Adding "Remote Atom" to My DigitalOcean Server

Posted on March 15, 2020 from Toledo, Iowa

Last evening and early this morning I completed the addition of a new (to me) package to Atom on my Mac Mini. The package is Remote Atom and I found the configuration to be a little confusing, but in the end it was worth the work.

Use

The addition and configuration of this package allows me to open an SSH terminal/session from my Mac Mini to my summitt-dweller-DO-docker droplet and, with Atom open locally on my Mac I can issue a command like

ratom /opt/README.md

in the terminal connected to summitt-dweller-DO-docker, and the specified “remote” file will open in my local Atom. Better still, if I make changes to the file and save them, the remote copy is automatically updated as saved.

Configuration

As I said, configuration was a little dicey. Mine followed exactly what’s documented in the project site, complete with renaming rmate to ratom as suggested. The real key to configuration has two parts:

First, Atom has to be open locally. This is necessary to get the package running so that it can accept connections from the remote, and that also requires that the package is auto-started along with Atom.
Next, I added the following specs to ~/.ssh/config on my Mac Mini:
```
Host 104.248.237.235
  RemoteForward 52698 localhost:52698
```

That addition to ~/.ssh/config allows me to run my usual ssh connection commands without having to specify any remote/reverse tunneling…the config does it for me automatically when the “Host” or target is summitt-dweller-DO-docker. Without that spec I’d have to configure each ssh connection I open, like so:

ssh -R 52698:localhost:52698 administrator@104.248.237.235

That’s a wrap. Until next time…