Connecting via SSH

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

The SSH user is the same one shown on the session credentials page. For an Ubuntu launch that's ubuntu; Debian is admin, Kali is kali, Fedora is fedora. If you set a custom username at launch, use that.

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

Replace ubuntuwith your session's username and <public-ip> with the address shown on the session page.

Getting root

Every default user has passwordless sudo. Run sudo -i after login for a root shell. Don't try SSH-ing in as root directly — root login over SSH is disabled by default across all distros for security.

Copying files in and out

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

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

# Mirror a whole directory
rsync -avz -e "ssh -i deskboot-7f3a2b1c.pem" ./local-dir/ ubuntu@<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.