Troubleshooting & Help ‐ Common procedures ‐ How to enter a SSH terminal

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Many procedures will require to enter commands on the distant VPS using a Secure SHell (SSH) terminal.
Here's how to get into it.

What do you need ?

1. Your VPS IP and SSH port

• You'll get these from your VPS provider.
• SSH default port is 22, but your provider may have changed it for security reasons.

2. Default user credentials

• You'll get these from your VPS provider.
• Credentials include a username and it's account password.
  Default Linux user is "root", which has the "superuser" status (all permissions).
  Default user folder for "root" is /root.

Note

🟠 Using Ubuntu ? Don't have "root" ? Click me !

Some Ubuntu Linux distributions disable the "root" user (and /root folder) by default.
In these, your default user is "ubuntu", using /home/ubuntu as default folder.
Your CRCON folder will then be /home/ubuntu/hll_rcon_tool

As "ubuntu" doesn't have "superuser" permissions and can't be promoted to "root", which isn't enabled,
you'll have to use the sudo command as a prefix to ALL commands that require "superuser" permissions.
Example (starting Docker containers) :

As "root"	As "ubuntu"
docker compose up -d --remove-orphans	sudo docker compose up -d --remove-orphans

Follow this page's instructions if you want to enable "root" on Ubuntu.

3. An SSH client

Here are some you can use :

	Windows	macOS	Linux
Built in	● PowerShell	● Terminal	● Terminal
Third-party	● PuTTY	● Terminus ● iTerm2

Note

The example below will show how to use the Windows built in "PowerShell" tool.
To launch it, open the Start menu, search for "Windows PowerShell".

Entering an SSH session

Important

Any command you'll type in a terminal will have to be "entered", by pressing the [Enter] key.

To connect to the VPS on SSH port 22, enter this command in PowerShell (replace 123.123.123.123 with your VPS IP).

ssh root@123.123.123.123

❓ Your SSH port isn't 22 ? Click me !

Use the -p option to specify your port (here is an example using port 1234) :

ssh root@123.123.123.123 -p 1234  

You'll get a password prompt.
Enter the "root" user's password (it won't display for security reasons), then press the [Enter] key.

Result

You'll get a Linux command terminal prompt, ready to receive commands to execute on the VPS :

Caution

You're logged on your distant VPS as "root"
That means you're authorized to do absolutely ANYTHING, even bad things !

So : do NOT enter funky commands from an obscure tutorial you've found on the web,
as some commands can screw you Linux install.
If you don't have any idea about what the command really does : do not enter it.

Most (all) VPS providers offer a procedure to "reinstall" or "reset" your Linux distribution.
So you'll always be able to start again on a new and clean system.

Note

Most SSH enabled servers will close the connection if the user stays idle (don't enter any command) for some time.
If you've been kicked out the SSH session, you'll have to connect again.