SSH

Unlike other providers, the native way to create things and work on your Uberspace is the command-line via SSH. If you are inexperienced how to use this, please first head over to our SSH HOWTO.

Connection basics

You can connect to your Uberspace with a basic ssh command:

localuser@localhost ~ $ ssh USERNAME@HOSTNAME.uberspace.de

• the USERNAME is the name of your Uberspace you have chosen when you registered.

• the HOSTNAME is the name of the server where your Uberspace is located, look it up on your datasheet.

This would result with our example user in:

localuser@localhost ~ $ ssh isabell@stardust.uberspace.de

by Password

You will need to set up a SSH password on the dashboard logins page before your first connection.

Note

There is no SSH password set by default. If you want to remove it after you have set it up once, you need to contact us. Use SSH keys from the start to avoid this.

by SSH keys

Instead of using a password, you should better authenticate via SSH keys. If you are inexperienced with this, you can lookup our SSH keys HOWTO.

You can add a public key using the dashboard logins page. The public key will be added to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on your Uberspace. You can use RSA or ECDSA keys.

Using a config file

Especially when using connections to multiple (Uberspace) servers you will benefit from managing these in a SSH config file. On your local system create a file ~/.ssh/config and give it the right permissions for SSH to read:

localuser@localhost ~ $ touch ~/.ssh/config
localuser@localhost ~ $ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config
localuser@localhost ~ $

(How you need to do this will of course depend on your operating system.)

You may add an example basic config like this to the file:

Host uberspace.isabell
  Hostname stardust.uberspace.de
  User isabell

From then on you will be able to login by simply using:

localuser@localhost ~ $ ssh uberspace.isabell

You are totally free in chosing a name (-schema) for Host, you may also use the asterisk * for multiple connection types and there are a lot more of configuration possibilities. The internet will serve you with more information about it.

Troubleshooting

When your connection does not work, SSH will usually not return a proper error message by default. You can switch to the debug mode with the -v or even more verbose with the -vvv flag:

localuser@localhost ~ $ ssh isabell@stardust.uberspace.de -vvv
[…]

The output won’t be very easy to read but you can identify if the correct keys and configurations you set have been used.