conemu + ssh clears console history - ssh

I am using ConEmu and am totally satisfied with it except for the fact that if I use PuTTY for SSH access, I can then run commands on the remote machine like vim or nano or mcedit or others which opens some kind of a curses-interface and I can see the console commands history, but when I use CygWin SSH client or OpenSSH for Windows I cannot see the commands history anymore after running vim/nano/mcedit/whatever else.
When I quit those programs (:wq in vim, Esc key in mcedit, Ctrl^X in nano) I can see all the previous commands executed, like this (if I use PuTTY):
Run PuTTY and connect to some host
You will see something like that in history:
host$ whoami
user
host$ vim
...do something in vim then press :wq
And you should see exactly this:
=== Cut ===
host$ whoami
user
host$ vim
host$
=== Cut ===
all the previous commands (whoami) are visible. However if I run ConEmu and then use SSH client from CygWin (or OpenSSH client, it doesn't matter) the following happens:
Run ConEmu
ssh user#somehost
host$ whoami
user
host$ vim
...do something in vim then press :wq
And now the screen is empty! No history! You just see this:
=== Cut ===
host$
=== Cut ===
As if no whoami was executed. Same happens for mcedit, nano or any other programs that has something like a "screen". Also same happens with Ctrl-O in Midnight Commander, in PuTTY everything is nice, but when using ssh from CygWin in ConEmu (or OpenSSH Windows client) and running Midnight Commander each Ctrl-O just shows an empty history. As if nothing was typed previously. That is really not nice at all.
Is there any way to fix that?

The standard TERM environment variable for PuTTY.exe is xterm and that will mostly work for Cygwin ssh.exe as well. However, a better TERM environment variable for ssh.exe is cygwin.
When you use Cygwin ssh.exe to connect to another system, Cygwin processes your escape sequences, not ConEmu. In fact you get the same behavior whether you are running ssh.exe inside or outside of ConEmu. So the problem is not really related to ConEmu at all, at least not its ANSI processor.
The solution is to use the cygwin for the TERM environment variable on the remote system. In fact, the SSH client and server cooperate to do this for you automatically. But perhaps you have accidentally overridden the supplied TERM variable with say xterm in your .bash_profile or whatever. In that case, the escape sequence to restore the screen buffer after exiting the editor won't be correct for the Cygwin ANSI processor.
You can do this test to check whether this solves your problem:
$ export TERM=xterm
$ vim
$ # the screen before is cleared
$ export TERM=cygwin
$ vim
$ # the screen buffer is restored

Related

How to create a Linux GUI app short cut for WSL2 on Windows10?

