What is the best way to open remote files with emacs and ssh

Question

I connect to the remote machine with ssh [email protected]. When I need to open a file in the remote machine I do, e.g.,

emacs /usr/share/nginx/html/index.html

and that opens the index.html file in the shell. I noticed that some emacs commands work but others do not work. For instance, C-w does not work; M-< does not work. How can I fix this, and what is the best way to work with emacs and ssh?

I found this question but it made me more confused.

Solution 1

I generally prefer opening remote files from a local Emacs instance.

While running Emacs on your local machine, opening a remote file over ssh is not much different than opening any other file besides a slightly different syntax.

For ssh, you can type C-x C-f. Now, in the minubuffer you want to type /ssh:user@host:/path/to/file (Note that tab completion will work once you start typing a path. Also note the leading / character). See the full docs here.

In your example, that would be:

C-x C-f /ssh:[email protected]:/usr/share/nginx/html/index.html

Now you can edit remote files over ssh in Emacs while using your local configuration and any installed packages, etc...

Solution 2

Just to add to the answer above, you can write shortcuts for machines that you use frequently:

(defun connect-remote ()
  (interactive)
  (dired "/[email protected]:/"))

This will open a dired buffer on a remote machine. You can navigate this buffer as you would a local one.

If you have set up ssh keys for the remote machine, you don't even have to enter the password.

If you have a bunch of remote machines, you can give some recognizable name to each function, e.g. connect-cupcake, connect-kitkat and use smex package for completion.

Solution 3

And to add to @abo-abo's post about "shortcuts" --

Use Emacs bookmarks. Just create bookmarks normally, when you visit a remote file or directory. Then just use C-x r b to jump to a remote bookmark, whose name you provide (with completion).

If you use Bookmark+ then remote bookmarks are highlighted specially in the *Bookmark List*, so you can recognize them more easily. And remote bookmarks that must be accessed by su or sudo (root) are highlighted differently.

If you use Dired+ then you can also quickly bookmark multiple remote files or directories, by visiting their containing remote directory in Dired, marking them, and hitting C-x b. No need to give the bookmarks names; they are named after the files. Even if you never use those bookmarks for navigating to the remote files, you can use them with Bookmark+ tags to organize the files and thus operate on subsets of them.

If you use Icicles then whenever you use a command to jump to a bookmark, you can narrow the completion candidates to those that are remote by hitting C-M-@ during completion.

Solution 4

The original poster expressed interest in opening remote files as the root user. This can be done with the command:

C-x C-f /ssh:you@remotehost|sudo:remotehost:/path/to/file RET

More documentation can be found here: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TrampMode#toc14

Solution 5

A Simple Answer that focuses on the remote machine:

If I plan to do all my emacs work on the remote machine, I use

ssh -X username@hostname

and then run emacs in the remote session, displaying back on my local machine. It's an old question but I wanted to throw this in for completeness. Granted there are some xhost / X config issues but in many networks this will work right off the bat!

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