ShellSparrow lets you connect to a daemon on your computer over your favourite XMPP client and execute commands on your favourite command line shell like bash.

A sample configuration is given in sample.shellsparrowrc file, it’s pretty self-explanatory, but let me break it down for you:

1. the [shellsparrow] section compulsorily should contain these:
   # jid: [email protected]/thedaemon →full UID of the jabber account the daemon should use to connect.
   # password: password for the above account.
2. the [users] section should contain the JID (without resource name) of the users you want to grant access to.

I am working on making a .deb for shellsparrow, but till then you will have to set it up manually, here’s how you do it:

1. create a file called .shellsparrowrc in the $HOME directory and fill it up with the configuration
2. cd into the code directory type python shsd to start the daemon
3. use your favourite XMPP client from anywhere in the universe to connect to your computer!
4. You can find the history of all the commands in $HOME/.shellsparrow/commandlog

There’s a lot todo yet, briefly:

1. create a script to simplify configuration
2. make more configuration options available, like path of the shell binary to use
3. make sessions consistent (currently, each command starts a new shell instance)
4. implement mapping of local usernames with JIDs to allow access with various user levels

ShellSparrow is a Free Software, you are free to copy/adopt it untill you agree to keep it free. It is licensed under the MIT License, see COPYING for the full text.