Category Archives: ubuntu

Ubuntu Desktop 18 + Vi – Add Color Schemes (Molokai)

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This is just a simple reminder for myself.  To get VIM working with custom color schemes on Ubuntu Desktop, you need to install a couple extra packages.

Here are the steps to install the molokai theme from GitHub properly:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vim-gui-common -y
sudo apt-get install vim-runtime -y
mkdir -p ~/.vim/colors
cd ~/.vim/colors
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tomasr/molokai/master/colors/molokai.vim

And to enable it as default, you have to edit your “~/.vimrc” file to say the following color scheme line. I also left in a couple lines that help arrow keys and backspace to work normally for the heck of it.

set nocompatible
set backspace=2
colorscheme molokai

Linux Neatly Manage SSH Sessions Like MRemoteNG on Windows

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SSH technically works the same anywhere, but on Windows without special tooling, using SSH can be cumbersome as the CLI is not very… elegant?  Generally, on Windows, people use tools like putty or MRemoteNG (also putty based) to make things neater.

If you’re on Linux, you can use SSH out of the box very cleanly by leveraging the config file to create named hosts.

For example, this verbose command:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/prod-key.pem centos@10.20.30.40

Can be replaced by the following command – and the nice “pgadmin-prod” name even auto-completes.  So, if you have 100 servers for different things, you can still find them easily.

ssh pgadmin-prod

This works if you add the following block into your ~/.ssh/config file.

Host pgadmin-prod
User centos
HostName 10.20.30.40
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/prod-key.pem

Where:

  • Host = the user-friendly name I want to use for this connection.
  • User = the user I normally have to log in as.
  • HostName = the IP address of the target host.
  • IdentityFile = the path to the private key used for the connection.

You can have as many named hosts as you like and, again, their names will auto complete after the ssh command – so they’re very easy to use.

This gets even more effective if you combine it with a screen/session management app like tmux or screen.  So, I recommend you look into those too if you don’t use them already (tmux is a little more modern if you’re a new to both).

I hope this helps you be a little more efficient, and thanks for reading.