TermSCP is basically a porting of WinSCP to terminal. So basically is a terminal utility with an TUI to connect to a remote server to retrieve and upload files and to interact with the local file system. It works both on **Linux**, **MacOS**, **BSD** and **Windows** and supports SFTP, SCP, FTP and FTPS.
It happens quite often to me, when using SCP at work to forget the path of a file on a remote machine, which forces me to connect through SSH, gather the file path and finally download it through SCP. I could use WinSCP, but I use Linux and I pratically use the terminal for everything, so I wanted something like WinSCP on my terminal. Yeah, I know there is midnight commander too, but actually I don't like it very much tbh (and hasn't a decent support for scp).
On Arch Linux based distribution, you can install termscp using for istance [yay](https://github.com/Jguer/yay), which I recommend to install AUR packages.
-`-P, --password <password>` if address is provided, password will be this argument
-`-v, --version` Print version info
-`-h, --help` Print help page
TermSCP can be started in two different mode, if no extra arguments is provided, TermSCP will show the authentication form, where the user will be able to provide the parameters required to connect to the remote peer.
Alternatively, the user can provide an address as argument to skip the authentication form and starting directly the connection to the remote server.
- Connect using default protocol (*defined in configuration*) to 192.168.1.31, port if not provided is default for the selected protocol (in this case depends on your configuration); username is current user's name
You have probably noticed, that, when providing the address as argument, there's no way to provide the password.
Password can be basically provided through 3 ways when address argument is provided:
-`-P, --password` option: just use this CLI option providing the password. I strongly unrecommend this method, since it's very unsecure (since you might keep the password in the shell history)
- Via `sshpass`: you can provide password via `sshpass`, e.g. `sshpass -f ~/.ssh/topsecret.key termscp cvisintin@192.168.1.31`
- You will be prompted for it: if you don't use any of the previous methods, you will be prompted for the password, as happens with the more classics tools such as `scp`, `ssh`, etc.
TermSCP will also save the last 16 hosts you connected to.
This feature allows you to load all the parameters required to connect to a certain remote, simply selecting the bookmark in the tab under the authentication form.
For bookmarks only (this won't apply to recent hosts) it is also possible to save the password used to authenticate. The password is not saved by default and must be specified through the prompt when saving a new Bookmark.
> I was very undecided about storing passwords in termscp. The reason? Saving a password on your computer might give access to a hacker to any server you've registered. But I must admit by myself that for many machines typing the password everytime is really boring, also many times I have to work with machines in LAN, which wouldn't provide any advantage to an attacker, So I came out with a good compromise for passwords.
I warmly suggest you to follow these guidelines in order to decide whether you should or you shouldn't save passwords:
- **DON'T** save passwords for machines which are exposed on the internet, save passwords only for machines in LAN
- Make sure your machine is protected by attackers. If possible encrypt your disk and don't leave your PC unlocked while you're away.
- Preferably, save passwords only when a compromising of the target machine wouldn't be a problem.
To create a bookmark, just fulfill the authentication form and then input `<CTRL+S>`; you'll then be asked to give a name to your bookmark, and tadah, the bookmark has been created.
As said before, bookmarks are saved in your configuration directory along with passwords. Passwords are obviously not plain text, they are encrypted with **AES-128**. Does this make them safe? Well, depends on your operating system:
On Windows and MacOS the passwords are stored, if possible (but should be), in respectively the Windows Vault and the Keychain. This is actually super-safe and is directly managed by your operating system.
On Linux and BSD, on the other hand, the key used to encrypt your passwords is stored on your drive (at $HOME/.config/termscp). It is then, still possible to retrieve the key to decrypt passwords. Luckily, the location of the key guarantees your key can't be read by users different from yours, but yeah, I still wouldn't save the password for a server exposed on the internet 😉.
