How can I run shell (terminal) in Google Colab?

Question

I know that I can call !ls to issue ls command to shell.

But I want features like history or tab-completion.

Is it possible to do so in

Answer 1

Better try this -

1. Install Teleconsole on Colab, its a package to use terminal over internet -

    !curl https://www.teleconsole.com/get.sh | sh
   

2. Run below code on colab notebook to use Teleconsole -

    import subprocess as sp
    process = sp.Popen("teleconsole",shell=True,stdin=sp.PIPE,stdout=sp.PIPE,stderr=sp.PIPE)
    for i in range(6):
      print(process.stdout.readline().decode()) 
   

   You should get output something like -

    Starting local SSH server on localhost...
    Requesting a disposable SSH proxy on eu.teleconsole.com for root...
    Checking status of the SSH tunnel...
   
    Your Teleconsole ID: eu88d75d24084905shgdjhjhfgd1934e55c3786438a3
   
    WebUI for this session: 
    https://eu.teleconsole.com/s/88d75d24084905shgdjhjhfgd1934e55c3786438a3
   

3. Either open the web interface by following the link for accessing the terminal or open a local shell terminal and install Teleconsole using the command -

    curl https://www.teleconsole.com/get.sh | sh
   

   Then use the below code to join the terminal using Teleconsole Id you got in step No. 2-

    teleconsole join 
   

This method can also be tunneled through ssh with some additional steps.