If you've ever managed multiple servers via SSH, you've probably accidentally send the wrong command to the wrong terminal window at one point or another.

This is easy to do. They all look the same! You can set the terminal prompts, but that's not a very good visual indicator.

The OSX terminal app provides the ability to have multiple themes, and these can provide a clear visual indication, if you remember to set them. But if it's not automatic, you're likely to forget.

This set of scripts was written to provide a way to run automated commands at the start and end of SSH sessions, based on the host name.

Before starting an SSH session, the script will check for the existence of a script at ~/.ssh/scripts/start_[SSH HOSTNAME].sh, and run it if it exists. At the end of the session, it will look for a script at ~/.ssh/scripts/stop_[SSH HOSTNAME].sh, and run that as well. Note that the hostname is based on the command line you give to SSH, so if you nickname your servers in your SSH config, name your scripts based on the nickname rather than the real host name. You can 'return' anything from your start script by simply printing it to the console. The output will then be appended to the call of your stop script as parameters

Linux Users: The example scripts use an Applescript to set the terminal theme, but you can achieve a similar affect using the 'tput' command.

The components:

• scripts/ -- The scripts folder should be placed at ~/.ssh/scripts
  • changetheme.scpt -- An Applescript to retheme the currently active terminal tab. Takes the name of the theme as a command line parameter: osascript changetheme.scpt Ocean
  • wrapssh.sh -- This bash script should be aliased to 'ssh'. It will wrap the ssh call and run your commands at start and stop.
  • start*.sh -- Example script for changing themes for integration and production environments. It returns the terminal window id and the tab's tty to identify the tab
  • stop.sh -- Example script for changing the theme back. If a window id and a tty name is input, the corresponding tab will be searched and reset. This allows for a reset of the theme for tabs in the background i.e. if you have a broken pipe

1. Create some themes to use in your terminal settings. The example scripts expect to use "Pro" (a default in OSX), "Pro Int", and "Pro Prod"

2. Install the 'scripts' folder in ~/.ssh/scripts

3. Write start and stop scripts for your server, or symlink to the example scripts.

4. Test your setup by calling the wrapssh.sh script

5. Edit your ~/.bash_profile to call wrapssh.sh whenever you type 'ssh'. Feel free to give it another alias if you're squeamish about totally wrapping your SSH command.

Note: if your SSH command is aliased to the wrapssh script, it won't work for STDIN handling (as in piping things to SSH). I don't find this to be an issue, but if you do a lot of that in your workflow, you can alias the command to something else, or directly call /usr/bin/ssh when you need to pipe through SSH.