Actually [keyring-rs](https://github.com/hwchen/keyring-rs), supports Linux, but for different reasons I preferred not to make it available for this configuration. If you want to read more about my decision read [this issue](https://github.com/veeso/termscp/issues/2), while if you think this might have been implemented differently feel free to open an issue with your proposal.
TermSCP has, as you might have noticed, many features, one of these is the possibility to view and edit text file. It doesn't matter if the file is located on the local host or on the remote host, termscp provides the possibility to open a file in your favourite text editor.
In case the file is located on remote host, the file will be first downloaded into your temporary file directory and then, **only** if changes were made to the file, re-uploaded to the remote host. TermSCP checks if you made changes to the file verifying the last modification time of the file.
Text editor is automatically found using this [awesome crate](https://github.com/milkey-mouse/edit), if you want to change the text editor to use, change it in termscp configuration. [View more](#configuration-️)
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## Configuration ⚙️
TermSCP supports some user defined parameters, which can be defined in the configuration.
Underhood termscp has a TOML file and some other directories where all the parameters will be saved, but don't worry, you won't touch any of these files, since I made possible to configure termscp from its user interface entirely.
termscp, like for bookmarks, just requires to have these paths accessible:
-`$HOME/.config/termscp/` on Linux/BSD
-`$HOME/Library/Application Support/termscp` on MacOs
-`FOLDERID_RoamingAppData\termscp\` on Windows
To access configuration, you just have to press `<CTRL+C>` from the home of termscp.
These parameters can be changed:
- **Default Protocol**: the default protocol is the default value for the file transfer protocol to be used in termscp. This applies for the login page and for the address CLI argument.
- **Text Editor**: the text editor to use. By default termscp will find the default editor for you; with this option you can force an editor to be used (e.g. `vim`). **Also GUI editors are supported**, unless they `nohup` from the parent process so if you ask: yes, you can use `notepad.exe`, and no: **Visual Studio Code doesn't work**.
- **Show Hidden Files**: select whether hidden files shall be displayed by default. You will be able to decide whether to show or not hidden files at runtime pressing `A` anyway.
- **Group Dirs**: select whether directories should be groupped or not in file explorers. If `Display first` is selected, directories will be sorted using the configured method but displayed before files, viceversa if `Display last` is selected.
- **Add a new key**: just press `<CTRL+N>` and you will be prompted to create a new key. Provide the hostname/ip address and the username associated to the key and finally a text editor will open up: paste the **PRIVATE** ssh key into the text editor, save and quit.
- **Remove an existing key**: just press `<DEL>` or `<CTRL+E>` on the key you want to remove, to delete persistently the key from termscp.
- **Edit an existing key**: just press `<ENTER>` on the key you want to edit, to change the private key.
> A: Of course you can. The password provided for authentication in termscp, is valid both for username/password authentication and for RSA key authentication.
It is possible through configuration to define a custom format for the file explorer. This field, with name `File formatter syntax` will define how the file entries will be displayed in the file explorer.
The syntax for the formatter is the following `{KEY1}... {KEY2:LENGTH}... {KEY3:LENGTH:EXTRA} {KEYn}...`.
-`NoSuchFileOrDirectory` on connect (WSL): I know about this issue and it's a glitch of WSL I guess. Don't worry about it, just move the termscp executable into another PATH location, such as `/usr/bin`, or install it through the appropriate package format (e.g. deb).
- **Themes provider**: I'm still thinking about how I will implement this, but basically the idea is to have a configuration file where it will be possible
to define the color schema for the entire application. I haven't planned this release yet
No other new feature is planned at the moment. I actually think that termscp is getting mature and now I should focus upcoming updates more on bug fixing and
code/performance improvements than on new features.
Anyway there are some ideas which I'd like to implement. If you want to start working on them, feel free to open a PR:
Contributions, bug reports, new features and questions are welcome! 😉
If you have any question or concern, or you want to suggest a new feature, or you want just want to improve termscp, feel free to open an issue or a PR.