ttyd(1) User Manual ttyd(1)

ttyd - Share your terminal over the web

ttyd [options] <command> [<arguments...>]

ttyd is a command-line tool for sharing terminal over the web that runs in *nix and windows systems, with the following features:

  • Built on top of Libwebsockets with libuv for speed
  • Fully-featured terminal based on Xterm.js with CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and IME support
  • Graphical ZMODEM integration with lrzsz support
  • Sixel image output support
  • SSL support based on OpenSSL
  • Run any custom command with options
  • Basic authentication support and many other custom options
  • Cross platform: macOS, Linux, FreeBSD/OpenBSD, OpenWrt/LEDE, Windows

-p, --port
Port to listen (default: 7681, use 0 for random port)

-i, --interface
Network interface to bind (eg: eth0), or UNIX domain socket path (eg: /var/run/ttyd.sock)

-U, --socket-owner
User owner of the UNIX domain socket file, when enabled (eg: user:group)

-c, --credential USER[:PASSWORD]
Credential for Basic Authentication (format: username:password)

-H, --auth-header
HTTP Header name for auth proxy, this will configure ttyd to let a HTTP reverse proxy handle authentication

-u, --uid
User id to run with

-g, --gid
Group id to run with

-s, --signal
Signal to send to the command when exit it (default: 1, SIGHUP)

-w, --cwd
Working directory to be set for the child program

-a, --url-arg
Allow client to send command line arguments in URL (eg: http://localhost:7681?arg=foo&arg=bar)

-R, --writable
Allow clients to write to the TTY (readonly by default)

-t, --client-option
Send option to client (format: key=value), repeat to add more options, see CLIENT OPTIONS for details

-T, --terminal-type
Terminal type to report, default: xterm-256color

-O, --check-origin
Do not allow websocket connection from different origin

-m, --max-clients
Maximum clients to support (default: 0, no limit)

-o, --once
Accept only one client and exit on disconnection

-B, --browser
Open terminal with the default system browser

-I, --index
Custom index.html path

-b, --base-path
Expected base path for requests coming from a reverse proxy (eg: /mounted/here, max length: 128)

-P, --ping-interval
Websocket ping interval(sec) (default: 300)

-6, --ipv6
Enable IPv6 support

-S, --ssl
Enable SSL

-C, --ssl-cert
SSL certificate file path

-K, --ssl-key
SSL key file path

-A, --ssl-ca
SSL CA file path for client certificate verification

-d, --debug
Set log level (default: 7)

-v, --version
Print the version and exit

-h, --help
Print this text and exit

ttyd has a mechanism to pass server side command-line arguments to the browser page which is called client options:

-t, --client-option     Send option to client (format: key=value), repeat to add more options

  • -t rendererType=canvas: use the canvas renderer for xterm.js (default: webgl)
  • -t disableLeaveAlert=true: disable the leave page alert
  • -t disableResizeOverlay=true: disable the terminal resize overlay
  • -t disableReconnect=true: prevent the terminal from reconnecting on connection error/close
  • -t enableZmodem=true: enable ZMODEM ⟨https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMODEM⟩ / lrzsz ⟨https://ohse.de/uwe/software/lrzsz.html⟩ file transfer support
  • -t enableTrzsz=true: enable trzsz ⟨https://trzsz.github.io⟩ file transfer support
  • -t enableSixel=true: enable Sixel ⟨https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel⟩ image output support (Usage ⟨https://saitoha.github.io/libsixel/⟩)
  • -t titleFixed=hello: set a fixed title for the browser window
  • -t fontSize=20: change the font size of the terminal

You can use the client option to change all the settings of xterm defined in ITerminalOptions ⟨https://xtermjs.org/docs/api/terminal/interfaces/iterminaloptions/⟩, examples:

  • -t cursorStyle=bar: set cursor style to bar
  • -t lineHeight=1.5: set line-height to 1.5
  • -t 'theme={"background": "green"}': set background color to green

to try the example options above, run:

ttyd -t cursorStyle=bar -t lineHeight=1.5 -t 'theme={"background": "green"}' bash

ttyd starts web server at port 7681 by default, you can use the -p option to change it, the command will be started with arguments as options. For example, run:

ttyd -p 8080 bash -x

Then open http://localhost:8080 with a browser, you will get a bash shell with debug mode enabled. More examples:

  • If you want to login with your system accounts on the web browser, run ttyd login.
  • You can even run a none shell command like vim, try: ttyd vim, the web browser will show you a vim editor.
  • Sharing single process with multiple clients: ttyd tmux new -A -s ttyd vim, run tmux new -A -s ttyd to connect to the tmux session from terminal.

Generate SSL CA and self signed server/client certificates:

# CA certificate (FQDN must be different from server/client)
openssl genrsa -out ca.key 2048
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key ca.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=Acme Root CA" -out ca.crt
# server certificate (for multiple domains, change subjectAltName to: DNS:example.com,DNS:www.example.com)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout server.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=localhost" -out server.csr
openssl x509 -sha256 -req -extfile <(printf "subjectAltName=DNS:localhost") -days 365 -in server.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out server.crt
# client certificate (the p12/pem format may be useful for some clients)
openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout client.key -subj "/C=CN/ST=GD/L=SZ/O=Acme, Inc./CN=client" -out client.csr
openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in client.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out client.crt
openssl pkcs12 -export -clcerts -in client.crt -inkey client.key -out client.p12
openssl pkcs12 -in client.p12 -out client.pem -clcerts

Then start ttyd:

ttyd --ssl --ssl-cert server.crt --ssl-key server.key --ssl-ca ca.crt bash

You may want to test the client certificate verification with curl(1):

curl --insecure --cert client.p12[:password] -v https://localhost:7681

If you don't want to enable client certificate verification, remove the --ssl-ca option.

Docker containers are jailed environments which are more secure, this is useful for protecting the host system, you may use ttyd with docker like this:

  • Sharing single docker container with multiple clients: docker run -it --rm -p 7681:7681 tsl0922/ttyd.
  • Creating new docker container for each client: ttyd docker run -it --rm ubuntu.

Sample config to proxy ttyd under the /ttyd path:

location ~ ^/ttyd(.*)$ {
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:7681/$1;
}

Shuanglei Tao <tsl0922@gmail.com> Visit https://github.com/tsl0922/ttyd to get more information and report bugs.

September 2016 ttyd