Getting started

Connecting via SSH

Linux-only. Key-based, no passwords. Use this for headless work, scripting, or piping files in and out.

SSH is the fastest way to work with a Linux session if you don't need a graphical desktop. We disable password auth — only the .pem private key we generate per session can authenticate.

Download your key

On the session detail page, click "Download SSH key". You'll get a file like deskboot-7f3a2b1c.pem. Save it somewhere safe — it's view-once and we don't store the private half in the clear.

Set permissions, then connect

chmod 600 deskboot-7f3a2b1c.pem
ssh -i deskboot-7f3a2b1c.pem deskboot@<public-ip>

Replace <public-ip> with the address shown on the session page.

On the first connection your SSH client warns about an unknown host key — that's normal, it's a fresh instance. Type yes to add it to your known_hosts. It will accept silently on subsequent connections.

Default user

The Linux user we create is named deskboot and has passwordless sudo. Don't try root, ubuntu, admin, or fedora as the SSH user — those default users aren't password-set on our instances and SSH will reject the connection.

Copying files in and out

# Copy a file from your local machine to the session
scp -i deskboot-7f3a2b1c.pem ./report.pdf deskboot@<public-ip>:/home/deskboot/

# Copy a file from the session back to your local machine
scp -i deskboot-7f3a2b1c.pem deskboot@<public-ip>:/home/deskboot/output.tar.gz .

# Mirror a whole directory
rsync -avz -e "ssh -i deskboot-7f3a2b1c.pem" ./local-dir/ deskboot@<public-ip>:~/remote-dir/

Keep your session warm

Idle SSH sessions can disconnect after a few minutes of no traffic. Either add this to your local ~/.ssh/config:

Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 60
  ServerAliveCountMax 3

Or run tmux on the remote side so your work survives disconnects.

SSH for Windows sessions

We don't enable SSH on Windows. Use RDP — see the RDP guide.

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