Issues with Remote Connection SSH

[adisarid]

The same config works for VSCode and windows powershell ssh, however, Positron simply hangs.

I can see multiple bugs and issues relating to Positron and SSH in this repo's issues section, but I'm not sure if this is an occurrence of a previously reported bug, or simple an issue with my setup that causes Positron to behave differently than VSCode.

Using:

Positron Version: 2026.03.0 (system setup) build 212
Code - OSS Version: 1.108.0
Commit: f3aae65e0a1a11d39226cd884520f49301daef82
Date: 2026-02-26T05:40:49.600Z
Electron: 39.2.7
Chromium: 142.0.7444.235
Node.js: 22.21.1
V8: 14.2.231.21-electron.0
OS: Windows_NT x64 10.0.26200

A Linux server that I'm trying to connect to. The positron output while trying to connect is:

[Info  - 04:52:28.793] Resolving ssh remote authority 'ssh-remote+r4-nopp'
[Trace  - 04:52:28.878] Identity keys:
C:\Users\adisa/.ssh/id_positron ssh-ed25519 SHA256:Xeg21he3iJcroT+BkJwYt2/3GnHY9hCNoNwRSH6yPTY=
[Info  - 04:52:29.531] Trying no-auth authentication
[Info  - 04:52:29.714] Trying publickey authentication: C:\Users\adisa/.ssh/id_positron <***REDACTED***>

My config file:

Host r4-nopp
    HostName <***REDACTED***>
    User rstudio
    Port 8785
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_positron
    IdentitiesOnly yes

I checked to see if Positron tried to download its server package (.positron-server), but it didn't. I'm deducing it didn't even connect.
I tried with and without a passphrase (two separate keys), but same behavior.

Ideas anyone?

[austin3dickey]

Hey @adisarid, thanks for the post. A few questions to help narrow things down:

1. Is that the full Remote SSH log? The snippet you shared shows the connection attempt starting but I'm wondering if there's more after the publickey auth line.
2. Is your remote server able to access the internet? If not, that may be related to #11554; Positron currently needs to download its server component to the remote host.
3. What kind of server is running on port 8785? Is this Posit Workbench / RStudio Server, or a standard SSH daemon on a non-default port?
4. Does your SSH config use any features like ProxyJump, Match blocks, or Include directives? The config you shared looks straightforward, but just want to confirm there's nothing else in your ~/.ssh/config that might apply to this host.

[adisarid]

Thanks @austin3dickey for getting back to me!

1. Logs: The snipped I sent is all there is (under OUTPUT -> Remote - SSH), and in the bottom right corner I have "Setting up SSH Host ..."
2. The server can access the internet. As I wrote, I was successfully able use vscode in the same manner - the mechanism is similar, vscode also downloads a bundle to the server, and I can confirm that it indeed did that (there is a .vscode-server folder that vscode downloaded and installed). There is no .positron-server that you expect to find after succesfully installing the positron server bundle.
3. My setup goes like this: I have an EC2 running Ubuntu 24.04.2. It's running a rocker/tidyverse docker container, exposing ports 22 and 8787. Port 8785 is mapped to the container's port 22. Just in case, I'm attaching the main elements of my Dockerfile that are related:

FROM rocker/tidyverse
RUN R -e "install.packages('pak')"
RUN R -e "pak::pak('renv')"

# <Skipping a bunch of other installations like Quarto, Air, ImageMagick, fonts and locales, Chromium>

# SSH Installation and Configuration ---
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
    openssh-server \
    && apt-get clean && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# Required for SSH to run in a container 
RUN mkdir /var/run/sshd

# Configure SSH for Key-Pair Authentication only
# This disables password login for SSH but does NOT affect the RStudio Web UI login
RUN sed -i 's/#PubkeyAuthentication yes/PubkeyAuthentication yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config && \
    sed -i 's/#PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config && \
    sed -i 's/PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config && \
    sed -i 's/UsePAM yes/UsePAM no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config

# Create the S6 service (for ssh)
RUN mkdir -p /etc/services.d/sshd && \
    echo "#!/usr/bin/with-contenv bash" > /etc/services.d/sshd/run && \
    echo "exec /usr/sbin/sshd -D" >> /etc/services.d/sshd/run && \
    chmod +x /etc/services.d/sshd/run

# Ensure the 'rstudio' user has a valid shell for SSH sessions
RUN chsh -s /bin/bash rstudio

# Open port 22 for SSH in addition to 8787 for RStudio
EXPOSE 8787 22

# Start both RStudio and SSH using a simple shell command 
CMD ["/init"]

4. From the client's side: the config file I shared is what I use, nothing fancy there.

Thanks for looking into this!

