Can't ssh into terminal. Internal error. Connection to lon1.tmate.io closed.

[PhilipFaure]

We are having issues trying to ssh into our raspberry pi devices at several sites. Usually we can ssh in remotely using: ssh user/session@lon1.tmate.io but now we get the following:

Internal error
Connection to lon1.tmate.io closed.

Also tried different locations, e.g.: @ lon1, @ nyc1, @ sgp1, and @ sfo2. None of which work, and all giving the same "internal eror" message.

We can now only ssh locally when on site. For example by using: ssh user@192.168.0.xxx when we are at the site, which is not ideal as these sites are on remote islands. I was at one of the sites yesterday trying to figure out what is going on and was able to create random session names, which I can still log in using for example: <random_string_of_characters>@lon1.tmate.io

While on site, I tried to stop and restart the tmate service but this didn't help either. I also tried to use our tmate API to create a new named tmate session, but it gave me a randomly named session every time, e.g.: <random_string_of_characters>@lon1.tmate.io.

The .tmate.conf is still in the home directory here: ~/.tmate.conf and contains the session name and API key. So tmate should be able to find the right API and session name, right?

I noticed that tmate.io website is not working, could the servers be down?

Not sure what to do..

[nviennot]

I'm closing the servers, sorry

[PhilipFaure]

Thanks, @nviennot - do you know when it will be back up again?

[nviennot]

It won't. I'm closing the servers permanently.

[israfilbd]

so sad 🥹

[koyuawsmbrtn]

I really like this project. Can I continue to host the servers? I have enough stable income to manage that.

[tuxj]

@koyuawsmbrtn me too, I can also provide hosting resources...

[nviennot]

No time to maintain. It's expensive. It's been >10 years. I'm sure there are alternatives. Time to shutdown

[koyuawsmbrtn]

Ironically I've never seen software work that well like tmate. It'd be a shame to shut it down entirely, because it's really one of a kind.

[tinpansoul]

I've also never seen alternative that works as good as this. Is there any way to do selfhosted server? I'm sure people can get it running.

Or does anyone know where to migrate?

[frankenstein91]

No time to maintain. It's expensive. It's been >10 years. I'm sure there are alternatives. Time to shutdown

Name one please

I really like this project. Can I continue to host the servers? I have enough stable income to manage that.

@koyuawsmbrtn me too, I can also provide hosting resources...

I would join the party as well

[HeinzM]

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=share+terminal+session+over+ssh

[ttesty]

It took a few days/week to setup a free cloud host, rebuild tmate-ssh-server, rebuild/port tmate client (via NDK for latest Android version- the pain!) - so it doesn't periodically hang on SSH lib mismatching, modify code to take a fixed connect string. The build and dependency/make/compile hacking hell was ultra silly (especially with latest versions of dependent libs), but it all works now! Sounds like the project is dead, but the benefits should last for a long time. Some pain points are lack of scrollback, overcomplicated copy and paste terminal text workflow compared to normal terminals, missing SFTP layer. One day a LLM will be able to reliably add that functionality in a couple of minutes. Thanks to all of the authors (including those from TMUX)!

BTW, RustDesk makes a good companion to tmate. Better to self-host I think.

[Wallemz]

Hi @nviennot , are you also planning to shut down the SSH session servers? If so, could you let us know when that will happen?