Applicable Plans - eApps Cloud Hosting plans (Webmin Control Panel)

User Guide - Connecting to your Virtual Machine (SSH and Console)

Overview

After your Virtual Machines are provisioned, you can connect to them using the Virtual Machine Console in the Customer Portal, or by using a standalone SSH (Secure Shell) client. This will allow you to work from the command line interface (CLI) of your Virtual Machine.

The best practice is to never login as the root user. You should always connect and login as a regular user, and then use su or sudo to perform administrative tasks. More information on sudo can be found at http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/sudo.html. The sudo application is already installed on most Linux distros.

Connecting to your Virtual Machine using the Virtual Machine Console (Customer Portal)

Connecting to your Virtual Machine using an SSH client (PuTTY, SecureCRT, etc)
SSH Clients
Windows SSH Clients
UNIX SSH Clients (including Mac OS X, Linux and *BSD)

Connecting to your Virtual Machine using SSH
Using PuTTY (Windows)
Using a Terminal Emulator program (Mac OS X, UNIX/Linux, *BSD)

Connecting to your Virtual Machine using the Virtual Machine Console (Customer Portal)

The Virtual Machine Console is a Java based VNC client that is built into the Customer Portal. This provides “out-of-band” access to the command line of the Virtual Machine. In this context, “out-of-band” means that you can connect to the VM using the Virtual Machine Console, even if something like a software or networking misconfiguration has disabled external access to the VM (SSH is not working, network interfaces are down, etc).

Because the Virtual Machine Console is a Java applet, how well it will work depends greatly on your version of Java and your browser and browser version. If you are having issues, make sure you are on the latest versions of each. You can also try another browser. If you continue to have issues, you will need to move to an actual SSH client.

To access the Virtual Machine Console, you will need to log in to the Customer Portal - http://portal.eapps.com, and click on the link for Virtual Machines.

Click on the View link for the Virtual Machine you wish to connect to - the small magnifying glass icon to the right of the Virtual Machine listing.

This takes you to the Overview for the Virtual Machine. In the Actions section, click on Virtual Machine Console.

This opens the console, and takes you to a login prompt. Login to the Virtual Machine Console as the appropriate user, and you will be able to work from the command line of the Virtual Machine.

Connecting to your Virtual Machine using an SSH client (PuTTY, SecureCRT, etc)

Using an SSH client such as PuTTY (Windows), SecureCRT (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux), Terminal.app (Mac OS X), or an xterm (Linux, Mac OS X), you can connect to the command line of your Virtual Machine.

The advantage of an SSH client over a Java and browser-based solution like the Virtual Machine Console is that a standalone client is not affected by Java or browser version issues, or problems or conflicts with installed browser extensions or plug-ins. If you find yourself working from the command line on a regular basis, you should be using an actual SSH client.

SSH Clients

There are SSH clients available for every major operating system: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and *BSD.

Windows SSH Clients

There are several Windows SSH clients, both free and commercial.

• PuTTY - a popular free and open source SSH client. Download A Windows installer for everything except PuTTYtel to get all the necessary PuTTY files. Basic PuTTY configuration will be covered in the Using PuTTY section of this User Guide.

• SecureCRT - a popular and full featured commercial SSH client. More information about SecureCRT can be found at http://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html.

This is by no means a complete list of Windows SSH clients. You should be able to easily find more clients if one of the above does not meet your needs.

UNIX SSH Clients (including Mac OS X, Linux and *BSD)

For operating systems based on a UNIX variant, such as Mac OS X, Linux, or one of the *BSD flavors, there is usually an SSH client built into the system in the form of a terminal emulator. There should be no software to install in order to have an SSH client.

For UNIX, Linux and *BSD systems, the type of terminal emulator available will vary depending on the window manager installed. These systems will also have the ability to connect via SSH directly from the console or command line of the operating system.

For Mac OS X systems, the terminal emulator is the Terminal application, which is located in the Applications > Utilities. This is NOT the Console application - use only the Terminal application as an SSH client. Mac OS X users can also purchase SecureCRT, or use the free iTerm2 client.

There are quite a few SSH clients available for UNIX, Linux, Mac OS X, and *BSD. If any of the listed clients do not meet your needs, you should be able to find one that does quite easily.

Connecting to your Virtual Machine using SSH

Once you have located an SSH client to use, you can connect to your VM using the SSH protocol.

You will need to know the following information:

• IP Address of the VM - this is found in the IP Addresses tab for that VM, in the Customer Portal.

• Username and Password - this user must have command line (shell access) to the Virtual Machine.

Using PuTTY (Windows)

To connect to your Virtual Machine using PuTTY, you will need to add the settings for the VM to the PuTTY configuration.

Launch PuTTY, which will take you to the main PuTTY Configuration window. If this is your first time using PuTTY, only the entry for Default Settings will be available.

Enter the following settings:

• Host Name [or IP address] - enter the IP address for the VM here (or use a domain name associated with that VM).

• Port - make sure this is set to 22 (the default SSH port)

• Connection type - make sure this is set to SSH (the default)

• Saved Sessions - enter a name for this Session (usually the host name of the VM)

You can make other configuration changes to PuTTY, such as changing part of the appearance or the window behavior. However, none of those changes are necessary for PuTTY to work correctly.

Click on Save to save the configuration details. Click on that session name to highlight it, and click Load. Then click Open to load the session, and open a connection to the VM.

If this is your first time connecting to the Virtual Machine, you may see a warning similar to this:

Click Yes to allow the connection.

This takes you to the login prompt for the Virtual Machine.

Login using the correct username and password, and you should be at the command prompt for the Virtual Machine.

Using a Terminal Emulator program (Mac OS X, UNIX/Linux, *BSD)

Open the Terminal Emulator program, and at the command prompt enter the following command, making sure to substitute the IP address of your Virtual Machine for IP_ADDRESS: ssh user@IP_ADDRESS

This example uses Terminal.app on Mac OS X, but the command should be the same on any Linux or UNIX system.

If this is your first time connecting to the Virtual Machine, you may see a warning similar to this:

Enter yes at the prompt to continue.

This will take you to the login prompt for the VM.

Login using the correct username and password, and you should be at the command prompt for the VM.