Connect your Linux system to your Android phone

While using your cell phone to connect to your Linux system may not seem like a huge priority, it is possible and you may have good reason to do so from time to time. If you have an Android cell phone, you can install a tool that allows you to connect and open a terminal session on a Linux box and run commands just as if you were sitting in front of the system. Well, approx.

The tool I recommend is called SSH . juice. It installs easily and leaves an icon with a picture of a lemon with its name under it on your screen. Click on this icon and select speed dial To set up your connection.

Sandra Henry Stocker

You will need to enter something like [email protected]:22 with your Linux username, the IP address of the target system, and the specified port 22. The form should default to save the connection as shown in the image above. Enter your password when prompted.

Before you begin any serious work, you will probably want to enlarge your font. To do this, go to Settings and scan the list for Line And the font size to make your choices.

Sandra Henry Stocker

When you change the font size, you can slide to the font that suits you best. Sizes range from 1 to 30 points. Keep in mind that the output from most commands will likely be wrapped, because your cell phone screen is rather narrow.

Sandra Henry Stocker

You can also change other settings (for example, theme colors) if you want to further customize your sessions.

Once connected to Linux, you can ask who is logged in on the target system using World Health Organization ordering. You might see something like this.

$ who
justme  tty2    2022-06-02 11:05 (tty2) 	<== console login
nemo    pts/0   2022-06-02 12:38 (192.168.0.12) <== login from another system
justme  pts/1   2022-06-02 12:43 (192.168.0.6)	<== login from your Android cell phone

If there are several logins, they will look very similar, but the last one should be at the bottom of the list and it will display the IP address of your cell phone.

To get back to doing something else on your phone while you're leaving SSH . juice The session is active, press the home button. Mine is a small circle in the middle at the bottom of my screen. It looks something like this:

        ◁         ◯         ▢

Later, you can re-enter your Linux session by simply clicking SSH . juice once again.

Once you are back in the SSH session, you can repeatedly click the up arrow to repeat the previous commands as you would when logging into the console or using putty. If you do not see the arrow, click on the screen part of the screen - above the keyboard. After pressing the up arrow a number of times, pressing the down arrow will direct you down to the most recently entered commands.

Sandra Henry Stocker

Faucet control in the line at the top of the on-screen keyboard, then press "D" or simply type "sign out" in the terminal window to exit the SSH session.

note: This post describes the free version of SSH . juice. There is also a "Pro" version with additional features.

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While it's not likely to be something you'll need to do often, it's good to know that you can use your Android cell phone to log into your Linux system. Fortunately, doing this is much easier than you might have imagined. Hope you give it a try and find some ways it can be useful.