Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jan 24, 2023

Keeping SSH connections alive on iOS with high-fidelity terminal emulation and without draining your battery: the Story of El Preservador.

https://blog.xibbon.com/solving-background-disconnect-issues-on-ios-with-el/

El Preservador: SSHing Responsibly on iOS

With La Terminal, we strive to offer an SSH client that just works on iOS. With this in mind, I set out to make design decisions on behalf of users that would provide an experience that works out of the box while providing the best terminal emulator experience they deserve.

Xibbon Blog
Show threadsmeger
@Migueldeicaza I appreciate the write up! This does not work on my Synology host - the connection is insta-dropped whenever I navigate away from La Terminal. Can I help diagnose? It’s pretty frustrating!
Jan 25, 2023 at 10:57amWeb
Show threadMiguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jan 25, 2023
@smeger yes, this means El Preservador didn’t start. Can you look in the “…” menu for “Connection log”, this should have more details
Show threadsmegerJan 25, 2023
@Migueldeicaza Yup, that appears to be the reason. Do you know why it’s unable to start? TMUX is fine - I’m just curious.
Show threadMiguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jan 25, 2023
@smeger yes, the synology ships without the sftp client for ssh. I believe it is some alternative ssh.
Show threadsmegerJan 25, 2023
@Migueldeicaza Ahh, lame. Would scp work? And it might be good to let the user know session preservation won’t be active if El Preservativo didn’t load.
Show threadMiguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jan 25, 2023

@smeger yes, I have it in my todo list to warn about the condition, before it used to hang, now it falls back to a regular connection. I shall try also to downgrade to tmux in that case.

Let me also look into this scp alternative.

Show threadsmegerJan 25, 2023
@Migueldeicaza Great! I adore the app, btw!
Show threadMiguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jan 25, 2023
@smeger ah thanks for the kind words! Glad you like it!
Show threadMiguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉Jan 25, 2023
@smeger I believe synology was lacking a way to upload the agent. In this case, you can try “tmux” for session preservation