README.md

ssh-chat

Custom SSH server written in Go. Instead of a shell, you get a chat prompt.

Demo

Join the party:

$ ssh chat.shazow.net

The server's RSA key fingerprint is MD5:e5:d5:d1:75:90:38:42:f6:c7:03:d7:d0:56:7d:6a:db or SHA256:HQDLlZsXL3t0lV5CHM0OXeZ5O6PcfHuzkS8cRbbTLBI. If you see something different, you might be MITM'd.

(Apologies if the server is down, try again shortly.)

Downloading a release

Recent releases include builds for MacOS (darwin/amd64) and Linux (386, amd64, and ARM6 for your RaspberryPi).

Grab the latest release here.

Play around with it. Additional deploy examples are here.

Compiling / Developing

You can compile ssh-chat by using make build. The resulting binary is portable and can be run on any system with a similar OS and CPU arch. Go 1.8 or higher is required to compile.

If you're developing on this repo, there is a handy Makefile that should set things up with make run.

Additionally, make debug runs the server with an http pprof server. This allows you to open http://localhost:6060/debug/pprof/ and view profiling data. See net/http/pprof for more information about pprof.

Quick Start

Usage:
  ssh-chat [OPTIONS]

Application Options:
  -v, --verbose    Show verbose logging.
      --version    Print version and exit.
  -i, --identity=  Private key to identify server with. (~/.ssh/id_rsa)
      --bind=      Host and port to listen on. (0.0.0.0:2022)
      --admin=     Fingerprint of pubkey to mark as admin.
      --whitelist= Optional file of pubkey fingerprints that are allowed to connect
      --motd=      Message of the Day file (optional)
      --log=       Write chat log to this file.
      --pprof=     enable http server for pprof

Help Options:
  -h, --help       Show this help message

After doing go get github.com/shazow/ssh-chat/... on this repo, you should be able to run a command like:

$ ssh-chat --verbose --bind ":22" --identity ~/.ssh/id_dsa

To bind on port 22, you'll need to make sure it's free (move any other ssh daemons to another port) and run ssh-chat as root (or with sudo).

Frequently Asked Questions

The FAQs can be found on the project's Wiki page. Feel free to submit more questions to be answered and added to the page.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT open source license.