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I'm an educator and I to teach things like symmetric cryptography. I just used full virtual machines in class to demonstrate ccrypt to encrypt and decrypt files

by jimmar 5y ago

I'm an educator and I to teach things like symmetric cryptography. I just used full virtual machines in class to demonstrate ccrypt to encrypt and decrypt files. Would xterm.js be a valid way to implement that kind of exercise to avoid relying on virtual machines? Do you know of any resources that would point me in the right direction for building educational exercises?

Tyriar 5y ago
xterm.js is only a frontend, you still need to plug it into a backend or write you own. A VM would probably be the way to go.
- jimmar 5y ago
  Thanks. I was curious because the demo on the homepage doesn't appear to be communicating with a backend. (The xterm.js code just seems to interact with https://xtermjs.org/js/demo.js https://xtermjs.org/js/demo.js.) So I guess this demo presented an experience that people should expect with xterm.js, but not necessarily the standard implementation.
  - Tyriar 5y ago
    You can check out the source for the demo at https://github.com/xtermjs/xtermjs.org/blob/master/js/demo.js https://github.com/xtermjs/xtermjs.org/blob/master/js/demo.j..., I've actually started hacking up a more general mechanism for doing this since I've done it a few times but it's not OSS yet. If you don't need to rely on ccrypt and just want to emulate teh experience of using it, you could have an on rails experience by forking the demo file and adapting the commands part.
  - ilaksh 5y ago
    https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/ https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/
williamstein 5y ago
(Shameless but relevant example.) On https://CoCalc.com https://CoCalc.com [1], you can create a project and click +New-->Terminal to get an *xerm.js based terminal*, then upload the ccrypt source code (download and upload the tarball from [2]), extract it, and build it in a few seconds via "./configure && make". You can then run it via "src/ccrypt". I'm also an educator, and created CoCalc mainly for teaching (it has course management functionality). [1] https://cocalc.com/features/linux https://cocalc.com/features/linux [2] http://ccrypt.sourceforge.net/#downloading http://ccrypt.sourceforge.net/#downloading
denixxyz 5y ago
Hi, I'm Dennis, and I've been working on my own browser based OS for a decade. You can check out the "web native" CLI at https://denix.xyz/shell.os https://denix.xyz/shell.os. Replace "shell" with "desk" to get to a friendly gui. Then we can start talking about browser-based encryption techniques. For simple command line utilities, porting via WebAssembly is always a thought. The way Denix works in the CLI is that you have to import command libraries. There is a library called crypto with 2 commands that you can import by typing into the prompt: "import crypto". Entering that command should give you the commands "encrypt" and "decrypt" in your runtime environment. It's been maybe a couple of years since I worked on that stuff, but I just tested "encrypt" and it seemed to be working. A word of caution: Denix is very much a chrome thing.

by jimmar 5y ago

Tyriar 5y ago

xterm.js is only a frontend, you still need to plug it into a backend or write you own. A VM would probably be the way to go.

jimmar 5y ago
Thanks. I was curious because the demo on the homepage doesn't appear to be communicating with a backend. (The xterm.js code just seems to interact with https://xtermjs.org/js/demo.js https://xtermjs.org/js/demo.js.) So I guess this demo presented an experience that people should expect with xterm.js, but not necessarily the standard implementation.
- Tyriar 5y ago
  You can check out the source for the demo at https://github.com/xtermjs/xtermjs.org/blob/master/js/demo.js https://github.com/xtermjs/xtermjs.org/blob/master/js/demo.j..., I've actually started hacking up a more general mechanism for doing this since I've done it a few times but it's not OSS yet. If you don't need to rely on ccrypt and just want to emulate teh experience of using it, you could have an on rails experience by forking the demo file and adapting the commands part.
- ilaksh 5y ago
  https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/ https://blog.stackblitz.com/posts/introducing-webcontainers/

williamstein 5y ago

(Shameless but relevant example.) On https://CoCalc.com https://CoCalc.com [1], you can create a project and click +New-->Terminal to get an *xerm.js based terminal*, then upload the ccrypt source code (download and upload the tarball from [2]), extract it, and build it in a few seconds via "./configure && make". You can then run it via "src/ccrypt". I'm also an educator, and created CoCalc mainly for teaching (it has course management functionality). [1] https://cocalc.com/features/linux https://cocalc.com/features/linux [2] http://ccrypt.sourceforge.net/#downloading http://ccrypt.sourceforge.net/#downloading

denixxyz 5y ago

Hi, I'm Dennis, and I've been working on my own browser based OS for a decade. You can check out the "web native" CLI at https://denix.xyz/shell.os https://denix.xyz/shell.os. Replace "shell" with "desk" to get to a friendly gui. Then we can start talking about browser-based encryption techniques. For simple command line utilities, porting via WebAssembly is always a thought. The way Denix works in the CLI is that you have to import command libraries. There is a library called crypto with 2 commands that you can import by typing into the prompt: "import crypto". Entering that command should give you the commands "encrypt" and "decrypt" in your runtime environment. It's been maybe a couple of years since I worked on that stuff, but I just tested "encrypt" and it seemed to be working. A word of caution: Denix is very much a chrome thing.