See what it's about by viewing this (silent) video:
The author mostly uses it with predefined hosts, and one of the "fancy" shells. This allows running an interactive shell, more or less like you would when you just ssh to it in a simple way. Plus some extras.
hcm is a little bit like putty if you're familiar with that, but hcm strives to make it easy to run predefined commands on predefined hosts. hcm is perhaps especially useful in clusters (about any kind you care to think of), but it's not only useful for clusters.
Because hcm uses deep-ssh, you can use bang paths to start commands behind firewalls, like user1@remote1.host.com!user2@only-behind1!only-behind2
hcm allows you to run n commands on m hosts in this many clicks:
| one host | m hosts, m >= 2 | |
| one command | in 2 clicks | in m+1 clicks |
| n commands, n >= 2 | in n+1 clicks | in n+m+2 clicks |
hcm is a nearly complete rewrite of ssh-gui. It's much prettier inside, and I daresay it's a bit more functional, too.
You can download hcm here
Usage basics:
| Command | Where it logs in | What it does |
| hcm-term --host-path 'dstromberg@localhost!zareason-limbo' | ssh to localhost as dstromberg, from there ssh to zareason-limbo, also as dstromberg | Run fancy terminal-window with logging and multitab ssh |
| hcm-term -h zareason2 | ssh to zareason2 as current user | Run fancy terminal-window with logging and multitab ssh |
| hcm-term -h zareason2 -C Gnome -c gvim | ssh to zareason2 as current user | Run gvim command in Gnome command group and remote display back over ssh |
| hcm-term -h zareason2 -C Gnome -c emacs | ssh to zareason2 as current user | Run emacs command in Gnome command group and remote display back over ssh |
| hcm-term -h zareason2 -C Gnome -c mate-terminal | ssh to zareason2 as current user | Run mate-terminal command in Gnome command group and remote display back over ssh. No logging is done. |
You can e-mail the author with questions or comments: