Ability to SSH into instances | Feature Requests

Ability to SSH into instances

complete

Kai Marshland

As I currently understand it, the only way to access a shell is through the online shell. Being able to SSH in would be useful for:

Easy of use. I'm familiar with how my shell works, but in the online shell, it seems like some things don't work (eg navigating with the arrow keys or tab completion).
Debugging. I sometimes want to copy over a file (eg an output or log) to analyze locally, or upload some seed data.
Testing new code. One of our use cases is a dev server where we can experiment with code changes live (and on a machine that has all the dependencies installed, etc). We currently have an EC2 instance set up for this, and we'd love to replace it. With true ssh, you can properly edit things on a remote host.

July 17, 2019

Dan Wendorf

marked this post as

complete

Pinned

SSH is now available for paid services. Visit your service's shell tab in the Render Dashboard for instructions on how to connect, or check out our docs at https://render.com/docs/ssh

Evil Paul

Dan Wendorf pls rephrase as it is not available for all users,

if we Visit service's shell tab in the Render Dashboard, we are greeted with following message :

Dan Wendorf

Evil Paul: Thanks for catching that! I've updated my comment.

Alex P81

+1 to emedvid-now, I'm seeing the same message right now for my free service. Trying to add a public key and ssh-ing into my machine according to the on-site manual results in the (non-RSA) key not being accepted: "SERVICE@ssh.REGION.render.com: Permission denied (publickey)"

https://render.com/pricing-jan-1-2023 clearly has a green checkmark for "SSH Access" in the Individual plan -- is this perhaps going to take effect only starting next year?

emedvid-now

All users didn't have SSH access.

Dan Wendorf

marked this post as

complete

SSH is now available for paid services. Visit your service's shell tab in the Render Dashboard for instructions on how to connect, or check out our docs at https://render.com/docs/ssh

Anurag Goel

Update: SSH is now supported for Dockerized web services, private services, and background workers. We will launch SSH in GA very soon!

Make sure to read https://render.com/docs/ssh.

Anurag Goel

You can now enable SSH in early access under Account Settings. 
SSH currently only works for native environments
 and your service will need a redeploy if it hasn't been deployed since December 17. 
More on the EA here: https://render.com/docs/ssh

Louis Sandoval

SCP access would be ideal.

Yes, I understand that "magic-wormhole" could be installed, but that requires re-building all my services, re-deploying them, and configuring then "magic-wormhole" installation per OS. So it's a bit of a pain to do that.

Anurag Goel

marked this post as

in progress

We're starting to build this out and would appreciate your answers to the questions below:
* Which applications or workflows will you use with SSH?
* Do you want a new container for each session or would you like to SSH into the existing application runtime container?
* Do you need SSH port forwarding?
* Do you need SCP transfers? You can already use magic-wormhole
 to transfer files to and from your Render service.
* Can Render use SSH keys you’ve uploaded to GitHub/GitLab?
Feel free to reply to this comment with answers!

Franklin Kumro Jr

Anurag Goel: 
* I would use the Elixir releases REPL and CLI observer.
* Both options are useful, however for CLI observer it would need to be an existing app container receiving traffic.
* No but it would be useful as then I could run the GUI observer locally
* No
* Yes

Ian Beck

Anurag Goel: My main need for this would be connecting to a Docker Python container, mainly in order to run Alembic/SQLAlchemy data migrations. This could work with a new container or the runtime container; doesn't really matter from a functional standpoint. For this particular usecase I wouldn't need port forwarding or SCP transfers. I'd prefer to manage keys directly within Render, rather than relying on keys provided to other services, personally.

Andy Chong

Anurag Goel: 
* running 1 off command like rails console, rake task, db console. Extra: deployment build should also use 1 off container!
* New container each time should be the priority since we already have access to the existing container via web shell. Running rails console on existing container quite easily get into memory issue. But will be great to have the ability to ssh into a specific existing container for debugging like Heroku.
* No
* No then.
* Yes, but will be better if can reuse the authentication done with cli.

Lanny Bose

Anurag Goel: Elixir REPL is key!

