Are you using rMate?

A good friend of mine, Randall, would always joke with me about using Nano and rMate instead of vi. He’s an awesome programmer and incredibly smart – So, I’ve always listened to every piece of advice he’s given me – but, I simply couldn’t let go of using rMate instead of nano or vi.

rMate is a way to edit remote files via a reverse SSH tunnel on your local machine via SublimeText.

This is WAY easier to navigate long scripts or text files, instead of using a terminal. Besides, you can keep the file open in a sublime text tab and any and all changes save and transfer to your remote server via the secure tunnel.

Clone rMate on remote server:

– I personally cloned the aurora rmate. There are a few out there.

https://github.com/aurora/rmate

sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/rmate https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aurora/rmate/master/rmate
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/rmate

Once you get the files from the github, go ahead and edit the permissions.

Install the SublimeText package:

Open the Package Manager in Sublime Text. search for ‘rsub’ and install it.

Ctrl+Shift+P / Linux-Win

Cmd+Shift+P / Mac

Now, lets open a command line on your local host and connect to a remote server to edit a remote file on your local install of sublime text.

ssh -R 52698:localhost:52698 {{username}}@{{remote-server}}

For my example, I’m going to remote into my local netbox server, with the following command from my WSL instance.

 

Here is a quick video, demonstrating how easy it is to edit a file locally from a remote server:

 

There are many more ways to use this cool little tool.

Check out the github and the following arguments – I’ve personally have set up several aliases on my workstation to be able to easily ssh to common servers I manage and have the ability to call rsub on files.

Example:

Create an alias by editing the .bashrc file and adding the previous ssh command, but this way – you can standardize the use of rsub by adding the ‘r’ behind the dns name of the server. You don’t always want to SSH with a reverse tunnel, so having the option to do, is much nicer – besides, this is an insane amount of text to input simply to ssh. My brain doesn’t want to do that, the million times a day I ssh into devices.

alias rnetbx=’ssh -R 52698:localhost:52698 htinoco@10.0.0.116′

root@Snowblind-Tower:/mnt/c# nano ~/.bashrc  ## Sorry Randall
root@Snowblind-Tower:/mnt/c# source ~/.bashrc
root@Snowblind-Tower:/mnt/c# rnetbx   ## <———The new alias
The authenticity of host ‘10.0.0.116 (10.0.0.116)’ can’t be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:XkjSNWW8a6Nri7m5wdV5KBpdXdTT9DDD+SxZa//2qic.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

Arguments

-H, --host HOST  Connect to HOST. Use 'auto' to detect the host from SSH.
-p, --port PORT  Port number to use for connection.
-w, --[no-]wait  Wait for file to be closed by TextMate.
-l, --line LINE  Place caret on line number after loading file.
+N               Alias for --line, if N is a number (eg.: +5).
-m, --name NAME  The display name shown in TextMate.
-t, --type TYPE  Treat file as having specified type.
-n, --new        Open in a new window (Sublime Text).
-f, --force      Open even if file is not writable.
-v, --verbose    Verbose logging messages.
-h, --help       Display this usage information.
    --version    Show version and exit.

 

I didn’t know about this tool until recently. I hope this helps someone and makes your day easier!