A Better Day for Unix Admin

Unix Admin daily job is often a painful experience, as you may need to connect to many servers to perform various tasks, and you may face several issues:

• Inconsistent environments: different machines, different OSes, different users, different shell, different environment, different tools…
• Manual work: repetitive tasks, manual configuration, manual setup.

Even if you have setup a very cool shell environment locally with your favorite tools, plugins, and aliases, when connecting to a remote machine, you will just have a plain shell with no history, no aliases, no plugins, no nothing.

But what if your shell environment could travel with you, instantaneously, intact, and on-demand?

Meet thefly and shell‑ng, two tools from my joknarf suite that make your shell environment transportable, consistent, and productivity‑centric — wherever you are.

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🌍 Meet thefly

thefly is a shell teleporter and plugin manager for bash, zsh, and ksh:

• Install it via:

  . <(curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joknarf/thefly/main/thefly) install
  

• add your favorite plugins from github with fly add <user/plugin> (eg. fly add joknarf/shell-ng)
• Customize your shell environment in ~/.fly.d/.flyrc (move your current environment setting there, and just put in your shell init file . ~/.fly.d/fly source)
• All your plugins and configs are stored in ~/.fly.d, you can add files there (.vimrc, .inputrc, etc…), and they will be transported with you using flyto (ssh) and flyas (sudo)

Teleport your full environment:

flyto user@remote

Simply run this, and your entire shell config and plugins appear on the remote machine—no manual copy. Your local ~/.fly.d will be available in $FLY_HOME on the remote machine. (in /tmp/.fly.d./ by default), and you can even enforce the remote shell you want to use.

flyas user

You can also flyas <user> on the same host, or flysh zsh to launch a different shell with your transported setup.

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🛠 Shell‑NG: Next‑Gen shell plugins on demand

shell‑ng is the plugin collection layer that powers your next-gen shell experience. It includes multiple highly interactive and modern plugins:

• complete-ng: command‑line completion menu with a selector UI
• seedee: interactive directory history and navigation menu (Shift or Control DownArrow)
• redo: interactive command history menu (Shift-Tab)
• nerdp: ultra‑rich powerline prompt

You activate shell-ng plugin by running:

fly add joknarf/shell-ng

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🚀 Real-world Workflow

1. Install thefly in your local shell (bash/zsh/ksh).
2. Add plugins:

   fly add joknarf/shell-ng
   fly add .../...
   

3. Teleport your environment:

   flyto user@serverX
   

   You are now on serverX, with your prompt, completion engine, history tools… everything.

   flyas user
   

   You have now switched to user keeping your full shell environment.

4. Switch shells seamlessly:

   flysh bash       # or fbash, fzsh, fksh
   

5. Remote or local commands still use your setup—consistent experience everywhere.

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🔍 Why It Works

Feature	Benefit
Portable config	~/.fly.d holds your shell & plugins in a unified layout
Teleportable	flyto copies your full setup via SSH to remote hosts
Plugin-driven	You pick only what you need (seedee, redo, complete-ng…)
Shell‑agnostic	Works on bash, zsh, and ksh reliably
Standalone-ready	No installation needed on remote hosts, only SSH access

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✍️ Summary

With thefly and shell‑ng, a Unix admin can:

• Maintain one environment that travels.
• Have a polished shell experience with modern tools.
• Stay lightweight: no dotfiles scattered across hosts.
• Use the same commands and UI from your home to server.

It’s like having your personal shell in your pocket—ready wherever you log in.

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📦 Try it yourself

. <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joknarf/thefly/main/thefly) install
fly add joknarf/shell-ng
flyto user@remote

Whether you’re managing servers, jumping through SSH tunnels, or just want a powerful shell environment that moves with you, this combo makes it simple—and pleasurable.