SSH/SFTP Connection to a Compute Session

Backend.AI supports SSH/SFTP connection to the created compute sessions (containers). In this section, we will learn how to do it.

Note

SSH/SFTP connection is supported only on desktop apps, and not yet supported on web-based Web-UI service. Destktop apps can be downloaded from https://github.com/lablup/backend.ai-webui/releases. Be sure to download the compatible version of the Web-UI. The Web-UI version can be checked by clicking the “About Backend.AI” sub-menu from the preference menu on the upper-right side of the GUI.

For Linux / Mac

First, create a compute session, then click the app icon (first button) in Control, followed by SSH / SFTP icon. Then, a daemon that allows SSH/SFTP access from inside the container will be initiated, and the Web-UI app interacts with the daemon through a local proxy service.

Warning

You cannot establish a SSH/SFTP connection to the session until you click the SSH/SFTP icon. When you close the Web-UI app and launch it again, the connection between the local proxy and the Web-UI app is initialized, so the SSH/SFTP icon must be clicked again.

Next, a dialog containing SSH/SFTP connection information will be pop up. Remember the address (especially the assigned port) written in the SFTP URL and click the download link to save the id_container file on the local machine. This file is an automatically generated SSH private key. Instead of using the link, you can also download the id_container file located under /home/work/ with your web terminal or Jupyter Notebook. The auto-generated SSH key may change when new session is created. In that case, it must be downloaded again.

Starting SSH/SFTP daemon inside a compute session (container)

To SSH connect to the compute session with the downloaded SSH private key, you run the following command in the shell environment. You should write the path to the downloaded id_container file after -i option and the assigned port number after -p option. The user inside the compute session is usually set to work, but if your session uses other account, the work part in work@localhost should be changed to the actual session account. If you run the command correctly, you can see that SSH connection is made to the compute session and you are welcomed by the container’s shell environment.

$ ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no \
>     -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null \
>     -i ~/.ssh/id_container \
>     work@localhost -p 52468
Warning: Permanently added '[127.0.0.1]:52468' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
f310e8dbce83:~$

Connecting by SFTP would almost be the same. After running the SFTP client and setting public key-based connection method, simply specify id_container as the SSH private key. Each FTP client may adopt different way, so refer to each FTP client manual for details.

Note

The SSH/SFTP connection port number is randomly assigned each time when a session is created. If you want to use a specific SSH/SFTP port number, you can input the port number in the “Preferred SSH Port” field in the user settings menu. To avoid possible collisions with other services within the compute session, it is recommended to specify a port number between 10000-65000. However, if SSH/SFTP connections are made by two or more compute sessions at the same time, the second SSH/SFTP connection cannot use the designated port (since the first SSH/SFTP connection has already taken it), so a random port number will be assigned.

Note

If you want to use your own SSH keypair instead of id_container, create a user-type folder named .ssh. If you create authorized_keys file in that folder and append it with the contents of your SSH public key, you can connect by SSH/SFTP through your own SSH private key without having to download the id_container after creating a compute session.

For Windows / FileZilla

Backend.AI Web-UI app supports OpenSSH-based public key connection (RSA2048). To access with a client such as PuTTY on Windows, a private key must be converted into a ppk file through a program such as PuTTYgen. You can refer to the following link for the conversion method: https://wiki.filezilla-project.org/Howto. For easier explanation, this section will describe how to connect to SFTP through FileZilla client on Windows.

Refer to the connection method on Linux/Mac, create a compute session, check the connection port and download id_container. id_container is an OpenSSH-based key, so if you use a client that supports only Windows or ppk type keys, you must convert it. Here, we will convert through the PuTTYgen program installed with PuTTY. After running the PuTTYgen, click on the import key in the Conversions menu. Select the downloaded id_container file from the file open dialog. Click the Save private key button of PuTTYGen and save the file with the name id_container.ppk.

SSH key conversion with PuttyGen

After launching the FileZilla client, go to the Settings-Connection-SFTP and register the key file id_container.ppk (id_container for clients supporting OpenSSH).

Filezilla settings to connect to compute session

Open Site Manager, create a new site, and enter the connection information as follows.

Filezilla site setting

When connecting to a container for the first time, the following confirmation popup may appear. Click the OK button to save the host key.

Unknown Host Key dialog

After a while, you can see that the connection is established as follows. You can now transfer large files to /home/work/ or other mounted storage folder with this SFTP connection.

Filezilla connection established

For Visual Studio Code

Backend.AI supports to develop with the local Visual Studio Code through SSH/SFTP connection to a compute session. Once connected, you can interact with files and folders anywhere on the compute session. In this section, we will learn how to do it.

First, you should install Visual Studio Code and the Remote Development extension pack.

Link: https://aka.ms/vscode-remote/download/extension

Install remote ssh plugin on Visual Studio Code

After installing the extension, you should configure the SSH connection for the compute sesion. In the SSH/SFTP connection dialog, click “DOWNLOAD SSH KEY” button to download the SSH private key (id_container) for the session. Also, remember the port number.

Download SSH Key

And then, setting SSH config file. Edit the ~/.ssh/config file (for Linux/Mac) or C:\Users\[user name]\.ssh\config (for Windows) and add the following block. For convenience, we set the hostname to vscode. It can be changed to any alias.

Now in the Visual Studio Code, select the Command Palette… from View menu.

View > comma

Visual Studio Code can automatically detect the type of host you are connecting to. Let’s choose Remote-SSH: Connect to Host….

SSH connect

You will see the list of hosts in .ssh/config. Please select the host to connect, in this case, vscode.

Select remote ssh select Host

Selecting the host name will lead you to access the remote compute session. After you are connected, you will see an empty window. You can always refer to the Status bar to see which host you are connected to.

Finished remote ssh connection

You can then open any folder or workspace on the remote host by accessing File > Open… or File > Open Workspace… menu just as you usually would do!

open remote host file directory