Using Emacs - 25 - Tramp
Today's video talks about using emacs Tramp mode.
Tramp mode allows you to edit remote files using your local emacs. I usually do this over ssh.
To edit a file on a machine www.cstuy.org I would first find-file using C-c C-f and then for the file name to open:
/ssh:www.cstuy.org:/home/zamansky/sc/testfile
this would open the file testfile in the absolute directory /home/zamansky/sc. If my username on the remote machine is different:
/ssh:username@www.cstuy.org:/home/zamansky/sc/testfile
And I can also work relative to my home directory:
/ssh:username@www.cstuy.org:sc/testfile
If I just hit enter after the machine name and : -
/ssh:username@www.cstuy.org:
I end up in a dired buffer on the remote machine.
Likewise if I run a shell or eshell in the tramp buffer, it will run the shell on the remote machine. In the video I showed how shell didn't work because locally, I'm configured to use zsh and I don't have zsh installed remotely. Eshell, however, worked fine.
Using tramp in this way gives us all of the power of our local emacs configuration to edit a file on a remote machine.
You can also use tramp to edit local files as root using sudo:
sudo::/tmp/sc/rootfile
Note the double colon.
Finally, you can do the double-whammy - remote root editing:
ssh::www.cstu.org|sudo:www.cstuy.org:/home/zamansky/sc/rootfile
If you use zsh and any of this freezes, just do a search on "zsh tramp" and the top couple of hits will tell you what to add to your configuration files to fix things.
Finally, I mentioned in the video that I don't use tramp all that much anymore. That's mostly because I don't do much remote editing anymore. I used it more when I was administering a number of machines at Stuyvesant.
I still use it periodically, but I also use sshfs, a Linux tool (which may be available for other operating systems) that allows me to mount a directory tree from a remote machine and use it on my local machine.
Relevant links:
- Video series overview page:
- Code:
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