ssm (Secure Shell Manager) is a terminal-based application for working with SSH hosts defined in the user’s existing OpenSSH configuration. It combines host navigation, connection management and remote administration tools in a keyboard-driven interface.
The program is particularly useful for administrators working with large collections of servers. Hosts can be filtered by name or tags, checked for reachability and accessed with a single keystroke. It can use either SSH or Mosh for interactive connections.
Beyond host selection, ssm offers file transfers, remote command execution and cloud inventory discovery. These capabilities allow users to work with multiple systems without repeatedly constructing long shell commands or maintaining separate host lists.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Reads OpenSSH configuration files, including recursive Include directives, and supports tag-based filtering and fuzzy searching.
- Offers keyboard-driven navigation using Vim and Emacs shortcuts, with one-key connection to selected hosts.
- Switches between SSH and Mosh for supported interactive connections.
- Tests the reachability of individual hosts or all visible hosts using concurrent TCP connection checks.
- Runs commands on remote hosts through an interactive command interface.
- Executes batch commands across filtered groups of servers, with configurable concurrency, delays and failure reporting.
- Provides an integrated dual-pane SFTP browser for transferring files between local and remote systems.
- Discovers running cloud instances from AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Hetzner, creating separate OpenSSH configuration files for each provider.
- Supports dry-run cloud synchronisation and automatically tags imported hosts with their provider.
- Opens the SSH configuration in the user’s preferred editor and reloads changes.
- Includes a configuration inspector, clipboard copying of hostnames and configurable terminal themes.
- Provides safeguards for non-interactive commands, checks SSH configuration permissions and does not require software on remote hosts.
Website: github.com/lfaoro/ssm
Support:
Developer: Leonardo Faoro & authors
License: MIT License
ssm is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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| sshmate | Simplify interactions with SSH servers |
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| ESSH | Terminal-native SSH client |
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