Danny's Lab

Engineering the World

Small ssh improvement for Mac

Published on: Aug 20, 2014
Reading time: 1 minute

Here's a little script to make ssh a bit nicer on Mac, especially if you also occasionally use XQuartz.

#!/bin/sh # This is a simple script to make ssh less annoying on Mac.  In particular: #  - If XQuarts is not running, don't cause it to auto start #  - If the user explicitly gives -x or -X options, honor that behavior #  - Always reset the title bar if we're running in Apple Terminal # # Add this line to your ~/.bashrc #   alias ssh="${HOME}/bin/ssh" # # 20140820 - Created by Danny Sung <[email protected]> # Use 'which ssh' before installing this script to ensure you find the path to the real ssh program ORIG_SSH=/usr/bin/ssh X11_MODE=auto NEW_ARGS=() while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do case "$1" in -x) X11_MODE=off ;; -X) X11_MODE=on ;; esac # Preserve all original arguments NEW_ARGS+=("$1") shift done if [ "$X11_MODE" == "auto" ]; then # Xquartz defaults to using pipes, so we can detect if it's running this way... xisrunning=$(netstat -n | grep -- "$DISPLAY" | wc -l) if [ $xisrunning -ge 2 ]; then NEW_ARGS=("-X" "${NEW_ARGS[@]}") else NEW_ARGS=("-x" "${NEW_ARGS[@]}") fi fi # Make sure to restore Mac Terminal title if [ "$TERM_PROGRAM" = "Apple_Terminal" ]; then printf '\e]0;\a' fi exit $retval