Help:Access to Cloud VPS instances with PuTTY and WinSCP

Cloud VPS
Cloud VPS technical documentation Cloud VPS and Toolforge at a glance Cloud VPS project Cloud VPS Infrastructure Cloud Services roles and user rights Cloud VPS administrator documentation Help and communication Glossary Technical documentation resources
Instances and access Set up a Cloud VPS Instance Set up a Cloud VPS Instance using MediaWiki-Vagrant Set up a Cloud VPS Instance using LAMP stack Access Cloud Services Instances Access Cloud Services Instances with PuTTY and WinSCP
Security and policies Security groups and firewall settings Configure sudo policies
Horizon, proxies and puppet About Horizon Manage floating IP addresses Proxy to reach Cloud VPS server Pupper compiler Standalone puppetmaster
Troubleshooting Locale errors LAMP issues
Additional documentation Resize root partition Development recommendations for easily moving to production

Overview

This page documents methods for accessing your Cloud VPS instances using PuTTY and WinSCP. There are extra instructions for accessing Toolforge with them.

With appropriate proxy respectively tunnel settings via the bastion server. With the correct settings,

Prerequisites

• username: your shell username on Cloud Services, Gerrit, bastion and your instance (you may find it at Special:Preferences)
• instance: your instance name like in the server name instance.eqiad.wmflabs, e.g. openid-wiki.eqiad.wmflabs

• PuTTY
• plink.exe (part of PuTTY suite)
• Pageant (PuTTY authentication agent)
• your generated and loaded-in-Pageant ssh key
• WinSCP

See reference section for further information about tunnels and proxies.

How to set up PuTTY for proxying through bastion.wmflabs.org to your instance

The following uses an intermediate local proxy, part of the PuTTY suite.

• Download plink.exe
• Proxy command for copy&paste:

plink.exe bastion.wmflabs.org -l <username> -agent -nc %host:%port

Hint: Make sure the proxy server (here: bastion) is already known to Putty before using it as a proxy. Otherwise you might just get a blank screen. If you are still getting the blank screen, you can run the plink command written above from the shell command line and accept the fingerprint. Then connect again with PuTTY as described above. Note that the proxied connection takes longer to establish than regular one (ie. you can wait 5 sec to get the remote prompt).

How to set up WinSCP for tunneling through bastion.wmflabs.org to your instance

Setting up WinSCP is very easy compared to setting up PuTTY.

Troubleshooting

SSH2_MSG_UNIMPLEMENTED

If you receive an error message similar to "Disconnected: Server protocol violation: unexpected SSH2_MSG_UNIMPLEMENTED packet", upgrade your PuTTY and plink.exe to a newer version. Older versions of PuTTY try to use encryption algorithms (ciphers) that are not supported by newer verisons of openssh.

Also ensure that in Connection->SSH->Kex section you have Diffie-Hellman group 14 set as the very first on the list "Algorithm selection policy".

References

• Multihop SSH with Putty/WinSCP 01/09/2008 by Mike Lococo
• WinSCP: Connect to FTP/SFTP Server Which Can Be Accessed via Another Server Only
• Help:Access
• Help:Putty

Communication and support

We communicate and provide support through several primary channels. Please reach out with questions and to join the conversation.

Communicate with us

	Connect	Best for
Phabricator Workboard	#Cloud-Services	Task tracking and bug reporting
IRC Channel	#wikimedia-cloud connect	General discussion and support
Mailing List	cloud@	Information about ongoing initiatives, general discussion and support
Announcement emails	cloud-announce@	Information about critical changes (all messages mirrored to cloud@)
News wiki page	News	Information about major near-term plans
Blog	Clouds & Unicorns	Learning more details about some of our work