Connecting with your Terminal using SSH

SSH, or Secure Shell, is a tool for securely connecting to remote computers. You can use it to run commands on our server to do things like upload files or install and run programs. We provide you with your own shell account with some basic tools installed, but you can also install your own programs like static site generators or git to do more advanced things.

How to connect to dawdle.space via SSH

To connect to dawdle.space via SSH, you will need an SSH client. If you are on Linux or macOS, you probably already have one installed. If you are on Windows, you might have to eneable the OpenSSH client in the Windows Features menu. See this guide for more information.

Once you have an SSH client, you need to generate an SSH key. This is a pair of files that you will use to identify yourself to the server. To generate an SSH key, run the following command in your terminal:

$ ssh-keygen -t ed25519

Dawdle.space only supports ed25519 keys, so make sure you use the -t ed25519 option. You can leave the passphrase blank if you want.

Once you have generated your key, you need to add it to your account. To do this, go to your settings page and paste the contents of the id_ed25519.pub file into the “SSH Public Key” box. Then, click “Save Changes”.

Now, you can connect to dawdle.space via SSH. To do this, run the following command in your terminal:

$ ssh <username>@dawdle.space

Replace <username> with your username. If you are on Windows, you might have to use ssh.exe instead of ssh.

VSCode Remote SSH

If you use VSCode, you can also use the Remote SSH extension to connect to dawdle.space. This allows you to edit files on the server directly from VSCode and use the terminal to run commands.

Considerations

Once you have connected to dawdle.space via SSH, you will be in your own sandboxed container. Each container has 1GB of RAM, 1 CPU core, and can only access the internet via HTTP and HTTPS. To install programs, you will need to use the apt package manager and sudo to install them. More information about this can be found on Google and ChatGPT can also help you.

Additionally, by default, your container will be shut down after 30 minutes of inactivity. Keep important files in your home directory to prevent them from being deleted, as files outside of your home directory will be deleted when we upgrade our server to newer versions of Debian.

SFTP

Currently, we do not support SFTP. The best way to upload files is to use rsync or WebDAV, or the web interface.