Show HN: Termbox – Launch a Linux terminal with two clicks | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Termbox – Launch a Linux terminal with two clicks

termbox.io

69 pointsjgillich57 comments

Termbox is somewhat similar to the recently announced dply.co, but I think our approach is much better for the following reasons:

* The interface is super streamlined. Open the page, confirm captcha, click launch - boom, you got a terminal. The planned SSH support will be similar to that - no web page, just do ssh root@ubuntu.termbox.io and you get logged in to a Ubuntu box.

* We use VM based containers (hypercontainer.io) and not full VMs, so startup is very fast and instances are super cheap. 2 hours of the 512MB DigitalOcean server cost $0.014, 2 hours of a 512MB Termbox instance currently cost us around $0.0001

* Because our instances are so cheap, we do not impose any limits on the amount of boxes you can create. Just leave them behind, they will be cleaned up automatically.

Server capacity reached , please try again later :) Tried the Debian instance

Same here, on CentOS 7.

What is the difference begeeen docker, a traditional VM and hypercontainer? And what are the trade off of hypercontainer?

There's a comparison table here: https://hypercontainer.io/why-hyper.html

Makes for a suspicious comparison when both the two other options, have no features that hyper doesn't or is better. I understand that this comparison comes from you, and it's not easy being completely fair when doing a comparison, but I can't find anywhere anything against using Hyper or even any tradeoffs.

I'm not involved with Hyper/HyperContainer, I'm just a user and recently started contributing. I've had hyperd silently crashing once, and the API and tooling is a bit rough, but these things can be fixed. No complaints so far from a purely architectural viewpoint.

How will you prevent abuse with SSH method?

Why do you publicize it as 2 clicks?

It's 1 click. Ubuntu is selected by default. Captcha doesn't count as click.

I'd market it as Terminal in 1 click.

> Captcha doesn't count as click

Eh, why not? Can you skip the captcha somehow?

Yeah my first thought was "this took 3 clicks"

edit: maybe that's why they market it as "2 clicks"... since ubuntu is selected by default and captcha definitely counts as a click

It could be done if author implements Invisible reCaptcha.

I will do that the day it becomes publicly available, but no sooner because I'm serious about Termbox being open source.

Thank you so much! For me a great possibility to test my post-install script! https://github.com/Cyclenerd/postinstall

FYI: This has a name clash with a fairly popular TUI library: https://github.com/nsf/termbox

Which is a really good, actively maintained library. Shameless plug for the game engine I wrote using it: https://github.com/JoelOtter/termloop

Captcha doesn't reset after first error message about server capacity, so when you click launch again it says captcha is wrong.

Stupid question maybe, but what would the use case for something like this be? Can I run a server on it?

The FAQ states that you can't run a server yet.

I'm curious too. I can't think of any reason I would use this. Maybe to use during an online course or something, but most of them offer a way to do that already.

After getting an over capacity error, you always get a captcha verification error and have to reload the page

I can replicate this.

I also got this error: http://i.imgur.com/yIj1Zvm.png

Slightly off-topic but kind of not. Through the website, I found https://hypercontainer.io/ which seems to fit really good for a use-case of mine.

However, it's the first time I see HyperContainer. Anyone have anything good/bad to say about it? The value proposition seems really attractive "Fast as Container" + "Isolated by VM" but can't find anything about the tradeoffs so would love someone who tried it to write about their experience.

The server has limited resources of 32GB RAM, so sorry if you're not getting in. The good news is that you can install it on your own hardware, it's all open source: https://github.com/termbox/termbox

Does it really have to be 777?

    chmod 777 /var/run/hyper.sock

Probably not, but I haven't really bothered to look into that, it should really be using HTTP instead.

I wonder if this can be used to hide malicious activity or even as a form of honeypot. Its simple to create such service then post/advertise on reddit, and simply monitor all commands the users execute. Soon you will have a trove of all sort of malicious scripts used for crawling, automated purchasing, phishing, spamming etc. You can also use the service yourself to get lost in the crowd.

It was working for a bit, and then the terminal went blank with:

    lost server

Edit: a refresh fixed it, but I lost my current shell session

over capacity and I get a captcha error when trying to select a different server. I have to reload the page -- never got to a terminal.

[ 0.182343] smpboot: CPU0: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C2750 @ 2.40GHz (family: 0x6, model: 0x4d, stepping: 0x8)

Neat to see one of these connected to the internet serving a production service! I also have a C2750 system.

This seems cool, but I don't know what to do with it, apart from sshing into my own server if I'm on a PC that doesn't have a ssh client on it. Just remember to use 2FA.

It may be the HN effect, but after opening an Ubuntu session and a vi console, it started refreshing constantly and telling me:

STATUS Reconnecting

Will need to try again when the traffic slows down...

Seems to be no way to go back up the terminal, so if you run something like grep --help, you only get the bottom portion of the help section rather then the whole thing.

It uses tmux for session management, so you can press Ctrl+b and [ to scroll with the arrow keys and page up/down. But this is definitely something I will try to fix soon.

Probably want to disable the tmux keybinding for detach

I actually like it. I think it is well implemented and can be used to play around on command line with different flavors of linux. Well done!

Considering the captcha it actually takes 3 clicks to launch

> Considering the captcha it actually takes 3 clicks to launch

More like ten.

Six for the captcha choices, one to submit the captcha, one to pick the server type, one to submit and get a "Server capacity reached, please try again later", and finally one to close the browser tab.

I'm not going to rent a $500 server just to handle the HN traffic spike, sorry. Capacity will be expanded over time, but only after the service pays for itself (either through ads or paid features).

No worries. I'm looking forward to trying it out again after things quiet down a bit.

Fyi, it doesn't have to be a $500/mo server permanently either. Depending on where your hosting the backend, you could scale it up temporarily and then scale it back down when things quiet down. $500/mo is approx $16/day which could be well worth it for a day while enjoying an HN-driven bump.

Not if you use the preselected Ubuntu. ;)

If you do

ctrl-b d

to disconnect from tmux, it pretty much leaves the server useless.

over capacity. anyone have a screenshot for what the terminal looks like? Is there a countdown timer?

Welp, I've temporarily reduced the duration to 1h, should free up some slots.

Here's a screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/UsRgXhD.png

After I got past the "over capacity" error I got to a screen like the above, but without the terminal.

Javascript error:

    index.js:2371 Uncaught TypeError: this.base.append is not a function

Interesting, what browser and OS are you using?

Same here. Chromium: "Version 53.0.2785.143 built on Debian stretch/sid, running on Debian stretch/sid (64-bit)"

That's odd, probably a bug in preact but I can't reproduce it. I've deployed a fix nonetheless.

index.js:2371 Uncaught TypeError: a.base.append is not a function

Still getting an error. As before, only header and footer visible.

CentOS 6.7 and FireFox 45.5.0 here. I do get to the terminal screen, but just the header, footer and a large white block in between. No terminal, no prompt, no cursor. Tried typing some random commands, but no joy.

In the footer, shows:

Status Connected

Time remaining 53 minutes, 52 seconds

etc.

Google Chrome: 50.0.2661.102 (64-bit) running on Arch linux.

Here's what it looked like for me: https://s29.postimg.org/ch1n7wkg7/termbox.png

I clicked "Launch" and that's what I got, no errors or anything. <shrug>

do you plan to have an API to create boxes and to run some predefined scripts on launch?

terminal.com all over again?

Great idea, closed in 6 months.

uhhhhhh

I can launch a Linux terminal with Super+Enter. (I run i3)

did you even click the link?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com