I have properly installed and setup WSL2. It works fine.
I also setup X11 forwarding and X server (VcXsrv). I can launch GUI apps such like konsole or gvim or even google-chrome from a bash shell.
Now I want to launch konsole by simply double clicking a short cut on the desktop without launching the bash command mode terminal. How should I do it?
I tried running this in cmd:
> wsl /usr/bin/konsole
and it reports:
qt.qpa.xcb: could not connect to display
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl, wayland-xcomposite-glx, xcb.
I'm guessing it is because some X11 forwarding configurations were not properly setup, so I created a k.sh as follows:
#!/usr/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=$(cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver | awk '{print $2; exit;}'):0.0
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1
/usr/bin/konsole &
The first two lines were the X11 settings in my .bashrc, the last line launches konsole.
It works fine under bash environment; but when I ran
wsl k.sh
from windows cmd environment, it silently quitted without launching the konsole.
I'm out of ideas. What should I do to directly launch konsole or other Linux GUI apps under windows without having to getting into bash?
Thanks in advance.
You are asking about two different command-lines, and while the failures in running them via the wsl command have the same root-cause, the underlying failures are likely slightly different.
In both cases, the wsl <command> invocation results in a non-login, non-interactive shell where the command simply "runs and exits".
Since the shell is non-login/non-interactive, your startup files (such as ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile, among others) are not being processed.
When you run:
wsl /usr/bin/konsole
... the DISPLAY variable is not set, since, as you said, you normally set it in your ~/.bashrc.
Try using:
wsl -e bash -lic "/usr/bin/konsole"
That will force bash to run as a login (-l), interactive (-i) shell. The DISPLAY should be set correctly, and it should run konsole.
Note that the quotes probably aren't necessary in this case, but are useful for delineating the commands you are passing to bash. More complicated command-lines can be passed in via the quotes.
As for:
wsl k.sh
That's likely a similar problem. You are doing the right thing by setting DISPLAY in your script, but I notice that you aren't using a fully-qualified path it. This would normally work, of course, if your script is in a directory on the $PATH.
But I'm guessing that you might add that directory to the $PATH in your startup config, which means (again) that it isn't being set in this non-login, non-interactive shell.
As before, try:
wsl -e bash -lic "k.sh"`
You could also use a fully-qualified path, of course.
And, I'm fairly sure you are going to run into an issue with trying to put konsole in the background via the script. When WSL exits, and the bash shell process ends, the child konsole process will terminate as well.
You could get around this with a nohup in the script, but then you also need to redirect the stderr. It's probably easiest just to move the & from the script itself to the command-line. Change your k.sh to:
#!/usr/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=$(cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver | awk '{print $2; exit;}'):0.0
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1
/usr/bin/konsole
Then run it with:
wsl -e bash -lic "k.sh &"`
Finally, a side note that when and if you can upgrade to Windows 11, it will automatically create Windows Start Menu entries for any Linux GUI app you install that creates a .desktop file. You can manually create .desktop files to have WSL create Start menu items for most applications.
For reference, in Windows 11 it's easier. To run a GUI application without a terminal window popping up, you just need to call wslg.exe instead of wsl.exe.
So, for example:
target: C:\Windows\System32\wslg.exe konsole
start in: C:\WINDOWS\system32
shortcut key: None
comment: Konsole
This tutorial shows how to install VcXsrv and and edit .bashrc to ensure that the "DISPLAY env var is updated on every restart".
DISPLAY env var needs to be dynamic setting.
I've used it successfully with WSL2 on Windows10 Version 21H2 (OS build 19044.2130) to run Chrome, Edge, and thunar. I'm using the Ubuntu 20.04 Linux distro.
To edit .bashrc follow these instructions.

What is the difference between calling a command via "wsl [command]" and opening a wsl shell and calling "[command]"?

I am using Ubuntu via WSL 2.0 on Windows 10 and would like to run Texlive from the Windows command line. To do so I prepended the Texlive folder to the path in /etc/environment (I also tried a number of other locations eg. $HOME/.bashrc):
C:\Users\scott\Documents>wsl echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/mnt/c/Windows/system32:...
C:\Users\scott\Documents>wsl
scott#SCOTT-PC:/mnt/c/Users/scott/Documents$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/texlive/2020/bin/x86_64-linux:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/mnt/c/Windows/system32:...
Why is there a difference between these two paths? Is it possible to change the first PATH variable?
To be honest, when I first looked at this question, I thought it would be an easy answer. Oh how wrong I was. There are a lot of nuances to how this works.
Let's start with the fairly "easy" part, though. The main difference between the first method and the second:
wsl by itself launches into a login (and interactive) shell
the shell launched with wsl echo $PATH is neither a login shell nor an interactive shell
So the first will source both login scripts (e.g. ~/.profile) and interactive startup scripts (e.g. ~/.bashrc). The second form does not get to source either of these.
You can see this a different way (and get to the solution) with the following commands:
wsl -e bash -c 'echo $PATH'
wsl -e bash -li -c 'echo $PATH'
The -li forces bash to run as a login and interactive shell, thus sourcing all of the applicable startup scripts. And, as #bovquier points out in the comments, a single quote is needed here to prevent PowerShell from interpolating the $ before it gets to Bash. That, or escape it.
You should be able to run TeX Live the same way, just replacing the "echo $PATH" with the startup command you need for TeX Live.
A second option would be to create a script that both adds the path and runs the command, and just launch that script through wsl /path/to/script.sh
That said, I honestly don't think that your current login/interactive PATH is coming from /etc/environment. In my testing, at least, /etc/environment has no use in WSL, and that's to be expected. /etc/environment is only sourced by PAM modules, and with no login check performed by WSL, there's no reason to invoke PAM in either the wsl nor the wsl echo $PATH commands.
I'd expect that you still have the PATH setting in ~/.bashrc or somewhere similar), and that's where the shell is picking it up from at the moment.
While this isn't necessarily critical to understanding the answer, you might also wonder, if /etc/environment isn't used for setting the default (non-login, non-interactive) path in WSL, what is? The answer seems to be that it is hard-coded into the init that starts up WSL. That init is also what appends the Windows path (assuming you don't have that feature disabled in /etc/wsl.conf).

