Best way to remotely administer Linux boxes from your iPhone?

Question

I often have to restart processes or go check something out while I'm out and about after hours when someone calls, frantic, about something that has gone wrong.

What is the best iPhone app for remote administration? SSH apps are OK, but ease of use and speed are key.

Bonus points for being $0.99 or less.

Answer 1

Both iSSH and TouchTerm are good choices - they have pretty similar functionality but a few slight differences, mostly comes down to personal preference as either will get the job done.

One recommendation, it pays off to plan ahead before you're confronted with an emergency and setup some scripts or aliases for common commands, especially if you need to login to multiple machines to reach backend servers, etc. While the onscreen keyboard is workable, it's still much slower than typing on a real keyboard. Also, make sure to spend some time experimenting with the app's functionality before having to use it under fire, so you aren't trying to figure out how to make it work while your servers are down.

Answer 2

I'd wager a guess that a web-based administration system would be your best bet. I haven't much experience with that myself, as SSH is usually my weapon of choice. I haven't been in the situation (yet) where I don't have an effective keyboard at hand though.

A quick google search turns up something called Webmin, might be something. Appears to be free with a BSD license.

Answer 3

I use the TouchTerm SSH client, which has a free version available that probably does most of what you need.

Answer 4

iSSH for the iPhone is fantastic. It also includes a VNC client, so you can port forward over your SSH connection.

Answer 5

I recommend TouchTerm for remote access of linux boxes using iphone. I've been using this service for 6 months and it is very robust.

Answer 6

If restarting lapsed services is your problem, the answer may be a service monitoring system - I'm pretty happy with monit. monit is reasonably easy to configure and can watch a daemon on a port or by process id and automatically restart it if it fails - if configured to do so it will also email you reports on everything that goes on.

An iphone ssh client could still be useful, but if a normally reliable bit of software falls over in the middle of the night I'd rather not have to get out of bed to keep things working.