Use ssh command globally with the config file - ssh

In my old Windows 10 I have ssh config file that resides in .ssh/config and the content of the file was simple:
# Read more about SSH config files: https://linux.die.net/man/5/ssh_config
Host server1
HostName ip 1 here
User ubuntu
IdentityFile key1
Host server2
HostName ip 2 here
User ubuntu
IdentityFile key2
and I was able to use for example ssh server1 from anywhere in the command line and that did work for me.
Now I did reset my Windows and I did add all the required configuration and when I try to enter my servers using the old way which is ssh server1 I get some message that says permission denied public key.
The solution that is working for me at the moment is just to use this command instead: ssh -F pathtoconfig server1
But I really like the old command, it's just simple and shorter. How can I achieve that?

Related

Access to jumpbox as normal user and change to root user in ansible

Here is my situation. I want to access a server through a jumpbox/bastion host.
so, I will login as normal user in jumpbox and then change user to root after that login to remote server using root. I dont have direct access to root in jumpbox.
$ ssh user#jumpbox
$ user#jumpbox:~# su - root
Enter Password:
$ root#jumpbox:~/ ssh root#remoteserver
Enter Password:
$ root#remoteserver:~/
Above is the manual workflow. I want to achieve this in ansible.
I have seen something like this.
ansible_ssh_common_args: '-o ProxyCommand="ssh -W %h:%p -q user#jumpbox"'
This doesnot work when we need to switch to root and login to remote server.
There are a few things to unpack here:
General Design / Issue:
This isn't an Ansible issue, it's an ssh issue/proxy misconfiguration.
A bastion host/ssh proxy isn't meant to be logged into and have commands ran directly on it interactively (like su - root, enter password, then ssh...). That's not really a bastion, that's just a server you're logging into and running commands on. It's not an actual ssh proxy/bastion/jump role. At that point you might as well just run Ansible on the host.
That's why things like ProxyJump and ProxyCommand aren't working. They are designed to work with ssh proxies that are configured as ssh proxies (bastions).
Running Ansible Tasks as Root:
Ansible can run with sudo during task execution (it's called "become" in Ansible lingo), so you should never need to SSH as the literal root user with Ansible (shouldn't ssh as root ever really).
Answering the question:
There are a lot of workarounds for this, but the straightforward answer here is to configure the jump host as a proper bastion and your issue will go away. An example...
As the bastion "user", create an ssh key pair, or use an existing one.
On the bastion, edit the users ~/.ssh/config file to access the target server with the private key and desired user.
EXAMPLE user#bastion's ~/.ssh/config (I cringe seeing root here)...
Host remote-server
User root
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/my-private-key
Add the public key created in step 1 to the target servers ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file for the user you're logging in as.
After that type of config, your jump host is working as a regular ssh proxy. You can then use ProxyCommand or ProxyJump as you had tried to originally without issue.

Setting up pyCharm pro for remote ssh

I have PyCharm pro and I need to set up a remote repo on it via ssh. There are instructions available for doing this but my requirements are slightly different than what I have seen available. My organisation has ssh set up via cloudfare and all those configs are already put in .ssh/config. It includes hostname, IdentityFile, username, and so on. If I need to access my remote machine, I just do ssh <HOST-NAME> from the terminal. My config looks like this -
Host <HOST-NAME>
HostName <HOST-NAME>.<ORGANISATION>.net
ProxyCommand /usr/local/bin/cloudflared access ssh --hostname %h
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
User <USER-NAME>
The way to set up PyCharm usually includes instructions like specifying host, port, username etc so that PyCharm can essentially run
ssh username#host_ip_address. However, I just need it to run ssh <HOST-NAME> so that it can access everything else using the config file that is already set up.
Is there a way to make this happen?
I use Pycharm Pro with my own .ssh/config and Jump Proxy pseudo hostname and certificates so slightly different. I "ssh pseudo-hostname" so no user as well.
In Pycharm I set a valid username and port (default 22) cause in my case it will get passed on.
Your setup ignore username and port no? If so you can use BS values?