Yank to system: neovim inside tmux inside ssh

I have found a similar question here but without a working answer for me:
System Clipboard Vim within TMUX within SSH session
I'm using Gnome terminal to start a ssh session with X forwarding to Debian 10.
If I start neovim and copy (yank) text, then this text is copied to the Gnome clipboard and everything is fine.
This is the content of .ssh/config :
Host nuc
ForwardX11 yes
I have this in .vimrc:
set clipboard^=unnamed,unnamedplus
But when I start neovim inside tmux, then this doesn't work.
I have tmux with the tmux-yank plugin and this works because when I copy from neovim inside tmux and then exit tmux I can see the selected text with xsel -o
How can I get the selection forwarded to my system clipboard?
Vim and NeoVim support for clipboard use a connection to the X11 server. The address to connect is available from the $DISPLAY environment variable.
The issue with X11 and terminal multiplexers or session managers such as tmux or screen is that the environment of the shells and programs running inside them will be the environment of when the tmux session was first created. That includes the $DISPLAY variable. So it means vim inside tmux will be trying to use the address of the X11 server of when the tmux session was created, not the one from where you just connected now.
A dirty but simple workaround is to update the $DISPLAY variable when you reconnect to tmux, to ensure you'll be connecting to the correct X11 server. Note that you need to do that for every shell or program running inside tmux, since each of them will have its own out-of-sync copy of the environment variable.
Something like the following works:
$ ssh -X nuc
nuc$ echo $DISPLAY
:1234.1
nuc$ tmux attach
tmux$ export DISPLAY=:1234.1
tmux$ vim
This should make clipboard work for that particular Vim.
As mentioned, if you have many tmux windows and panes, you'd have to update $DISPLAY on all of them. Also, if you create new windows or panes, they will start with the wrong $DISPLAY setting too (though you can also update the value of $DISPLAY in tmux's environment to fix new windows and panes, see tmux's set-environment command for that.)

Linux Screen tab misbehaves on WSL environment

I use Ubuntu 18.04 on a WSL system and usually log on a Linux server through ssh to get some work done. When I activate 'screen' and use the tab key to autocomplete commands, my cursor goes to the end of line, and the formatting of my entire terminal breaks from then on.
When using vim in that condition on a screen terminal, if I go to the end of file and press down on more time, it erases the last line from the terminal.
It seems a kind of misinterpretation of some terminal signal. When using Putty or any other ssh client under the same circumstances, everything works fine, so I am pretty sure it is a problem with WSL environment, specifically.
Any ideas about what is the main issue and how to solve it?
I just came across this same exact issue and it appears to be a possible bug with Windows Console and certain $TERM values.
I have this problem when $TERM is set to screen-256color. The problem went away after setting $TERM to xterm-256color in .screenrc
$ cat ~/.screenrc
term xterm-256color

Copy-pasting in Spacemacs from within tmux in an ssh session

My current setup consists of an OS X host machine in which I run iTerm. From inside iTerm I ssh into a second machine in which I do all the development. In there I run tmux, and inside tmux I run Spacemacs.
The experience is quite smooth with the only exception of copy-pasting. When I copy/paste from inside emacs, it interacts with the second machine's clipboard. Is there any way make it also use the host's clipboard instead? I would imagine that for copying it could execute a hook after each yank that would send via ssh the copied text to "pbcopy" in the host machine, and for pasting it could have a custom registry that would use the host's "pbpaste", also via ssh.
I managed to make it work with an xclip integration.
First of all make sure that xclip is installed in your development machine. When you ssh into the development machine forward X11 with ssh -Y.
In the development machine, in dotspacemacs/layers, as dotspacemacs-additional-packages, add xclip:
dotspacemacs-additional-packages '(xclip)
Also in the development machine, in dotspacemacs/user-config add:
;; == Terminal ==
;; XClip integration
(require 'xclip)
(define-globalized-minor-mode global-xclip-mode
xclip-mode xclip-mode)
(global-xclip-mode 1)
There is also an issue open in Spacemacs to add a layer to provide that functionality.