Comments on: Android vs iPhone for sysadmins

By: Essential sysadmin iPhone apps « Boxed Ice Blog

Essential sysadmin iPhone apps « Boxed Ice Blog — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:34:01 +0000

[...] sysadmin iPhone apps 2010 January 13 by David Mytton We have previously looked at Android vs iPhone as a mobile operating system for sysadmins but the OS is only the platform for the apps which [...]

By: Fannar

Fannar — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:47:01 +0000

Great post. I love my iPhone but I hate the Mail app as I’m also using Gmail (Google Apps Mail) and would really like to be able to have IM (Gtalk, Skype) running in the background.

If Apple wasn’t this strict we would probably have a much better Gmail app on the iPhone.

By: Sha

Sha — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:47:45 +0000

Here’s the tutorial on how you can use connectbot:

http://www.toremote.com/ssh

1. For the SSH connection, I use ConnectBot. Setup is as follows:

Initial setup involves simply typing in the username followed by @ and hostname.

Example: user@111.111.111.111 or user@yourdomain.com

The default port is 22. If you need to use a different port add a colon and the port number to the line above.

Example: user@111.111.111.111:222 or user@yourdomain.com:222

The IP address is, of course, the IP outside your firewall.

Press and hold the new entry in ConnectBot and you’ll see “edit host”. Select this if you want to change any of the info above.

By: John Arundel

John Arundel — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:55:09 +0000

Great post – I’ve found my iPhone indispensable in my freelance sysadmin work; though I haven’t used an Android phone to compare it to, I did once try to log in to a machine using a BlackBerry and found it highly frustrating.

Almost all of the sysadmins I meet seem to have iPhones; I think this is probably not only because they’re largely Mac users but also that they’re technology fans, and won’t settle for anything less than the best device available – even if the OS is not open source.

It’s worth pointing that out the excellent iSSH also supports VNC, which is an essential feature for remote management of Windows machines, for example.

Also, the Beejive IM client for iPhone supports Gtalk with push notifications, which works just fine.

By: David M

David M — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:54:40 +0000

Yeh, I meant the Pulse, not the Droid. So show me the “Done” button, and the arrow for return ’cause it’s not on there – http://boxedice.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/androidconnectbotlogin.png?w=292&h=405

By: ScaredyCat

ScaredyCat — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:04:43 +0000

The Droid has a physical keyboard. The Pulse might not but the Droid certainly does. Even without a physical keyboard Android provides a soft keyboard which has a Done button when connecting and a standard arrow for return.

I’ve already mentioned in a tweet that fring is out for Android and is a much better Skype client than that Skype Lite rubbish.

I’d also suggest looking at SMS Backup which will backup your sms messages to gmail too.

By: David M

David M — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:51:01 +0000

Where’s the “enter” button? It’s not on the on screen keyboard and the Droid has no physical keyboard.

By: Lennon

Lennon — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:20:10 +0000

Not to nit-pick with what was generally a fairly balanced review, but…

Did it not occur to you to try pressing ‘Enter’ after typing a hostname in ConnectBot? I accept that it might not be as “discoverable” as a big shiny purpose-labeled button, but it certainly seemed like a reasonable choice to me given the target audience for a text-mode-only SSH client on a smartphone.