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Asked: 2026-06-06T16:53:52+00:00

Background I’m writing an web application so I can control an Ubuntu Server from

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Background
I’m writing an web application so I can control an Ubuntu Server from a web site.

One idea I had was to run the ‘screen’ application from mono and redirect my input and output from there.

Running ‘screen’ from mono:

ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo("screen", "-m");
info.UseShellExecute = false;
info.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
info.RedirectStandardInput = true;

var p = new Process();

p.StartInfo = info;

p.Start();

var output =  p.StandardOutput;
var input = p.StandardInput;

but running ‘screen’ with the RedirectStandardInput gives out the error:

Must be connected to a terminal

I’ve tried many different arguments and none seems to work with ‘Redirecting Standard Input’

Other ideas for controlling a server will be greatly appreciated

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think this is the typical question in which you’re asking how to implement your solution to a problem, instead of asking how to solve your problem. I don’t think you should do hacky things like making a web app that tunnels the user actions to the server via a terminal.

    I think you can bypass all that and, without writing a single line of code, take advantage of what the platform (Gtk+ in this case) already provides you:

    You could run gnome-terminal in the server with the Broadway GDK backend. This way the gnome-terminal app will not run in the server, but open a web server on the port you specify. Later, you can use any WebSockets-enabled browser to control it.

    This is the easiest and less hacky solution compared to the other ones offered so far. If you still are excited about using Mono for web development you still can, and you could embed this access in an iFrame or something.

    (PS: If you don’t want to depend on GTK being installed in the server; you could just use WebSockets in your client part of the webpage to be able to send events from the server to the client, and the library SSHNET to send the user’s input directly through the wire.)

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