dockercolima

How to SSH into the colima instance

Looking for the steps needed to SSH into colima, this is too new and the documentation is a bit scarce. I need to copy over the volumes, and running scp seems ideal.

Solution

  • Quickest answer

    colima ssh

    Quick-ish answer using ssh

    (tmpconfig=$(mktemp); limactl show-ssh --format config colima > $tmpconfig; ssh -F $tmpconfig lima-colima)

    While i'm at it, here is the scp:

    (tmpconfig=$(mktemp); limactl show-ssh --format config colima > $tmpconfig; scp -F $tmpconfig lima-colima:/path/to/somewhere/ .)

    I would love to have written this with a file descriptor, unfortunately, ssh does not like it when you pass a file descriptor in the -F argument, such as: ssh -F <(limactl show-ssh --format config colima) lima-colima

    Use root

    If you need to auth as root such as ssh -F $tmpconfig root@lima-colima you'll notice it won't work, your user will always be used, here are the steps to change that.

    (
tmpconfig=$(mktemp);
# Need to remove the 'ControlPath' and 'User', and add 'ForwardAgent'
(limactl show-ssh --format config colima | grep -v "^  ControlPath\|  ^User"; echo "  ForwardAgent=yes") > $tmpconfig;
# Setup root account
ssh -F $tmpconfig $USER@lima-colima "sudo mkdir -p /root/.ssh/; sudo cp ~/.ssh/authorized_keys /root/.ssh/authorized_keys"
)

    The command above changes slightly to:

    (tmpconfig=$(mktemp); (limactl show-ssh --format config colima | grep -v "^  ControlPath\|  ^User"; echo "  ForwardAgent=yes") > $tmpconfig; ssh -F $tmpconfig root@lima-colima)

    Using ~/.ssh/config

    If you're going to be ssh-ing into colima a lot, you can alway just skip all the fuss and simply add it into your ~/.ssh/config and just call it "normally".

    # run this ONLY ONCE!!!
limactl show-ssh --format config colima >> ~/.ssh/config

    And then just call ssh/scp "normally":

    ssh lima-colima
scp lima-colima:/path/blah/foo .

    Personally, I don't like to clutter my ~/.ssh/config, but do what best works for you.