Log in to your site via SSH

What you get: a command line within the folder of your site, to execute wp, composer or git, and by the way SFTP to upload encrypted files.

Before starting

Two things that are confused all the time:

  • The FTP account cannot be used for SSH or SFTP. It is another account.

  • The SSH keys screen on your account stores your public key, but on its own it does not give you access to anything. The panel itself warns you: “You can save your keys here, but until you create an SSH access on one of your sites there is nowhere to use them”.

And one that costs a ticket every week: on a VPS the key does not copy itself. The same screen says it: “On a VPS the key is pasted when creating it, in its own form: it does not copy itself from here”. On the sites it does copy itself.

Steps

  1. Save your public key. Account → SSH keys → Add key menu.

    • Name — to recognize it in the list. For example, “laptop”.

    • Public key — the content of ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub (or id_rsa.pub). It is the one that ends in .pub: the other one is private and never leaves your computer.

  2. Create the access. In the line of your site, press SSH → New SSH user.

    • Site — which one it enters.

    • User and Password - minimum 8 characters.

    • Shell — bash unless you know what you want sh.

  3. Create SSH user. Your key is copied to that account as soon as it exists.

Each user enters directly into the folder of their site and without being able to leave it. You will not see the rest of the server, and that is on purpose.

How to check it worked

On the SSH screen you have the command already written, with your server and your port. Paste it in a terminal. If it logs in without asking for a password, the key is set correctly. Type pwd and you have to see the folder of your site.

For SFTP, in FileZilla choose the SFTP protocol, ssh.tudominio.com server, port 22, and your SSH user.

Common problems

“Permission denied (publickey)” and I just saved the key

Check that you are using the SSH user and not the FTP one, and that you pasted the entire public key - start with ssh-ed25519 or ssh-rsa and end with a comment - on a single line, without spaces.

I saved the key and in my VPS it keeps asking me for a password

This is what is expected. In a VPS, the key is pasted into the VPS creation form; the SSH Keys screen only feeds the SSH accesses of the sites. If the VPS is already created, enter through the console and add it manually to its authorized keys file.

My program says “SFTP” and the FTP account does not connect

The FTP account only speaks FTP, on port 21. Create an SSH user and connect to port 22: that one does SFTP.

I log in but I can’t see my files, only strange folders

You are at the root of the site. Your website is usually one level deeper; go into the folder that contains the website and look there.

I want to execute something outside my folder and it won’t let me

It can’t be done, and it’s not a configuration error: each user is locked in the folder of their site so they don’t see others’ folders. If you really need something from the system, write to us and we’ll take a look.

There is an application from the catalog that says “Installed manually via SSH”

They are the ones that need Docker, Node or Composer and they don’t fit in the one-click installer. They are installed from here, with this user. Look at Install an application with one click.

I have deleted my password from the computer

It cannot be recovered: we never had the private key. Generate a new pair of keys, save the new public key in SSH Keys and delete the old one from the list.