Error Public Key when trying to ssh into Google Cloud Platform VM

I had been using VSCode's remote-ssh to access my virtual machines running on google cloud. This had been working perfectly fine until I made a snapshot of my most recent instance and created a new instance out of this on a larger VM. Now when I try to connect (through any method) I get: " Permission denied (publickey).". I have spent countless hours deleting and re-adding, and recreating my ssh keys to no avail. Before I simply ran "gcloud compute config-ssh" and this created a working config file, but now this works. Please help, I have tried everything and there is simply no way for me to ssh. On the website I can click the ssh button to open up their shell, but cannot do it from my terminal
The problem may be related to the lack of identification of your SSH private key during connection in VSCode. You can indicate your private key adding IdentityFile option pointing to your SSH private key, this in your SSH connection host entries in SSH configuration files:
Host vm_name
HostName external_ip
IdentityFile /path/to/ssh_private_key
Port port_number
Here the long story if you or someone need more information.
You can go from the start for ensure that you do no have compromise your SSH keys and that is the origin of problem.
Create SSH Key
First, create new ssh keys.In the computer that you will use to access your remote host, that is Google VM instance, open your terminal or cmd and go to the ssh folder to generate the keys.
My ssh config and keys are under my user directory, /home/my_user/.ssh on Linux or C:\Users\my_user\.ssh on Windows.
The I will cd to one of these path, depending on for which of them I using at the moment.
Linux:
cd /home/my_user/.ssh
Windows:
cd C:\Users\my_user\.ssh
Command to generate SSH key
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f my_ssh_key -C user
my_ssh_key: the name your key, you can put what you want to better identify
user: must be the user that you want to use to connect at your Google VM instance.
This will generate an Private Key named my_ssh_key and a Public key named my_ssh_key.pub.
Alternatively, stay in any location of operating system and passing the absolute path where to generate the keys:
Linux:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f /home/my_user/.ssh/my_ssh_key -C user
Windows:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -f C:\Users\my_user\.ssh\my_ssh_key -C user
Copy the public key in your Google cloud VM authorized_keys file
/home/my_user/.ssh/authorized_keys
** Do not rewrite anyone public key that already exists jus append in the file of authorized_keys file.
Add new ssh Host entry for remote connection
Click on Remote SSH manager, the icon at the bottom right of the VS Code, click on the Remote SSH: Open Configuration File option and choose your ssh configuration file to add another SSH entry for remote connection.
The config file must be under SSH directory, the same path used in the step of generate SSH keys.
Linux:
/home/my_user/.ssh/config
Windows:
C:\Users\my_user\.ssh\config
To add another Host, write the following make the properly changes:
Host vm_name
HostName external_ip
IdentityFile /path/to/ssh_private_key
Port port_number
vm_name: is alias to connect with ssh command in practical way, could be what you want.
external_ip: the external of your Google VM instance, you can get in the VM instances panel at https://console.cloud.google.com/
IdentityFile: the path for yout private SSH key, the file that you generated that note have .pub extension.
Linux:
/home/my_user/.ssh/my_ssh_key
Windows:
C:\Users\my_user\.ssh\my_ssh_key
Port: the por number of SSH of your Google VM instance, 22 is the default port.
Now it is just choose this host to connect to your Google VM instance.
For more details about SSH settings on Google Cloud Platform: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/adding-removing-ssh-keys#linux-and-macos_1