Ben Beecher

Anurag Goel: I would primarily use this for django shell / django migrations - in that work flow I would not need an existing container (since they're temporal one off commands)

SSh keys from github/gitlab would work fine for my use case.

Rob Johansen

Anurag Goel: 
* We might use this to run database migrations, or investigate runaway processes
* The existing application container
* No
* No
* No

andrew.konoff

Anurag Goel: 
* Which applications or workflows will you use with SSH? for me this would be to run anything I'd use in the Render in-browser shell. Mainly the Django shell - python manage.py shell
. I think this kinda overlaps with the request I'd have for a Render CLI - I've got many different services running on Render, and having something that'd make it easy to SSH into the appropriate one would be nice.
* Do you want a new container for each session or would you like to SSH into the existing application runtime container? Good question. I think either might be okay for my use case.
* Do you need SSH port forwarding? I don't think so.
* Do you need SCP transfers? Nope.
* Can Render use SSH keys you’ve uploaded to GitHub/GitLab? Sure!

jason

Anurag Goel: 
> * Which applications or workflows will you use with SSH?
* A: elixir applications primarily
> * Do you want a new container for each session or would you like to SSH into the existing application runtime container?
* A: I'd like to have the option for both, but SSH into the existing application runtime container is the priority
> * Do you need SSH port forwarding?
* A: It would be nice
> * Do you need SCP transfers? You can already use magic-wormhole to transfer files to and from your Render service.
* A: No
> * Can Render use SSH keys you’ve uploaded to GitHub/GitLab?
* A: No, I'd prefer to set them separately so I can have tighter control over the privileges of each SSH key

brian

Anurag Goel: 
* managing access to servers without giving access to Render backend. could also use an instance as an ops box in the cloud with access to private services. also potential to use tmux or screen to preserve sessions
* existing app runtime container, especially if disks cannot be shared then I'm not sure how a new container would work
* not now, but could be handy
* yes! 
* sure, but managing in Render would be better

Marc Köhlbrugge

Anurag Goel:
Which applications or workflows will you use with SSH?
Using rails console
 to manipulate data and debugging. Also tailing of production logs (easier than using web-based log, because I can use grep, etc).
Do you want a new container for each session or would you like to SSH into the existing application runtime container?
I would prefer the existing runtime container, so I can tail the logs.
Do you need SSH port forwarding?
I'm not sure.
Do you need SCP transfers? You can already use magic-wormhole to transfer files to and from your Render service.
Don't _need_ it, but might be nice on occasion.
Can Render use SSH keys you’ve uploaded to GitHub/GitLab?
Yes.

HelpSite

Anurag Goel:
> * Which applications or workflows will you use with SSH?
Primarily the ability to do something like I could on Heroku:
heroku run rake my_task
heroku run rails console
from the command line rather than having to go into the Dashboard UI.
> * Do you want a new container for each session or would you like to SSH into the existing application runtime container?
Open to either. I'd probably assume a new container. Perhaps tailing a log of an existing container would be helpful for debugging though.
> * Do you need SSH port forwarding?
Generally no. Only reason I can think of would be for the ability to inspect Redis from a local GUI tool (if your upcoming hosted redis doesn't support external connections)
> * Do you need SCP transfers? You can already use magic-wormhole to transfer files to and from your Render service.
No
> * Can Render use SSH keys you’ve uploaded to GitHub/GitLab?
Yes

Marc Köhlbrugge

Anurag Goel: Hi Anurag. Any update on this? I've been trying to run a command through the web shell, but after ~15 minutes or so the page automatically refreshes and I lose some of my work. Having a reliable way to SSH into the machine would be super useful.

Anurag Goel

Marc Köhlbrugge: I hear you. We're planning to launch this in EA in the coming weeks: it's taking time because we want to do it right (security/performance/UX).

Franklin Kumro Jr

Anurag Goel: Any update on deployment of this feature?

Anurag Goel

Franklin Kumro Jr: we're actively working on it! Expect another update soon.

Roman

+1. Are there any estimates for when this will go in_progress?

nilsvanbrabant

is this still not available?

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