The Command of the Day Just got Better

Shortly after yesterday’s post about the terminator, Chris Jones, terminator’s primary developer and maintainer, left a comment containing the following tidbit:

The “type once, execute multiple” feature you mention is now available in our development code (install bzr and run “bzr branch lp:terminator” to get a copy to play with).

I followed Chris’s instructions, downloaded the terminator trunk branch, and whipped up a Fedora RPM, terminator-0.11a, and used that to update my existing terminator install. I’ll admit to being a bit chagrined on seeing the new version for the first time; I saw no evidence of the “type once, execute multiple” feature. It turns out that I was expecting some new big honking widget that would provide this functionality, when in fact, the feature is elegantly and unobtrusively contained in terminator’s existing interface.

Just open terminator, create a couple or three windows, then right click in one of them; choose Group from the popup, then New or All. All groups all your windows together, type in one window, and your command goes to all the windows. Neat!

Choosing New enables creating custom group names; you then can assign open windows to groups as needed. Just right click in a window, Group -> YourGroupName, and all members of a group get the commands typed into any individual window.

In both the all or custom groupings, a window’s assigned group appears in the leftmost portion of its titlebar. Very nice!

If you want to suppress commands going to a specific window, right click -> Group -> None; the selected window now is a standalone entity. This is a tad cumbersome, but not much more so than checking/unchecking hostname boxes in cluster ssh. Using either tool, if you’re constantly waffling between sending and not sending to all windows, you’re probably doing it wrong anyhow.

There’s also an experimental trunk called ssherminator, which improves cooperation on the terminator/ssh duo. I have yet to check this out, but I plan to.

Here’s how I see myself taking advantage of “type once, execute multiple” enhancement:

1. Open terminator.
2. Split windows as required.
3. Group them all.
4. ssh someuser@somehost.
5. Now that I have multiple windows on the same remote system, ungroup the windows.

An option to “ungroup all” would be nice for that last step. I don’t see myself opening 20 windows at once on a remote system; still, it would be nice.

cssh is a tool for doing the same thing across multiple systems; terminator is a tool for doing different things on a single system. And both are right up there with ssh itself on my must have list.

-k-

terminator