hss
What's hss?
hss is an interactive ssh client for multiple servers. It will provide almost the same experience as in the bash environment. It supports:
- interactive input: based on libreadline.
- history: responding to the
C-rkey. - auto-completion: completion from remote server on the
tabkey, for commands and paths.
Command is executed on all servers in parallel. Execution on one server does not need to wait for that on another server to finish before starting. So we can run a command on hundreds of servers at the same time.
A quick start
Usage: hss [-f hostfile] [-o file] [-u username] [command]...
Options:
-f file file with the list of hosts
-H host specifies a host option, support the same options as the ssh command
-l limit number of multiple ssh to perform at a time (default: unlimited)
-u user the default user name to use when connecting to the remote server
-c opts specify the common ssh options (i.e. '-p 22 -i identity_file')
-o file write remote command output to a file
-i force use a vi-style line editing interface
-v be more verbose
-V show program version
-h display this message
For more information, see https://github.com/six-ddc/hss
- This is a screenshot
How to install it?
- MacOS
brew install hss-
Linux
- Install dependency
## on CentOS yum install readline-devel ## on Ubuntu / Debian apt-get install libreadline6-dev
- Compile and install
make && make install -
Or you can download the binary release here .
How to use it?
The fundamental of hss is to execute the ssh command for every host, and then show the results on the terminal. So hss supports every argument supported by the ssh command. Following is an example of the hostfile:
192.168.1.1
-p 2222 root@192.168.1.2
-p 2222 -i ~/.ssh/identity_file root@192.168.1.3
-p 2222 -oConnectTimeout=3 root@192.168.1.4
Connect to servers:
# Specify the hostfile directly
hss -f hostfile
# Or pass servers in arguments
hss -H '192.168.1.1' -H '-p 2222 root@192.168.1.2' -H '-p 2222 -i ~/.ssh/identity_file root@192.168.1.3' -H '-p 2222 -oConnectTimeout=3 root@192.168.1.4'
Passthrough of ssh arguments are supported. For example, by specify -c '-oConnectTimeout=3', sessions without a timeout configured will set its timeout on this argument.
Usage of readline
The interactive input is implemented on libreadline, supporting command and path completion from remote, history storage and searching, moving around, etc. (please refer to readline for more)
- Command history is stored in file
~/.hss_history. - Completion of commands and paths are based on the first server in the list.
- Path completion is available when the first input character is
/,~or..
Goals of the future versions
- Solve the "@" suffix problem on directory symbol-link.

Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
