CONMAN(1)

💖 CONMAN(1) — ConMan: The Console Manager 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the conman client from ConMan (yes, "The Console Manager", it's giving very on-the-nose and honestly? iconic) ✨

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🎀 NAME 🎀

conman — the ConMan client, aka the lil buddy you use to go talk to your consoles 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

conman [OPTION]... [CONSOLE]...

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so basically, conman is the program you use to connect to remote consoles that are being managed by conmand. that's the whole vibe. 🦋

console names? you can separate them with spaces and/or commas, no stress, she's flexible.

by default, globbing is what's used to match console names against the configuration. but if you're feeling regex-y, you can turn on regular expression matching with the -r option. periodt. 🔥

now here's the tea — conman supports three modes of console access:

• monitor — read-only, you're just lurking 👀
• interactive — read-write, you're in the group chat for real 💬
• broadcast — write-only, you're yelling into the void 📢

if you don't specify either -m (monitor) or -b (broadcast), the console session opens in interactive mode. that's the default, main character energy 💅

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -b — Broadcast to multiple consoles (write-only). whatever data you send gets copied to all the specified consoles in parallel, but console output does not come back to you. so you're talking, but nobody's answering. this option can be used together with -f or -j. 🫶
• -d destination — specify where the conmand daemon lives, overriding the default [127.0.0.1:7890]. this location can have a hostname or an IP address, and optionally a colon followed by a port number. 🌈
• -e character — set the client escape character, overriding the default [&]. 💜
• -f — specify that write-access to the console should be "forced", which means stealing the console away from existing clients that have write privileges 😱. the original clients get told by conmand exactly who perpetrated the theft as their connections get terminated. yes, snitching is built in.
• -F file — read console names/patterns from file. only one console name per line, bestie. leading and trailing whitespace, blank lines, and comments (i.e., lines beginning with a '#') are all ignored. 🍓
• -h — display a summary of the command-line options. the lil cheat sheet 📝
• -j — specify that write-access should be "joined", thereby sharing the console with existing clients that have write privileges. the original clients get informed by conmand that a new client has been granted write privileges. wholesome, collaborative, we love to see it 🫶
• -l file — log console session output to file. 📄
• -L — display license information. ⚖️
• -m — monitor a console (read-only). lurk mode activated. 👀
• -q — query conmand for consoles matching the specified names/patterns. output from this query can be saved to a file for use with the -F option. chef's kiss, that's a workflow ✨
• -Q — enable quiet-mode, suppressing informational messages. this mode can be toggled inside a console session via the '&Q' escape. 🤫
• -r — match console names via regular expressions instead of globbing. regex girlies rise 🧚
• -v — enable verbose mode. she's chatty now 💬
• -V — display version information. 🏷️

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💅 ESCAPE CHARACTERS 💅

these are the escapes that are supported, and they all assume the default escape character [&]:

• &? — display a list of currently available escapes. help me help you 🆘
• &. — terminate the connection. bye bestie 😭
• && — send a single escape character. escaping the escape, meta fr 💀
• &B — send a "serial-break" to the remote console. 💥
• &E — toggle echoing of client input. 🔁
• &F — switch from read-only to read-write via a "force". stealing the aux cord 🔥
• &I — display information about the connection. ℹ️
• &J — switch from read-only to read-write via a "join". sharing the aux cord 🫶
• &L — replay up the the last 4KB of console output. this escape requires the console device to have logging enabled in the conmand configuration. 👑
• &M — switch from read-write to read-only. going back to lurker mode 👀
• &Q — toggle quiet-mode to display/suppress informational messages. 🤫
• &R — reset the node associated with this console. this escape requires a "resetcmd" to be specified in the conmand configuration. 🔄
• &Z — suspend the client. 😴

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

the following environment variables override the default settings:

• CONMAN_HOST — specifies the hostname or IP address at which to contact conmand, but it may be overridden by the -d command-line option. a port number separated by a colon may follow the hostname (i.e., host:port), although the CONMAN_PORT environment variable takes precedence. if it's not set, the default host [127.0.0.1] gets used. 💖
• CONMAN_PORT — specifies the port on which to contact conmand, but it may be overridden by the -d command-line option. if it's not set, the default port [7890] gets used. 🔌
• CONMAN_ESCAPE — the first character of this variable specifies the escape character, but it may be overridden by the -e command-line option. if it's not set, the default escape character [&] gets used. ✨

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🔒 SECURITY 🔒

the client/server communications are not yet encrypted. no cap, no security blanket, just vibes. be aware bestie. 😭

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🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

Chris Dunlap <cdunlap@llnl.gov>

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©️ COPYRIGHT ©️

Copyright (C) 2007-2022 Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. Copyright (C) 2001-2007 The Regents of the University of California.

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📜 LICENSE 📜

ConMan is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. 🎀

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

conman.conf(5), conmand(8).

https://dun.github.io/conman/

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this was conman-0.3.1, dated 2022-10-17 — go forth and manage those consoles, you absolute queen 👑✨💅