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config-connection-ssh.md

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Connection through an SSH tunnel

SSH tunnels

If you - like most masternode owners - have your masternode running on a VPS with SSH access capabilities, then using it as an RPC gateway will probably be a good option to consider.

For security reasons, the TCP port number used for RPC communication (9998 by default) should be blocked on the firewall of the VPS instance. For this reason, you will not be able to connect to your Dash daemon and use the RPC service directly over the Internet. However, using certain features of the SSH protocol, you can create a secure tunnel connecting your workstation running DMT to a remote RPC service as if that remote service were available on your workstation.

The communication is set up as follows:

  • an SSH session with the remote server is established over its public IP address and SSH TCP port
  • a random port is selected from the pool of unused ports on your computer to play the role of the local channel's endpoint
  • within the established SSH session, a secure channel is created that connects the local endpoint with the listening RPC service port on the remote server (127.0.0.1:9998)
  • DMT connects to the local endpoint and performs RPC requests as if the Dash daemon was working locally
 Local computer ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━> SSH session ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━> remote_server:22
           ┃- connecting to 127.0.0.1:random local port           ┃ - listenning on 127.0.0.1:9998
 DMT app ━━┛                                                      ┗━━━ Dash daemon JSON-RPC

Configuration

RPC node configuration (enabling RPC and "indexing")

The procedure is similar to the RPC/indexing procedure for a local RPC node scenario.

  • Log in to the VPS/server running the Dash daemon (dashd) with an SSH terminal.
  • Change to the dashd configuration directory: cd ~/.dashcore
  • Open the dash.conf file with your preferred text editor: nano dash.conf
  • Enter the configuration parameters listed here.
  • Stop the dashd process: ./dash-cli stop
  • Start dashd with the -reindex parameter: ./dashd -reindex

Keep in mind that the last step can take several hours to complete. If running on a live masternode, it may be best to wait until immediately after a payment was received to carry out the reindexing.

DMT application configuration (network connection)

  • In DMT click the Settings button.

  • Select the Dash network tab.

  • Click the + (plus) button on the left side of the dialog.

  • Check the Use SSH tunnel box.

  • Check the Enabled box.

  • Enter the following values:

    • SSH host: IP address (hostname) of your remote VPS/server.
    • port: SSH listening port number of the server (usually 22).
    • SSH username: username you are using to establish a connection.
    • Authentication: select your preferred SSH authentication method.
    • RPC host: IP address of the network interface where dashd listens for JSON-RPC calls (127.0.0.1 by default).
    • port: TCP port number on which dashd listens for JSON-RPC calls (9998 by default).
    • RPC username: enter the value you specified for the rpcuser parameter in the dash.conf file.
    • RPC password: enter the value you specified for the rpcpassword parameter in the dash.conf file.

    Instead of entering parameters related to the RPC configuration, you can click Read RPC configuration from SSH host to try to read the values directly from the remote dash.conf file. However, for this method to work, in the SSH username field, you have to enter the Unix username under which the Dash daemon is running.

  • Make sure the SSL checkbox remains unchecked. Also, if you decide to use only this connection, deactivate all other connections by unchecking the corresponding Enabled checkboxes.
    SSH configuration window

  • Click the Test connection button. If successful, DMT will return the following message:
    Connection successful