Remote Terminal

NOBA provides a full interactive terminal for remote agents directly in the web dashboard. Connect to any online agent and run commands as if you were SSH'd in.

Accessing the Terminal

1. Navigate to Agents in the sidebar
2. Click on any online agent to open the detail modal
3. Select the Terminal tab

The terminal connects via WebSocket for real-time interaction. You'll see a green connected badge when the session is active.

How It Works

The terminal uses a real PTY (pseudo-terminal) on the remote agent:

• Browser connects to the NOBA server via WebSocket
• Server bridges the connection to the agent's WebSocket
• Agent spawns a shell process via pty.openpty() (Linux) or subprocess.Popen (Windows)
• Keystrokes and output stream in real-time through the WebSocket chain

This means full interactive support — vim, htop, top, ssh, sudo, tab completion, command history, and ANSI colors all work.

Role-Based Access

Terminal access enforces least privilege based on your NOBA role:

Admin

Full shell access as the agent's service user. Unrestricted.

Operator

Restricted shell for diagnostics only:

• Linux: Opens a session as the noba-agent user (or nobody if unavailable). Falls back to bash --restricted if no unprivileged user exists.
• Windows: PowerShell in Constrained Language Mode — blocks .NET object creation, COM access, Add-Type, and other potentially dangerous operations while keeping standard commands available.

Viewer

No terminal access.

Platform Support

Linux / macOS

Full PTY with xterm-256color support. Terminal resize events are forwarded to the remote shell via SIGWINCH.

Windows

PowerShell session via stdin/stdout pipes. Interactive commands work, though some TUI applications may have limited rendering compared to a native Windows Terminal.

Agent Requirements

The remote terminal requires agent version 2.2.0 or later. Agents auto-update when the server has a newer version — the update is triggered automatically on the next heartbeat cycle (within 30 seconds).

To check agent versions, look at the agent detail modal's Overview tab.

Troubleshooting

Terminal shows "disconnected"

• Verify the agent is online (green badge in the agents list)
• Check that the agent is connected via WebSocket (commands delivered via WS are instant; queued commands wait for the next heartbeat)
• Try refreshing the page to re-establish the WebSocket connection

No output after connecting

• The agent may be running an older version without PTY support. Check the agent version in the Overview tab — it needs to be 2.2.0+
• Use the Command Palette to send an "Update Agent" command, or wait for auto-update

Session hangs

• If a command hangs, close the terminal tab and reopen it to start a fresh session
• The PTY session is automatically cleaned up when you close the modal or navigate away