BBSSH finally has a FaceBook page. I’ll get a button on the web site this week, but in the mean time — if you’re a fan, stop by and “like” it, or whatever you crazy kids do with FaceBook pages these days…
Forum software – suggestions?
Can anyone suggest forum software that has good handling for spam, bogus tags, etc? bbpress isn’t really doing it (a lot of things slipping through, the management interface for deleting users/posts leaves a lot to be desired, and I have no way to delete invalid tags…)
I last used phpbb several years ago, and it was a spam magnet. Has that improved under 3.0? . SMF was a similar experience, but again that was 3-4 years back.
Another crazy few weeks…
I’ve been in process of finding a new job (more on that in a week or so on my personal blog @ http://marcparadise.com), so BBSSH support and PB development have taken a temporary back seat.
A few of you have used ‘send feedback’ to send in an issue report since late September; please know that I’ve not forgotten you – but catching up may take a little time, because I’m also pushing to get BBSSH 2.1 finalized and in App World. For the most part, there is only one of me – so if you have some J2ME and/or BB development experience and want to help out, please let me know!
This is especially important now, because I see a fair number of new OS 7 users every day (based on anonymous usage stats) and I know that unless they visit this site to see the news about using BBSSH 2.1 for OS7… they’re downloading the current ‘official’ 2.0 release and finding that it’s not working for them.
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
BBSSH for OS7 Update (Pre-Beta)
An issue has been discovered under OS7 in attempting to show the Symbols screen while in Direct Input mode. This will cause BBSSH to hang, and you will not be able to use BBSSH until you reboot the device. This was due to the specific menu item that BB OS uses to universally provide the “Show Symbols” menu having changed internally.
Normally I wouldn’t post about an update for a single issue, but this one is critical enough to merit it. You can grab the fixed version at the unstable download location for BBSSH OS7:
http://dev.bbssh.org/bbssh/unstable/7.0.0/BBSSH.jad
All the usual disclaimers apply: this release is considered a development build, and may contain additional issues not yet discovered.
Thanks to those of you who reported this one to me.
Posted in Uncategorized
4 Comments
BBSSH for OS 7 (pre-beta)
Current versions of BBSSH do not properly run under the just-released OS7. There is an ‘unstable’ build currently available that corrects this. Note that I have not tested other functionality – in particular we may see problems with available keys in key binding. Once I full test the version I’ll move it to regular beta, but in the interim you can grab it here:
http://dev.bbssh.org/bbssh/unstable/7.0.0/BBSSH.jad
You should be able to get back all of your settings from your old device using “restore” in desktop manager. If you are doing a selective restore (something I’d always recommend when switching devices…) then you’ll find that all of the BBSSH settings to restore are prefixed with the name “BBSSH”.
If you do find any new issues under OS7 please report them to me using the “Send feedback” menu item.
Getting the Most from BBSSH: GNU Screen
Many long-time SSH users already know this, but I receive a number of emails from people who haven’t heard of the awesome utility that is GNU Screen. Screen has several benefits for frequent (and even infrequent) SSHers.
- Persistent logins: after setting up a Screen session, you can reconnect to it at any time. In practical terms this means that even when your crappy 3G coverage *cough AT&T cough* flakes out and you lose connection to your server, you don’t lose your work. You can reconnect and pick up right where you left off. To do this, just type this at the shell prompt:screen -RDaA
- Multiple shells within a single connection. Screen lets you create a virtually unlimited number of active sessions within one connection and switch between them. BBSSH shortcuts make this easy to manage.
- Scrollback buffer: while BBSSH’s scrollback support is improving with every release, using screen for scrolling doesn’t use extra memory on your device — so you can keep a scrollback buffer that is much larger. (Mine is 5000 lines). And those multiple sessions I mentioned above? Each one has its own scrollback buffer under screen. One thing to note is that BBSSH’s vertical scrollback buffer is of much less use if you are using screen – it’s pretty much either/or.
- BBSSH’s copy support is fairly rudimentary (though I hope to change this soon). While screen’s copy/paste won’t let you share with your BB device, it will let you easily copy and paste between mul
- For those of you looking forward to getting a new high-res BB OS7 devices (or who like the small font sizes BBSSH has available) screen allows you to split the window showing 2 or more sessions concurrently.
- IRC fan? Run screen and irssi together, and you have IRC from your BlackBerry device – except unlike most of the IRC clients available on BlackBerry, irssi is a powerful client that runs on your remote system and not your BB — so the connection remains stable.
Stay tuned and I’ll be posting some BBSSH macros and shortcut bindings I use with screen (and irssi) that make it sit up, beg and roll over with a single keystroke/touchscreen tap.
One important note: disable “visual bell” on screen in order to avoid a terminal bug in BBSSH. To do this, type: CTRL+A CTRL+G . You only need to do this once. (For folks with hardware keyboards using default bindings, that would be: SYM,A,SYM,G)
For now, here are some useful links:
- Screen Shortcuts Cheat Sheet (also available in other formats)
- irssi cheat sheet
- launching screen: startup options
June Update
Well, it’s been a while since I updated here (blame the PlayBook and a mild case of family) but BBSSH is still alive and kicking. The 2.1 beta is coming along well if a bit behind my planned release schedule, and as usual the early adopters have been providing some great feedback. Some fun new features are included along with a few critical bug fixes - go ahead and try it out, as long as you’re not relying on the legacy fonts (there is a rendering bug introduced which should be fixed soon).
