Mosh on the GameShell

Tutorials
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MOSH, or MObileSHell, is a terminal application that works great for devices with intermittent connections, poor wireless links, or insufficient wireless antenna.

In my experience, the GameShell falls into this category, as it frequently drops WIFI, and oftentimes requires me to stand in the same room as the access point- which makes SSH-ing into the GS quite tedious!

This is where MOSH shines!

We all know how to SSH into the GS, if not, here’s a great tutorial on how to-do just that:

Now to get MOSH working, follow these steps:

  1. SSH into your GS
  2. Install MOSH with:
    a. sudo apt update && sudo apt install mosh
  3. logout
  4. That’s it!

Now on your other computers, also install MOSH, several methods can be found here, on the MOSH site.

To connect to the GS, via MOSH, simply replace your ssh command with mosh. So, on a mac, normally I would type ssh cpi@10.x.x.x now I simply replace this with mosh cpi@10.x.x.x.

Say goodby to frequent disconnects, stalled terminals, and wondering if you really did save-quit the file before WIFI dropped or not!

Cheers!

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thanks for that, but I think yours might be an edge case. I’ve never had mine drop the wireless unexpectedly. it’s been solid as a rock and ive been using it for several months in many situations

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Seriously…
I took the time to write up a tutorial to help people struggling with poor WiFi signals, and to offer a solution. Yet instead of contributing something useful to the conversation, you decided to comment on said tutorial and say, “I don’t have that problem”… ugh, good for you?

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Well that’s a very combative way to take my statement. What I meant was maybe you have a hardware problem and should investigate that as it’s not normal.

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I don’t think it’s an edge case. I have purchased 3 gameshells and they all exhibited slow speeds and dropouts over wifi. I basically had to be sitting next to my router to get anything done in setting them all up, and I have a really good gaming router, with no issues with any other devices, including RasPis that are 2 rooms away.

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Interesting. Maybe I got really lucky or its because I use commercial hardware at home then. My bad. I am the edge case.

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maybe it’s wifi power saving ?

https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/documentation/iw#power_save

get status > /sbin/iw dev wlan0 get power_save
disable > sudo /sbin/iw dev wlan0 set power_save off
enable > sudo /sbin/iw dev wlan0 set power_save on

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I’ve always had poor wifi connections on my GameShell too. It won’t connect at all to my main router, but works (with limited range/quality) with another I set up. I checked thanks to the post by @r043v and unfortunately my power save is already off.

I haven’t had any other issues with the hardware and based on the complaints I’ve seen on the forums I assumed it was just a known issue with the device. As long as I stay within a limited area, I can SSH and keep relatively stable connections to the device, but for transferring files I’ve always gone the USB-ETH route, because I had too many dropped or slow connections. The main way I notice the issue is when I use Pico-8 (which is the main reason I got this device, which is otherwise perfect for it!) and it goes to update from the BBS. I have to be careful where I have my GameShell and occasionally the connection fails anyway. Pretty much everything else is local to my device so the wonky wifi isn’t as noticable.

MOSH is pretty cool though, and I didn’t know it existed so thanks for that, @xstrex!

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