retrocomputing

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Is there a precedent for a really delay-tolerant command line interface? (A bit off-topic) (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 4 months ago by CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org to c/retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org

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I've been playing with an idea that would involve running a machine over a delay-tolerant mesh network. The thing is, each packet is precious and needs to be pretty much self contained in that situation, while modern systems assume SSH-like continuous interaction with the user.

Has anyone heard of anything pre-existing that would work here? I figured if anyone would know about situations where each character is expensive, it would be you folks.

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[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Like MOSH? https://mosh.org/ Mosh has some predictive output and will resume sessions automatically.

Or more like tmux/screen? Has some fancy "nohup" like functions.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 10 points 4 months ago

Mosh plus tmux is amazing.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That's really helpful. Thank you! MOSH might work, I'll have to play around with it.

Could you go into more detail about the tmux functions? If it's a way to write everything to files instead of a STDOUT in a predictable way, that would be great, since each packet could be a (compressed) shell script that explicitly includes which data to send back, if any.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

No, tmux does not redirect to a file. Though '>' and 'script' do.

Tmux is like 'screen' and can be wrapped with 'byobu'.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I guess you could just programmatically insert a > after every command. That's actually a pretty good idea. It's kind of obvious now that you mention it, haha!

It would be better if the tools expected to be used this way, but as a quick kludge for a project about something else it's probably sufficient.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The first step is to make it work (at all, even badly).