Terminal & Shell

KuaDashboard includes a powerful integrated terminal panel that gives you full interactive access to pod shells, log streams, EC2 SSH/RDP sessions and a local system shell — all from within the same window.

Overview

The terminal panel sits at the bottom of the main view and supports multiple simultaneous tabs, each colour-coded by context:

Context	Colour	Description
pod	Blue	Live log stream from a Kubernetes pod
workload	Blue	Live log stream resolved from a Deployment, StatefulSet or DaemonSet selector
exec	Purple	Interactive shell session inside a pod
local	Green	Local system shell (bash / zsh / PowerShell)
ec2	Teal	Browser-based SSH/RDP session to an EC2 instance

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Opening a Terminal Tab

Pod and Workload Logs

Stream real-time logs from any running pod or supported workload:

1. Select a pod, deployment, statefulset or daemonset in the Kubernetes resource table
2. Click the Logs action
3. A new tab opens with live-streaming output via WebSocket

For multi-container pods, select the container from the dropdown in the terminal header.

For workloads, KuaDashboard resolves the current pods using the resource selector and prefixes each line with the source pod name when multiple pods are streaming.

Toggle Prev in the toolbar to also include log output from the previous container instance (useful after a crash restart).

Use the search button in the toolbar to filter log output by text, date/time range or both. Filtered logs can be downloaded as a .log file.

Pod Exec (Shell)

Open an interactive shell session directly inside a pod:

1. Select a pod in the Kubernetes resource table
2. Click the Shell action
3. A terminal tab opens with a live PTY shell

The exec session supports:

• Full PTY mode (colours, cursor movement, terminal resize)
• Container selection for multi-container pods
• Standard keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+D, Tab completion)

Local Shell

Access a local system shell without leaving the dashboard:

1. Click Local Shell in the Tools section of the sidebar
2. A terminal tab opens with your system shell (bash / zsh / PowerShell)

Use the local shell for running kubectl, aws, gcloud, helm, or any CLI tools without switching windows.

EC2 SSH/RDP

Open a browser-based SSH or RDP session to any running EC2 instance:

1. Go to Cloud > AWS > EC2 tab
2. Click SSH for Linux instances or RDP for Windows instances
3. A remote session opens with the proper connection form

Remote sessions are persistent. Closing the session window only hides it; the WebSocket remains alive and the session can be restored from the floating remote-session dock. Use Disconnect inside the session, or close the dock tab, when you want to end it.

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Terminal Toolbar

The header toolbar provides quick controls for the active tab:

Control	Description
Container selector	Switch container in multi-container pod sessions
Prev toggle	Include logs from the previous container instance (log tabs only)
Search / filters	Filter logs by text and serialized date range
Download	Export the current filtered log view to a .log file
✦ Clear	Erase all current output in the active tab
⏎ Wrap text	Toggle line wrapping for long log lines
↓ Scroll to end	Jump to the bottom of the output buffer
📁 File browser	Toggle the side file browser (local shell tabs only)
? Keyboard shortcuts	Toggle the keyboard shortcut help overlay
■ Stop	Send SIGINT / terminate the active stream or session
⬡ Pop out	Detach the terminal into a floating browser window
— Minimise	Collapse the panel to just the tab bar
× Close all	Close all open terminal tabs

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Input Bar

Shell tabs (exec, local, EC2) display an input bar at the bottom with:

• Command prompt (❯) — green when connected, grey when disconnected
• Command input field — type your command and press Enter to send
• Suggestion chip — shown when an autocomplete suggestion is available; click to apply
• ✕ Interrupt — send Ctrl+C to terminate the running command

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
↑ / ↓	Navigate command history
Tab	Path autocomplete
Enter	Send command
Ctrl+C	Interrupt (SIGINT)
Ctrl+D	EOF / close session
Ctrl+L	Clear output

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File Browser (Local Shell)

When a local shell tab is active, click the 📁 button to open the inline file browser panel on the left side of the terminal.

Action	Description
Click a 📁 folder	Navigate into the directory (also runs cd in the shell)
Click a 📄 file	Preview the file contents in the terminal output
Double-click a file	Insert the full file path into the command input
Click ↑ (top entry)	Navigate to the parent directory
Click ↻ (breadcrumb)	Refresh the current directory listing

A breadcrumb trail shows your current location. The active working directory is also shown in the terminal footer.

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Output Highlighting

Log lines are colour-coded automatically to help you spot issues at a glance:

Colour	Meaning
🔴 Red	Error / exception / stderr
🟡 Yellow	Warning
🟢 Green	Success / OK
⚫ Dim	System / meta messages

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Footer

The footer bar at the bottom of the panel shows:

• Status text — connection state (Connected, Reconnecting, Stopped, etc.)
• Working directory — current cwd for local shell tabs
• Line count — total number of output lines in the current tab

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Panel Resize

Drag the resize handle at the top edge of the terminal panel to adjust its height. The height is preserved while the panel is open. Click — to collapse it to just the tab bar, and click — again to restore it.

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Multiple Tabs

You can have as many terminal tabs open as needed:

• Log multiple pods simultaneously
• Keep a local shell open alongside an exec session
• Switch between tabs instantly with a single click
• Close individual tabs with the ✕ button on each tab
• Tab content is preserved in memory while the tab is not active

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Common CLI Commands (Quick Reference)

Command	Purpose
ls -la	List files with details
pwd	Show current directory
env	Print environment variables
ps aux	Show running processes
cat /etc/os-release	OS / distro information
df -h	Disk usage by mount point
top / htop	CPU and memory usage
curl -I <url>	HTTP response headers check