jaap-jan
49f617b450
The host list now comes from the vault instead of from a form. A fresh machine takes a server URL, signs in through the browser, enrolls, and from then on opens with the passphrase alone. DodoSSH.Client.Session is the composition layer: where a profile lives, how it unlocks, and how a machine gets one. ClientPaths picks a non-roaming per-OS directory — %LOCALAPPDATA% and never %APPDATA%, because a SQLite cache that roams between two machines is a corrupt one, and each machine's outbox is its own. SessionOpener needs no transport at all and could not reach one if it wanted to; that is the offline unlock, asserted rather than asserted about. A wrong passphrase, a stale KDF and a grant revoked by a rekey are three different answers, because the remedies are three different things and telling someone to retype a passphrase that was never the problem is worse than saying nothing. The shell's states are the onboarding story. The recovery code gets its own state that cannot be clicked past: it exists for one moment, losing it with the passphrase loses the vault, and there is no server-side reset by design. It is dropped from memory on confirmation rather than merely hidden. Sign-in is a delegate over IVaultServer, so the whole state machine runs in a test against an in-memory server — no browser, no identity provider, no toolkit. The view models are plain observable objects, which is what makes that possible. What it does not cover is whether the XAML binds to the right names; that needs a rendered tree and Avalonia.Headless, and is its own piece of work. Three things found by doing it rather than by reading it: - Pooled SQLite connections keep the database file open after the last context is disposed. On Windows that means locked, so the application could never replace its own cache — and a test could not clean up after itself, which is how it surfaced. Dispose now clears the pool. - EF's SQLite provider puts the database in WAL mode, so the cache is three files. A comment in ClientCacheFactory claimed the opposite; reading PRAGMA journal_mode off a real launch settled it. WAL is the right mode here — a sync pass writes while the interface reads — so the comment was wrong on the merits as well as on the fact. - Enrolling a device key with nowhere to keep the private half would put a wrap on the server nobody can open and make the device list claim this machine can unlock without a passphrase. Device binding is now optional and the shell declines it until the OS keystore is wired. Verified on Windows: the client created %LOCALAPPDATA%\DodoSSH\cache.db and migrated it on first launch, and msedgewebview2 held an established connection to the data plane while the unlock overlay covered it — which is the point of covering the WebView rather than collapsing it, since a NativeWebView that is never laid out is never realised. 630 tests, up from 593. The recovery-code gate and the offline unlock were each verified by breaking them and watching the right test fail. Still to do for M1's actual definition of done: the manual run against the real API and a real Keycloak. Credentials are not a synced entity type yet, so a connection still asks for a password, and the interface says so rather than implying otherwise.
6.2 KiB
DodoSSH
A self-hosted, team-oriented SSH client with an end-to-end encrypted vault.
Manage hosts, credentials and keys in a desktop app; sync them across your devices and share them with teammates through a server you run yourself. The server stores ciphertext and never holds a key — the operator cannot read the credentials it stores.
Status: early development. See the milestone plan for what exists today.
Why
Teams either scatter SSH credentials across individual ~/.ssh directories with no sharing
story, or pay per-seat for a hosted product that holds their infrastructure credentials.
DodoSSH keeps the convenience of a synced, shareable vault while remaining self-hostable and
zero-knowledge.
Architecture
| Component | Choice |
|---|---|
| Backend | ASP.NET Core on .NET 10, PostgreSQL + EF Core |
| Client | Avalonia (C#) for Windows/Linux/macOS; terminal pane is a WebView running xterm.js |
| Auth | OIDC, provider-agnostic (Entra ID, Keycloak, Auth0, Authentik) |
| Vault | End-to-end encrypted; X25519 + Ed25519 + XChaCha20-Poly1305, Argon2id unlock |
| Connections | Client-direct SSH by default, with an optional raw-TCP server relay |
Two consequences worth knowing before you read further:
- Revocation is not retroactive. A removed member keeps what they already downloaded. The real remediation is rotating the SSH credential, so offboarding is built around a rotation checklist rather than a button that implies more than it delivers.