Connecting to a remote server from local machine via ssh-tunnel

I am running Ansible on my machine. And my machine does not have ssh access to the remote machine. Port 22 connection originating from local machine are blocked by the institute firewall. But I have access to a machine (ssh-tunnel), through which I can login to the remote machine. Now is there a way we can run ansible playbook from local machine on remote hosts.
In a way is it possible to make Ansible/ssh connect to the remote machine, via ssh-tunnel. But not exactly login to ssh-tunnel. The connection will pass through the tunnel.
Other way is I can install ansible on ssh-tunnel, but that is not the desired and run plays from there. But that would not be a desired solution.
Please let me know if this is possible.
There are two ways to achieve this without install the Ansible on the ssh-tunnel machine.
Solution#1:
Use these variables in your inventory:
[remote_machine]
remote ansible_ssh_host=127.0.0.1 ansible_ssh_port=2222 ansible_ssh_user='username' ansible_ssh_private_key_file='/home/user/private_key'
hope you understand above parameters, if need help please ask in comments
Solution#2:
Create ~/.ssh/config file and add the following parameters:
####### Access to the Private Server through ssh-tunnel/bastion ########
Host ssh-tunnel-server
HostName x.x.x.x
StrictHostKeyChecking no
User username
ForwardAgent yes
Host private-server
HostName y.y.y.y
StrictHostKeyChecking no
User username
ProxyCommand ssh -q ssh-tunnel-server nc -q0 %h %p
Hope that help you, if you need any help, feel free to ask
No request to install ansible on the jump and remote servers, ansible is ssh service only tool :-)
First make sure you can work it directly with SSH Tunnel.
On local machine (Local_A), you can login to Remote machine (Remote_B) via jump box (Jump_C).
login server Local_A
ssh -f user#remote_B -L 2000:Jump_C:22 -N
The other options are:
-f tells ssh to background itself after it authenticates, so you don't have to sit around running something on the remote server for the tunnel to remain alive.
-N says that you want an SSH connection, but you don't actually want to run any remote commands. If all you're creating is a tunnel, then including this option saves resources.
-L [bind_address:]port:host:hostport
Specifies that the given port on the local (client) host is to be forwarded to the given host and port on the remote side.
There will be a password challenge unless you have set up DSA or RSA keys for a passwordless login.
There are lots of documents teaching you how to do the ssh tunnel.
Then try below ansible command from Local_A:
ansible -vvvv remote_B -m shell -a 'hostname -f' --ssh-extra-args="-L 2000:Jump_C:22"
You should see the remote_B hostname. Let me know the result.
Let's say you can ssh into x.x.x.x from your local machine, and ssh into y.y.y.y from x.x.x.x, while y.y.y.y is the target of your ansible playbook.
inventory:
[target]
y.y.y.y
playbook.yml
---
- hosts: target
tasks: ...
Run:
ansible-playbook --ssh-common-args="-o ProxyCommand='ssh -W %h:%p root#x.x.x.x'" -i inventory playbook.yml

How to forward local keypair in a SSH session?

I manually deploy websites through SSH, I manage source code in github/bitbucket. For every new site I'm currently generating a new keypair on the server and adding it to github/bitbucket, so that I can pull chances from server.
I came across a feature in capistrano to use local machine's key pair for pulling updates to server, which is ssh_options[:forward_agent] = true
How can I do something like this and forward my local machine's keypair to the server I'm SSH-ing into, so that I can avoid adding keys into github/bitbucket for every new site.
This turned out to be very simple, complete guide is here Using SSH Forwarding
In essence, you need to create a ~/.ssh/config file, if it doesn't exist.
Then, add the hosts (either domain name or IP address in the file and set ForwardAgent yes)
Sample Code:
Host example.com
ForwardAgent yes
Makes SSH life a lot easier.
Create ~/.ssh/config
Fill it with (host address is the address of the host you want to allow creds to be forwarded to):
Host [host address]
ForwardAgent yes
If you haven't already run ssh-agent, run it:
ssh-agent
Take the output from that command and paste it into the terminal. This will set the environment variables that need to be set for agent forwarding to work. Optionally, you can replace this and step 3 with:
eval "$(ssh-agent)"
Add the key you want forwarded to the ssh agent:
ssh-add [path to key if there is one]/[key_name].pem
Log into the remote host:
ssh -A [user]#[hostname]
From here, if you log into another host that accepts that key, it will just work:
ssh [user]#[hostname]
To use it simply with the default identity (id_rsa) you can use the following couple of command:
ssh-add
ssh -A [username]#[server-address]
The configuration file is very helpful but the trick for agent forwarding does the ssh-add command. It seems that this have to be initial triggered before any remote connections or after restart of the computer. To permanently add the key try the following solution from the user daminetreg:
Add private key permanently with ssh-add on Ubuntu
It is very useful :
ssh -i [private-key] -A [user]#[host]
You can set one command in bash_aliases or other command routines.