Keep sessions alive on the phone

A phone drops SSH connections: the screen turns off, the network changes, Android pauses the app. Sternway reconnects by itself, but a reconnect is a new shell, and whatever ran in the old one is gone. Running the session inside tmux on the server keeps the work.

Reconnecting

With Auto-reconnect on (Settings › Connections & SSH, on by default), a dropped session tries 5 quick times (after 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 seconds) and then once a minute for as long as its tab is open. The box over the terminal shows the try, with Reconnect now and Stop trying. When the network changes or the phone wakes up, a waiting session tries at once.

It stops by itself when a try needs you (a changed host key, a login that needs an answer). A login the server refuses (wrong password, a key no longer accepted) is tried again only in the first quick round, so the app does not lock you out of a server that blocks after a few failed logins.

Keep sessions running in the background

Settings › Background & keep-alive › Keep sessions alive in background is on by default. While the app runs in the background, its Active connections notification keeps your sessions and port forwards open for as long as Android allows, and reconnects go on.

When the app itself is ended (swiped away from Recents, stopped by a battery saver, the phone restarted, the app updated), its connections end with it, and so does whatever was running in the foreground of those shells. No setting changes that: an app that is not running cannot keep a connection open. Sternway does not run your SSH connections on a server of its own.

Keep the work on the server with tmux

Keep this session on the server runs the session inside tmux on the host. If the app is ended, only the view goes: the work goes on in tmux, and the next connection attaches to the same tmux session with the screen as you left it.

1. The host needs tmux installed (sudo apt install tmux and the like).
2. In the host’s editor, under Advanced, turn on Keep this session on the server. Leave tmux session name empty to have one made from the host’s label (web-01 (prod) becomes web-01-prod), or give one of letters, digits, - and _.
3. Connect. Sternway checks on a channel of its own whether tmux is there, then types tmux new-session -A -s <name> into the shell, which attaches or creates the session.

You can also flip it for one session from Terminal tools › Keep this session on the server. If tmux is missing, the session goes on as a plain shell and a line above the keys says so.

Pick a tmux session

A host card’s ⋯ › tmux sessions (or Terminal tools › tmux sessions) lists the host’s tmux sessions with their windows, attached clients, last activity and the last lines of each. Tap one to attach, choose New to start one, or End to kill one. On the desktop, the same picker is Hosts › (a host’s menu) › tmux sessions…, and it can also rename and search panes.

Get told when something happens

The terminal’s ⋯ › Notify me chooses what this session notifies you about while the app is in the background: when a command finishes, when the session asks for input (a password or PIN prompt included), when it goes quiet for the time set in Settings › Notifications › Quiet for (5 minutes by default), and more. Notifications are made by the app on the phone; no push service is involved, so an app that Android has stopped notifies nothing.

Not checked yet

iOS has not been built. A host whose SSH account runs a forced command or a restricted shell gets no answer to the tmux check, so the session stays a plain shell.