had experience on it.

I named this app as Wazari Brower and this can be downloaded from here. I wrote documentation here

This is an open source project and able to see the code inside from the github repository. I’m sure there are tons of bugs there, so any bug report is welcome (and also PR :) )

I’ve also found that iOS doesn’t support keyboard key configuration. So I added this function to replace capslock and ctrl. The final feature is folloing. I hope you like this.

Feature

Customizable shortcuts to operate browser. e.g. Change tabs without touching screen.
Panes to split views vertiacally or horizontally.
Hit-A-Hint - without touching, click links to move pages.
Customizable modifiers. e.g. swap capslock with ctrl key.
Customizable default search engine - DuckDuckGo or Google
Exclude web sites not to use keymapping. Some dynamic web site doesn't use Input type=text or textarea, which Wazari keymapping doesn't work. But you can exclude these website so you can still type on it.
Histories to go back easily
Integrated to Wazaterm so you can terminal - I had a separate project for this. I wanted to integrate with it too.

Forem: Shohei Kameda

​Use Powerline to make the appearance even cooler

Customize the appearance of your terminal

Use tmux, an essential tool for remote development

Let's start using Wazaterm

Let's start using Wazaterm

1. purchase credits

$1.81 USD / month

$7.3 USD / month

2. Launch the terminal

1. Decide the host name and user name.

2. Region selection

3. Determine the storage size.

4. Select CPU & Memory

5. Launch 🚀

Wazaterm Features

Wazaterm Features

CPU and memory can be freely selected

SSH is available 🙌

You have root privileges

Suspend, Resume can be automated

Take backups

What is Wazaterm?

What is Wazaterm?

Apple Silicon for developers?

Coding with Vim on iPad

1. Follow the Getting started page

2. Install Vim with apt

3. Launch Vim

Created iPadOS/iOS browser to operate without touching

Feature

Use Powerline to make the appearance even cooler