Gurren

A fast, terminal-based SSH tunnel manager with a TUI and background service.

Features

• Interactive TUI — Manage all your tunnels from a single interface
• Background service — Tunnels persist even after closing the TUI
• systemd integration — Optional systemd user service for auto-start on login
• Vim-style navigation — j/k to navigate, Enter to toggle
• Multiple auth methods — SSH agent, public key, and password
• SSH config support — Use hosts from ~/.ssh/config directly
• Simple configuration — TOML-based config file
• Real-time status — Push-based status updates in the TUI

Installation

From Source

go install github.com/JoshElias/gurren@latest

Or build manually:

git clone https://github.com/JoshElias/gurren.git
cd gurren
go build .

Homebrew

Coming soon.

AUR

# Stable release
yay -S gurren

# Development version (latest git)
yay -S gurren-git

Quick Start

1. Create a config file at ~/.config/gurren/config.toml:

[[tunnels]]
name = "my-database"
host = "user@bastion.example.com"
remote = "db.internal:5432"
local = "localhost:5432"

2. Launch the TUI:

gurren

3. Use j/k to navigate, Enter to connect/disconnect, q to quit.

Usage

TUI (Default)

gurren

Launches the interactive terminal interface. The service starts automatically if not running.

Key bindings:

Key	Action
j / ↓	Move down
k / ↑	Move up
Enter	Toggle connection
q	Quit (tunnels keep running)

CLI Commands

# List all tunnels with status
gurren ls
gurren ls --json

# Connect/disconnect via CLI
gurren connect my-database
gurren disconnect my-database

# Direct connection with flags (bypasses config)
# --host accepts user@host:port or a Host from ~/.ssh/config
gurren connect --host user@bastion:22 --remote db:5432 --local localhost:5432
gurren connect --host my-ssh-host --remote db:5432 --local localhost:5432

# Service management
gurren service start    # Start service in background
gurren service stop     # Stop service and all tunnels
gurren service status   # Check if service is running

# systemd integration (Linux only)
gurren service install    # Install systemd user service
gurren service uninstall  # Remove systemd user service
gurren service enable     # Enable auto-start on login
gurren service disable    # Disable auto-start

# Shell completion
gurren completion bash       # Bash completion script
gurren completion zsh        # Zsh completion script
gurren completion fish       # Fish completion script
gurren completion powershell # PowerShell completion script

Global Flags

These flags work with any command:

Flag	Description
--config <path>	Config file path (default: ~/.config/gurren/config.toml)
-a, --auth <method>	Auth method: auto, agent, publickey, password (default: auto)

Configuration

Gurren looks for config files in this order:

1. ~/.config/gurren/config.toml
2. ~/gurren.toml

Example Config

[auth]
method = "auto"  # "auto", "agent", "publickey", or "password"

[[tunnels]]
name = "production-db"
host = "ec2-user@bastion.example.com"
remote = "db.internal:3306"
local = "127.0.0.1:3306"

[[tunnels]]
name = "staging-db"
host = "ec2-user@bastion-staging.example.com"
remote = "db-staging.internal:3306"
local = "127.0.0.1:3307"

[[tunnels]]
# name is optional - derived from host if omitted (becomes "bastion")
host = "bastion"
remote = "redis.internal:6379"
local = "localhost:6379"

Authentication

Gurren supports three SSH authentication methods:

Method	Description	Priority
agent	SSH agent (uses SSH_AUTH_SOCK)	1 (tried first)
publickey	Private key files (~/.ssh/id_ed25519, id_ecdsa, id_rsa)	2
password	Interactive password prompt	3 (last resort)

When method = "auto" (default), Gurren tries each method in priority order until one succeeds.

SSH Config Integration

Gurren reads your ~/.ssh/config file and can use any Host entry directly. This means you can reference hosts by their alias instead of specifying full connection details.

For example, if your SSH config contains:

Host bastion
    HostName bastion.example.com
    User ec2-user
    Port 22

You can connect using just the alias:

gurren connect --host bastion --remote db.internal:5432 --local localhost:5432

In your config.toml, you can also reference SSH config hosts:

[[tunnels]]
name = "production-db"
host = "bastion"  # Uses Host entry from ~/.ssh/config
remote = "db.internal:5432"
local = "localhost:5432"

If you omit the name field, Gurren will automatically use the host value as the tunnel name (stripping the user@ prefix if present). Duplicate names are auto-suffixed (e.g., bastion, bastion-2).

systemd Integration

On Linux systems with systemd, you can install Gurren as a user service for automatic startup on login.

Install and Enable

# Install the systemd user service
gurren service install

# Enable auto-start on login
gurren service enable

# Start the service now (or just reboot/re-login)
systemctl --user start gurren

Manage with systemctl

Once installed, you can also manage the service directly with systemctl:

# Check status
systemctl --user status gurren

# View logs
journalctl --user -u gurren

# Restart service
systemctl --user restart gurren

Uninstall

gurren service uninstall

Architecture

┌─────────────────┐     ┌─────────────────┐
│   gurren (TUI)  │     │   gurren ls     │
│                 │     │   gurren connect│
└────────┬────────┘     └────────┬────────┘
         │   Unix socket (JSON)  │
         └───────────┬───────────┘
                     ▼
         ┌───────────────────────┐
         │   Service             │
         │   - Manages tunnels   │
         │   - Tracks state      │
         │   - Pushes updates    │
         └───────────────────────┘

• Service runs in the background and manages SSH tunnel lifecycles
• TUI and CLI are clients that communicate with the service via Unix socket
• Tunnels persist after the TUI exits — the service keeps them running
• Status updates are pushed from service to subscribed clients in real-time

Roadmap

• Homebrew formula
• AUR package
• SSH config file (~/.ssh/config) parsing
• systemd user service support
• Host key verification
• Test coverage

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to help with these.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

MIT