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terminal output sharing

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Seashells

Pipe output from CLI apps to the web in real time

#pipe output web #cli monitoring #real time logs #neural network training logs

Shown by anishathalye on Jul 10, 2017. Click the card to turn it over.

356points

70comments

#48of 2,242 in 2017

Top 3%of 2017 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

17 positive, 24 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 8 critical, out of 49 comments about the project. Thread score +0.23.

Idea: 8 for, 3 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 4 againstExecution: 2 for, 0 againstPricing: 0 for, 1 againstPerformance: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

Useful, straightforward, no signup needed
From 3 comments
- I love any service that you can use without registering.
  pollyannas on HN
- I've been linux for about 10 years and I would have no idea to do what you just said. The benefit is obviously that it is extremely straightforward to use.
  mcjiggerlog on HN
- This is one of those perfect "I had a problem, made a solution, and others think it's neat" posts that make HN impossible to miss. Well done!
  flaviuspopan on HN
Real-time and neat idea
From 2 comments
- I tried it with SSH chat: ``` ssh chat.shazow.net | nc seashells.io 1337 serving at https://seashells.io/v/FYh2Dt7t ``` It is really real time! much wow!
  Walkman on HN
- I love the fact that there are no dependencies. Just piping to netcat is really clever. Good job.
  petters on HN

Objections

Piping shell output to a third-party server risks leaking sensitive data
From 2 comments
- I love the idea but I'm very wary of piping shell output directly to a third party. Command line tools are notorious for outputting sensitive data to stdout. Any chance we can…
  jedberg on HN
- You could do something similar with https://papertrailapp.com/ or something else that support plain text forwarding. The advantage is that it would also support encryption, that…
  m45t3r on HN
Free no-registration service may not last
From 1 comment
- Such a service is unlikely to last long. Each registered user means money.
  dvfjsdhgfv on HN

Requests

Self-hosted or open source version
From 4 comments
- Any plans to open source the server?
  finnn on HN
- I love the idea but I'm very wary of piping shell output directly to a third party. Command line tools are notorious for outputting sensitive data to stdout. Any chance we can…
  jedberg on HN
- Any plans to release a self-hosted version?
  pota on HN
- This is a great idea. My two cents: 1. An accounts system would be great so that I could just run ``python experiment.py | seashells u=almostarockstar p=hunter2`` or similar with…
  almostarockstar on HN
Accounts system
From 2 comments
- An accounts system is coming in the next version. The public seashells URLs / HTML/CSS output ideas sounds neat, I'll add them to the potential features list! I'm not sure if the…
  anishathalye on HN
- This is a great idea. My two cents: 1. An accounts system would be great so that I could just run ``python experiment.py | seashells u=almostarockstar p=hunter2`` or similar with…
  almostarockstar on HN
Client-side encryption and TLS
From 2 comments
- An accounts system is coming in the next version. The public seashells URLs / HTML/CSS output ideas sounds neat, I'll add them to the potential features list! I'm not sure if the…
  anishathalye on HN
- Yeah, there are other similar services (many of which do a lot more than Seashells). The idea with Seashells was to have a zero-overhead service that was available to the public…
  anishathalye on HN

Questions

Whether the server will be open sourced
From 2 comments
- Any plans to open source the server?
  finnn on HN
- An accounts system is coming in the next version. The public seashells URLs / HTML/CSS output ideas sounds neat, I'll add them to the potential features list! I'm not sure if the…
  anishathalye on HN
How sessions are reaped
From 2 comments
- Looks interesting, but there seems to be a built in conflict where you say it's meant for "long running", but then also reap these after 24 hours. Can you clarify how they are…
  tyingq on HN
- Oh, I should update the text to clarify: sessions are garbage collected 24 hours after the program has terminated (so after there's no possibility of the program producing more…
  anishathalye on HN

Alternatives named

bpipe
From 1 comment
- Looks similar to the "bpipe" project I was experimenting with three years ago, except it appears seashells is only a one-way pipe ( can't pipe data back from browser into Unix…
  _Marak_ on HN
gotty
From 1 comment
- I think gotty is similar: https://github.com/yudai/gotty I'm not really sure what the differences are.
  rmetzler on HN
Papertrail
From 1 comment
- You could do something similar with https://papertrailapp.com/ or something else that support plain text forwarding. The advantage is that it would also support encryption, that…
  m45t3r on HN
frontail
From 1 comment
- Slightly different from https://github.com/mthenw/frontail but similar type of thinking. Will be interesting to see how you can evolve security and management.
  bberenberg on HN
websocketd
From 1 comment
- Nice job! We all like free services without registration :-) This is similar to https://github.com/benas/gossed (uni-directional) and http://websocketd.com/ (bi-directional)…
  benas on HN