You'll learn how to configure SSH access to your Virtual Machine and set up password-less login.

Log in to the virtual machine and install ssh server software:

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Get your ip address with 

$ ip address

You can now connect from another machine or your host computer:

$ ssh debian@<remote_host>

Replace with the external ip from your virtual machine.

Windows has a built-in SSH client that you can use in Windows Terminal.

You can check that it is installed in Windows Settings > System > Optional features, then search for "OpenSSH" in your installed features.

On GNU/Linux Debian you can install the client with

$ sudo apt-get install openssh-client

We are going to generate a SSH key pair, which will allow us to connect without a password.

Create key

On your host (windows) generate your key pair.

PS> ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096

You will be asked for a location, accept default by hitting enter.

Then you will be asked if you want to protect the key with a password. This is a good practice, but for the exercises it can be painful because you will have to enter it often. Decision is up to you.

Upload key to vm

On windows you can use this trick

PS> type $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\id_rsa.pub | ssh debian@<remote_host> "cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys"

On GNU/Linux

$ ssh-copy-id debian@<remote_host>

Connect without password

PS> ssh debian@<remote_host>

We want to connect to the Database Server from a Tool on our host machine. However, by default you cannot connect directly to a PostgreSQL server from an external connection. They are disabled by in pg_hba.conf (more on this in another lab).

Connect via SSH port forwarding

Before connecting you can specify a local port which will be mapped to a remote host and ip. Lets redirect traffic from the host DB port to the localhost DB port inside the virtual machine.

PS> ssh -L 5432:127.0.0.1:5432 debian@<remote_host>

Test the connection

Use VScode SQLTools with PostgreSQL drivers to connect to the database:

Adapt the credentials according to your setting

You can then explore the database.

You can use your new SSH key to authenticate with GitHub and remove the need to enter your password for every git clone, pull or push action.

Add key to your Account

Follow the official tutorial

Test your key

Git clone a repository with the git/ssh url: git@github.com:heg-web/[algopy-...].git

We are going to create a new virtual machine on a cloud provider. In modern cloud infrastructure, login is mostly done via SSH keys. The key is directly added to the virtual machine at creation and allows login without ever setting a password.

Add key to Switch Engines

Login with your edu-id account on https://engines.switch.ch/horizon/quickstart/#/

Switch Region to LS (on the top)

Go to Project > Compute > Key Pairs and click Import Public Key

Create your first virtual machine on switch engine

Use Quickstart > Instances > Create Instance

Create a simple virtual machine with the following options:

OS: Debian 12
CPU: 2 
Ram: 2GB 
Volume: 10GB / Standard
SSH Keypairs: your imported key

Connect to your new virtual machine

Use the displayed external ip to connect to your new machine from your host.

PS> ssh debian@<remote_host>

Run the lscpu command

$ lscpu

What is the Hypervisor used on this platform ?

Go into the switch engine instances and look at your virtual machines' advanced settings.

Which security Groups are applied?

Task Progress Check

Take a screenshot showing the ssh window with the result as well as the browser window showing your SWITCHengines vm instance and upload it below.

We are going to test creating a virtual machine on AWS

  1. Login to the AWS and go to EC2
  2. Go to Key pairs and actions > import key pair
  3. Upload your public key
  4. Go to instances and Launch an instance.
  5. Use Debian and t3.micro
  6. Select your newly uploaded key pair
  7. Launch and wait
  8. From the dashboard get the Public IPv4 of your instance

You can now connect to your vm from your computers'terminal with

PS> ssh admin@<remote_public_ip>

Run the lscpu command

$ lscpu

What is the Hypervisor used on this platform ?

As we have a virtual machine located in the US region we will try SSH Socks forwarding.

Reconnect via ssh but with Dynamic Port Forwarding

PS> ssh -D 7777 admin@<remote_host>

Use this socks proxy 127.0.0.1:7777 with one of your browsers.

For example in Firefox:

Where are we?

Now go to https://whatismyipaddress.com/

Try to play a video from https://www.rts.ch/

Does it work?

We are going to test creating a virtual machine on Google Cloud.

  1. Login to the Google Cloud Console
  2. If it's your first time create a project and enable compute api. You can follow this tutorial: Create a Linux VM instance in Compute Engine
  3. You should create a e2-micro instance in us-east region of your choice
  4. Edit the virtual machine options to add your PUBLIC SSH Key. After saving check the username linked to your key in the same place.
  5. Get the public ip address

You can now connect with

PS> ssh <username>@<remote_host>

Run the lscpu command

$ lscpu

What is the Hypervisor used on this platform ?