Manage your server from your iPhone

Prompt 2 helps you manage your server from your iPhone
Prompt 2 helps you manage your server from your iPhone

Prompt 2 is an update to my favourite SSH terminal app for iOS. It allows me to manage, perform maintenance and repair my VPS (which hosts this website) from my phone anywhere I have an internet connection.

One of the new features added to the app are “clips”, short snippets of commands you can create and sync between devices. This is great for saving time typing out complicated commands when your most likely under some pressure.

From the keyboard tap the green button until the red button is shown. Activate the clips menu with the button highlighted in red.
From the keyboard tap the green button until the red button is shown. Activate the clips menu with the button highlighted in red.

Once you’ve logged on to your session with your server tap the double dot button (shown in green in the screenshot above) until the star 5 pointed star button (highlighted in red) is shown then tap this to bring up the clips menu. You can create server specific or global clips.

Some of the clips I use in Prompt 2
Some of the clips I use in Prompt 2

Here are a few of the clips I use to manage my own server:

top

Used to show the top processes on the server and how much resources are used/free.

shutdown -r now

Will restart the server immediately.

service apache2 restart

Will restart apache2 web server.

/etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

Will restart the FTP service.

cd /var/log/apache2/
cat error.log

Will open your error log.

cd /var/mail
cat username

Will open mail for the username provided.

Quick Tip: If you add a new line this will force a return, running the command.

If you have any others you would like to share please tweet me @andrewjamesford or email me at andrewford dot co dot nz and I’ll update the post.

Prompt 2 is well worth the upgrade for this feature alone. Combined with the Panic’s sync service your clips and servers will remain in sync across your iPhone and iPad. If your already using Prompt the import of your settings is seamless into Prompt 2.

Prompt 2 helps you manage your server from your iPhone any where you have an internet connection. It is available right now on the app storefor NZ$12.99.

Tags:
 app,
 linux,
 prompt-2,
 ssh,
 terminal,
 apps,
 ios,
 server