Public Access
jaap-jan
5fccd53824
The terminal works end to end. A new integration test drives a real sshd in a container through a real PTY, the real pump, the real loopback WebSocket with its token and origin checks, and a ClientWebSocket standing in for the page: the login banner arrives, typed input round-trips, and `stty size` reports the 100x30 the session asked for. The only untested link left is xterm drawing bytes it was handed. The WebView is de-risked on Windows, which was the plan's largest risk. Not by assertion: with the app running there is an established TCP connection from msedgewebview2 to the data plane port, so WebView2 launched, navigated to the loopback page, executed terminal.js, and completed the WebSocket handshake against the real token and origin checks. Linux remains unproven and the package's own release notes now corroborate the concern -- Linux uses a WPE backend, and it ships a NativeWebDialog described as useful where embedded WebViews may be unavailable. Two bugs found by building it, both of which would have shipped: - ShellStream.Write buffers and needs an explicit Flush. Without one a keystroke is accepted, reported as written, and never reaches the remote: the terminal displays output perfectly and simply stops responding to input. SSH.NET's own WriteLine flushes, which is why the earlier spike never hit it. Found by isolating the pump against real SSH and reading BytesRead=51 -- banner and prompt through, nothing after. - The Windows app manifest needs a supportedOS list, or Avalonia's native control host fails outright and the terminal never starts. Also fixed a genuinely flaky test I happened to catch: SyncCursorTests tampered with the *last* base64url character, whose low bits the decoder ignores when the input length is not a multiple of three -- so a tampered cursor sometimes decoded to identical bytes and verified. It failed roughly one run in thirty, depending on a random key. Now tampers the penultimate character, which is fully significant at every length; 40 consecutive runs are clean. xterm 6.0.0 plus the fit and webgl addons are vendored as UMD bundles rather than built with npm, so a clean clone needs only the .NET SDK. Provenance and licences are recorded next to them, along with the UMD global names terminal.js depends on -- a bundle that switched to ES modules would load without error and leave Terminal undefined. The renderer acknowledges output from term.write's completion callback, not on receipt. Acknowledging early would return flow-control credit for bytes the screen has not caught up with, which is the one thing the credit window exists to measure. TerminalWorkspace moved into DodoSSH.Client.Terminal: it has no Avalonia dependency, and having it there is what let the end-to-end test exist at all. 404 tests pass, zero warnings on a clean rebuild, format clean.
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.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, and an Avalonia shell whose terminal works end to end against a realsshd. Remaining: the encrypted local cache and the sync client, which are what let the app read hosts from the vault instead of a form. The client currently connects to a host you type in. - 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.