We’re rolling out a new Lish SSH gateway that simplifies Lish by introducing a single place to access Lish for all of your Linodes, regardless of their host or datacenter. It eliminates the need for per-Linode Lish passwords and SSH keys. Instead, the Lish gateway uses your existing Linode Manager credentials for authentication. You will also notice a new “Lish SSH Keys” field in the My Profile section of the Linode Manager, where you can submit SSH public keys to authenticate yourself to these new Lish gateway boxes.
To provide a little background, Lish is the Linode Shell. It provides you with the ability to issue reboot and shutdown jobs, check the status of your Linode, and most importantly, access and interact with the console of your running Linode. Lish is an out-of-band console, which means you can access it even when your Linode’s networking is disabled.
Previously, each Linode required its own Lish SSH username, password, and SSH keys. Access to Lish was via a direct SSH connection to your Linode’s host machine. In the coming weeks, we will be completely removing host access from the public Internet, and as such the old Lish access methods will no longer function.
Lish-via-SSH into hosts will cease to function on Friday, May 10, 2013 1:00PM EDT. As such, please adjust any scripts or aliases to utilize the new Lish gateway.
When you log in to the new Lish gateway, you’ll see a list of your Linodes and their locations, as shown below:
$ ssh caker@lish-newark.linode.com Linodes located in this data center: linode2345 Newark, NJ linode3456 Newark, NJ linode4567 Newark, NJ Linodes located in other data centers: sandbox Dallas, TX linode5678 Dallas, TX [caker@lish-newark.linode.com]#
Then, at the command prompt, you can enter the name of the Linode to which you want to make your Lish connection. In the example shown above, you could enter “linode2345? to access the Lish console for linode2345. Once you’re on a specific Linode, Lish will work like it always has. When you exit linode2345?s Lish, you’ll be taken back to the gateway menu.
You can also do tricks like this to bypass the menu all together:
$ ssh -t caker@lish-newark.linode.com linode2345
And like this to send commands directly to a Linode’s Lish:
$ ssh -t caker@lish-newark.linode.com linode2345 logview
We’ve set up Lish gateways in all six data centers. You can use any gateway to get to any Linode, but we recommend using the one geographically closest to you or your Linodes. Here are the Lish gateway boxes:
- lish-tokyo.linode.com
- lish-fremont.linode.com
- lish-dallas.linode.com
- lish-atlanta.linode.com
- lish-newark.linode.com
- lish-london.linode.com
The Lish gateway boxes are accessible via both IPv4 and IPv6. The Ajax method of connecting to your Linode’s Lish is unaffected by these changes.
Enjoy!
-Chris