FAQ

The menu is your ~/.ssh/config, Include directives followed. If the host is missing there, add it—by hand, or with Settings → Add a host. If it's in the file but not the menu, it's probably hidden: a # palana: hide comment in its block keeps it out of the menus (the toggle lives in Settings → Hosts). A typed address still works.

Edited the file outside pālana? reload hosts in the ▾ menu picks up the change.

It can, or neither can: pālana runs the same ssh your terminal does, so if ssh <alias> works there, it works here. Probe the host from the field view (f, then r on the row) and read the sentence that comes back.

no usable ssh key—key setup needed means auth: generate a key if you don't have one (ssh-keygen -t ed25519) and install it (ssh-copy-id <alias>) —pālana shows these commands but never runs them. unreachable means the network or the address. answered, but the probe came back unreadable means an unusual userland; stripped-down BusyBox boxes are supported, but some vendor firmware does not return the data pālana needs.

Because a required condition was not met. The refusal states what blocked the operation before anything runs. A rename onto an existing name refuses rather than replaces. A kind clash is named—won't work—backup is a file here and a folder there. The pool root is untouchable—pālana manages datasets, never the pool itself. Mounting without sudo shows you the exact grant it needs.

Every refusal names its reason, and the reason is always checkable in your own terminal.

The server's home—koan:~ is wherever $HOME points for the user your SSH config logs in as on koan. It is never your Mac's home folder.

~/Library/Application Support/palana/—a handful of human-readable files: field-cache.json (the remembered topology), session.json (where your panes were), settings.json, favorites.json, and operations.log (the history of enacted runs). No database.

The cache and session are safe to delete any time—your hosts are the system of record and everything re-derives from them. Delete favorites or the log only if you don't want them.

No. It runs when you open it and stops when you close it—there is no daemon, launch agent, or polling loop. Discovery happens when you probe or point, never on a timer. Why this is a design commitment →

The plan tells you, every time, in its how: line. Host-to-host with a forwarded agent: no—your Mac orchestrates and the bytes travel server to server. Proxied fallback, or a transfer with your Mac at one end: yes, and the plan says exactly that. The route is never hidden; that's the point.

No, deliberately. pālana is native Mac only—the cost is named and accepted. SSH is the only transport: no SMB, NFS, or SFTP-server browsing. This is a tool for hosts you administer, not arbitrary remote connections. It sees files and datasets, not containers. And it is not a sync tool or a monitor: no background replication, no alerts, no graphs. Every operation is one you enacted.

The servers can be anything you can ssh into—Linux, BSD, even BusyBox firmware boxes.

Yes. pālana is a complete SSH file manager on any host. ZFS is an addition, not a requirement: the dataset tree, snapshots, and send/receive appear on hosts that have ZFS and never on hosts that don't. Nothing else changes.

They are protocol clients with wide reach—SMB, FTP, WebDAV, S3—and they relay transfers through your Mac. pālana is SSH-only, shows the exact command before anything runs, moves bytes host to host when the hosts can talk, and speaks ZFS. The full chart, including the cells they win: how it compares.

The beta: nothing—a signed, notarized download. At 1.0 the signed build becomes a one-time $29 purchase, no subscription, all 1.x updates included. The source is GPL-3.0 either way: free to read, build, and fork, forever. And during the beta, a real issue filed is a 1.0 license earned. The license, plainly →

One plan enacts at a time—the operations queue is the first post-release enhancement (plans are values; a queue is a list of them). No search inside panes, no batch rename. The beta is early and feedback shapes it: open an issue for what's broken, missing, or wrong-feeling.