cssh: change terminal from xterm to terminator

Question

I would like cssh to use terminator terminal emulator, instead of the default xterm. In ~/.clusterssh/config I have changed the following line:

#terminal=/usr/bin/xterm
terminal=/usr/bin/terminator

But when I start cssh I get following error:

Opening to: server1 server2
Usage: terminator [options]

terminator: error: no such option: -g
Usage: terminator [options]

terminator: error: no such option: -g
Cannot open pipe for reading when talking to server1 : Interrupted system call

Apparently, cssh is passing some parameters to xterm, which terminator does not recognize.

How can I fix this problem ?

Answer 1

I suspect that you may not get this to work as I doubt that Terminator will accept synthetic events and I don't think that multiple terminal per window model is compatible, but If you want to try the best source is the README.Debian.gz from the debian package. I have included the relevant portion below, but It would probably be much simpler to just use Terminator's grouping option

Super+g: Group all terminals so that any input sent to one of them, goes to all of them. (from the man page)

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TERMINAL EMULATORS

Clusterssh no longer allows the use of just any Debian terminal emulator that provides x-terminal-emulator, since a number of them don't support the XSendEvents resource. By default, clusterssh will invoke xterm. To change this, create or modify your config file to contain the line:

    terminal = /path/to/my/favorite/terminal-emulator

Note that this terminal emulator must accept the "-xrm" command line switch to set XTerm.VT100.allowSendEvents:true (or something that does the same thing). If your terminal emulator provides equivalent functionality with a different switch, or provides it implicitly, you can set this with the parameter "terminal_allow_send_events" in the config file.

If you are having trouble getting clusterssh to work with uxterm, you should either delete the "terminal_allow_send_events" option from your config file, or update the value to:

  UXTerm.VT100.allowSendEvents:true

or simply:

  *.VT100.allowSendEvents:true

Older versions of clusterssh would create the .csshrc file with the class set to "XTerm" which prevents the uxterm from receiving events.

The terminal emulator must also accept:

    -e <command>
    -font <font>
     System-wide configure changes can be made by editing /etc/csshrc.

Debian terminal emulator packages tested and known NOT to work with clusterssh:

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(please send updates either directly to the maintainer or via the bug tracking system)

gnome-terminal konsole kterm xvt xfce4-terminal mlterm

Debian terminal emulator packages tested and believed to work:

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xterm rxvt rxvt-beta aterm (only with "terminal_allow_send_events =" in ~/.clusterssh/config) wterm (only with "terminal_allow_send_events =" in ~/.clusterssh/config) pterm (although it requires input focus before any output is displayed) eterm (although it doesn't use the -font switch)

Note that xterm-wrappers like lxterm and uxterm that immediately background themselves will NOT work.

If you use a script to spawn your terminals, make sure that it takes takes $* as an argument, and that it doesn't background itself.

Answer 2

It seems that terminator does not accept csshs (default or hard-wired) parameters. Instead of trying to change these, how about creating a wrapper for the terminator startup:

cat > /usr/bin/start_terminator.sh
#!/bin/bash
# debug info: dump parameters
echo "start_terminator.sh called with paremeters: ${@}" > /tmp/start_terminator.sh.cmdline
# now start terminator avoiding invalid parameters given by cssh
exec /usr/bin/terminator
^D

(^D is Ctrl+D to end the keyboard input and cat command), then

chmod 755 /usr/bin/start_terminator.sh

and replace the terminal=/usr/bin/terminator by terminal=/usr/bin/start_terminator.sh in your ~/.clusterssh/config. If terminator does not start after this change then please look at our debug output at /tmp/start_terminator.sh.cmdline to see whether some of the parameters need to be passed to /usr/bin/terminator when execing it.

Answer 3

According to the manual for cssh it has this to say:

--tile,-g|--no-tile,-G Enable|Disable window tiling (overriding the config file)

With that said, I would propose disabling the window tiling option then review the manual for terminator which has this to say regarding window tiling:

--geometry=GEOMETRY Specifies the preferred size and position of Terminator's window; see x(7).

It seems that some general configuration options are going to be needed to switch terminals for cssh.