Now on to the question everyone has been asking me: when will we see BBSSH on the PlayBook? A few months ago the answer was not clear – with no details of the native SDK capabilities, and no desire to write a complete SSH stack in actionscript … the outlook was grim.
However, bits and pieces of information have been dribbling out of RIM and Adobe – enough that I can finally commit to actually starting the project. It’s too soon yet for a definite timeline, but I’m hoping to have an alpha quality release out the door this summer. The actual release is highly dependent on when RIM releases the actual NDK beta.
Stay tuned for more details – I’m exploring a couple of different options for implementing this and will bounce these ideas off of you all in the very near future.
One thing I would like to hear some feedback on is this: BBSSH development is a one-man operation. This means that when I start to focus on a PB release for it, BB development will be put on hold (excepting critical bugs and security fixes). The three big features outstanding are utf8 support, sftp, and port forwarding. So the question is … is it worth delaying one or more of these in order to have a PlayBook ssh client available?
2.1 Beta news
I’ve been getting great feedback from those of you testing the latest beta. Some issue have been reported but so far nothing critical; expect Beta 2 (2.1.1) to be released on or around the 19th, with unstable builds available between now and then for the brave.
Key issues to be corrected in the next beta:
- formatting/line wrap errors in some text editors (this may be related to non-English installations – reports so far all seem to include characters that BBSSH can’t render in the terminal)
- sometimes the terminal window seems to stop accepting input completely, requiring you to reconnect before it works again.
- Some lingering notification issues: they now always clear correctly, but don’t always fire correctly to begin with.
Several lesser issue have been reported and will be addressed as well.
I had originally intended to move this out on a faster schedule – however, my attention is diverted from BBSSH so that I can wrap up development on an app that will qualify me for RIM’s free playbook offer. (No, it’s not BBSSH for PlayBook – that’s on hold until I get either a Java or C++ API for PB as I”m not about to attempt implementing the SSH protocol in actionscript or javascript 
)
In addition, I’ve built a new development computer and am ironing out the kinks in the BBSSH build process — it’s been running so long as-is on my old laptop that I didn’t even realize it was broken in a couple of places.
Once I wrap up the above tasks this weekend, it’ll be time to get back to BBSSH.
BBSSH 2.1.0 Beta now available
BBSSH 2.1.0 beta is now available for download OTA at this location:
Originally planned to be 2.0.2, this one grew to contain a few too many things to qualify as a simple bugfix/maintenance release; similarly it’s more than I am comfortable releasing without testing among a wider audience.
As always, beta releases are not for the faint of heart. They’re usually pretty stable, but sometimes unpretty things happen. Also as always – BACK UP your settings with desktop manager prior to updating. If you need to revert, the ONLY way you can revert and still retain your data is to uninstall, reinstall, then (before launching BBSSH) restore from backup.
Quick highlights:
- Multiple VT102/VT320 terminal incompatibilities resolved
- Multiple refresh issues fixed, wherein parts of the screen would not display correctly.
- Bitmap font colors now render correctly, even when FG/BG are reversed.
- Bold/highlight now shows up properly.
- Many fixes to notifications/alerts (and a new notification icon). Notification counts now indicate the total number of alerted sessions, and not the number of bells/tones received. This new method is more similar how BB messenger determines the “new” count based on conversation activity, and not individual messages.
- Improved main screen that’s also friendlier to smaller screens. New screen includes better connection indicators, and error/alert/notified status for each session.
- Macros are now properly backed up/restored with desktop manager.
- Disconnected sessions can be returned to in order to view final output/messages. To close a session completely, choose “Terminate Session” from the main screen instead of “Close Session”.
- Multiple bug fixes for keyboard mappings in
- Default keyboard mappings based on device profile.
- Fixed issue where you get stuck on the recovery screen
- Terminal data logging (ALT+LGTM from main screen)
- Improved session switching interface.
- Fixed bug which prevents Torch users from using all available shortcuts if they launch BBSSH with the keyboard closed.
- There’s quite a bit more than this; I’ll publish the full list with the final release notes at end of beta (~a week).
Important: if you have not customized shortcuts, I strongly recommend resetting them by going to View/Edit Shortcuts, pressing the Menu/BB key, then selecting “Reset Shortcuts”. This will allow you to take advantage of the new default shortcut mappings specific to your device touch/keyboard layout.
Things to keep an eye out for:
- Let me know of any issues with notifications/alerts not triggering or clearing properly. A notification should trigger when you’re not in the session and it is connected, disconnected, or a terminal bell occurs
- I have gotten a few reports of BBSSH no longer accepting input. The screen updates correctly based on what is displayed remotely, but does not allow you to send anything or even use many/most shortcuts. Please let me know right away if this is happening to you.
- under this build, Legacy Font 5×9 appears corrupted for some colors. This will be fixed before final release, but if you use Legacy Font 5×9 as your usual font you may want to hold off on downloading this.
Anybody use BBSSH on Sprint?
I’m considering a switch to Sprint from AT&T (getting too frustrated with my constantly-fluctuating signal in a mid-sized city…) when they receive their next BB refresh.
I was wondering if anybody had used BBSSH on the sprint 3g work and if so, how well did it behave? Any problems with blocked ports or APN configuration? (I won’t ask about speed, because that tends to be very region-specific.)
Too- does Sprint 3G support simultaneous voice & data?