- No session recording in relay mode. The relay forwards SSH ciphertext, so it cannot see commands. That is the cost of the relay not being able to read your traffic.
The reasoning behind each major decision is recorded in docs/adr/, starting with
the E2EE trust model.
Repository layout
src/
DodoSSH.Contracts DTOs shared with the client — the real API contract
DodoSSH.Crypto DSH1 envelope, AAD derivation, the key hierarchy
DodoSSH.Domain entities and invariants, no EF
DodoSSH.Infrastructure DbContext, configurations, migrations
DodoSSH.Api the server
DodoSSH.Client.Auth OIDC code+PKCE on a loopback redirect, and the key binding
DodoSSH.Client.Api the typed server client, and client-side enrollment
DodoSSH.Client.Domain the decrypted item model and the three-way merge — no I/O at all
DodoSSH.Client.Storage the local cache: ciphertext mirror, outbox, offline unlock material
DodoSSH.Client.Sync the pull/apply/push loop and the conflict policy
DodoSSH.Client.Session where a profile lives, unlocking it, and getting one in the first place
DodoSSH.Client.Ssh connections, PTY shells, host key trust
DodoSSH.Client.Terminal the loopback data plane and credit-based flow control
DodoSSH.Client.App Avalonia; the only project that knows about a UI toolkit
tests/ one test project per source project
docs/adr/ architecture decision records
Everything under src/DodoSSH.Client.* except App is deliberately free of Avalonia. That is the
seam that lets the SSH layer, the terminal's flow control and the OIDC flow be tested without a UI
toolkit or a browser engine — which is most of why they are testable at all.
Building
Requires the .NET SDK pinned in global.json (10.0.x).
dotnet build DodoSSH.slnx
dotnet test DodoSSH.slnx
Run the API locally:
dotnet run --project src/DodoSSH.Api
It listens on http://localhost:5233, serving /healthz/live, /healthz/ready and — in
Development — /openapi/v1.json.
Development and testing are currently Windows-only. Anything known or suspected to differ on
Linux and macOS is tracked in docs/platform-flags.md, along with the
deployment gotchas that have already cost time once. Read it before assuming something works
off-Windows.
Conventions the build enforces
- Warnings are errors.
dotnet format --verify-no-changesgates CI. - Package versions are centralised in
Directory.Packages.props;packages.lock.jsonis committed and CI restores in locked mode. BannedSymbols.txtbansDateTime.UtcNow(useTimeProvider),Guid.NewGuid(useCreateVersion7), sync-over-async, MD5/SHA1 and PBKDF2.- Public members of
DodoSSH.Contractsmust be declared inPublicAPI.Unshipped.txt, so a contract change is a build error rather than a client-side surprise.
Milestones
-
M0 — foundation. Repo structure, build conventions, CI, ADRs. Done.
-
M1 — vertical slice. OIDC login → enroll → create a host → open a shell. Server done: the DSH1 crypto core, the data model, sync push/pull for hosts,
/me, and enrollment with the identity-provider key binding. Client done: the key hierarchy, the OIDC flow with the key binding, SSH connections with host key trust, the terminal data plane, the encrypted local cache with the sync client — offline unlock, an outbox and a field-level three-way merge, conflict matrix green — and an Avalonia shell that is vault-backed: server URL → browser sign-in → enroll → unlock → host list → terminal. The shell's whole path is covered by tests against an in-memory server, so the states that matter most (the recovery code that cannot be skipped, the unlock that needs no network) are checked rather than remembered. Remaining: the manual end-to-end run against the real API and a real Keycloak fromdeploy/docker-compose.dev.yml, which is what M1's definition of done actually asks for.Known gaps in the client, stated rather than implied by the interface: credentials are not a synced entity type yet, so a connection still asks for a password; known host keys live in memory for one session instead of in the vault; and no device key is registered, so the passphrase is needed on every launch until the OS keystore is wired.
-
M2 — full personal vault, robust sync, relay.
-
M3 — teams, sharing, ACLs.
-
M4 — hardening and ops, packaging, self-hosting guide.
-
M5 — multi-provider OIDC, key rotation, per-item content keys.
Licence
MIT.