[austin3dickey]

Super interesting; I haven't seen this failure mode before. I think you're right that it's never able to connect.

1. Can you check if the Windows OpenSSH Authentication Agent service is running? (Get-Service ssh-agent)
   • If so, can you please stop the service and try to connect again? You might need a passphrase key for this, in order to enter it.
2. Can you try setting remoteSSH.enableAgentForwarding to false in the Positron settings?

[adisarid]

No luck... I've disabled the ssh-agent service. Then I get the following:

[Info  - 08:26:20.514] Resolving ssh remote authority 'ssh-remote+r4-nopp'
[Error  - 08:26:20.612] Couldn't get identities from OpenSSH agent
Error: Failed to connect to agent
    at Socket.r (c:\Program Files\Positron\resources\app\extensions\open-remote-ssh\dist\extension.js:1:362135)
    at Socket.emit (node:events:519:28)
    at Socket.emit (node:domain:489:12)
    at emitErrorNT (node:internal/streams/destroy:170:8)
    at emitErrorCloseNT (node:internal/streams/destroy:129:3)
    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:90:21)
[Trace  - 08:26:20.613] Identity keys:
C:\Users\adisa/.ssh/id_positron ssh-ed25519 SHA256:Xeg21he3iJcroT+BkJwYt2/3GnHY9hCNoNwRSH6yPTY=
[Info  - 08:26:21.312] Trying no-auth authentication
[Info  - 08:26:21.489] Trying publickey authentication: C:\Users\adisa/.ssh/id_positron ssh-ed25519 SHA256:Xeg21he3iJcroT+BkJwYt2/3GnHY9hCNoNwRSH6yPTY=

It's the same when I set remoteSSH.enableAgentForwarding to false in the Positron settings. I wonder if my next step should be to try from a different computer to the same server or from the same computer to a different server...

Any other directions I should explore?

[austin3dickey]

Thanks for bearing with me. I'm still not positive what's wrong but if you've got some time to continue debugging with me I'd appreciate it. I'm also trying to reproduce locally. Some more questions:

1. Does it ever time out? The default setting remoteSSH.connectTimeout is 60 seconds. If it truly hangs forever, there might be a timeout bug.
2. Can you try an RSA key? (ssh-keygen -t rsa) I wonder if it's ed25519-specific.
3. Can you see if there are any errors when you connect in the Developer Tools console? (before connecting, Help > Toggle Developer Tools)
4. Do you see any sshd-related logs from the container, so we know if it even received the request? (docker logs <container> or journalctl -u sshd inside the container)

[adisarid]

Hey @austin3dickey
(1) Timeout bug: I saw that the settings contain a 60 seconds timeout, but it seems like Positron does not respect that - I just timed the hang and it exceeds 6 0 seconds. In fact, in all my attempts, it never timed-out.
(2) RSA: I created a new RSA key, no passphrase. Verified it works via powershell ssh, and then retried Positron, unfortunately that didn't help either.
(3) Developer Tools console: Some errors in console, nothing specific. I don't think they are related. Just positron having a hard time finding some python environments and some layout warnings. Attaching here.
(4) Server logs: No signals whatsoever from the container. No indication of something hapenning:

[s6-init] making user provided files available at /var/run/s6/etc...exited 0.
[s6-init] ensuring user provided files have correct perms...exited 0.
[fix-attrs.d] applying ownership & permissions fixes...
[fix-attrs.d] done.
[cont-init.d] executing container initialization scripts...
[cont-init.d] 01_set_env: executing...
skipping /var/run/s6/container_environment/HOME
skipping /var/run/s6/container_environment/PASSWORD
skipping /var/run/s6/container_environment/RSTUDIO_VERSION
[cont-init.d] 01_set_env: exited 0.
[cont-init.d] 02_userconf: executing...
[cont-init.d] 02_userconf: exited 0.
[cont-init.d] done.
[services.d] starting services
[services.d] done.

To be fair, I'm not sure that docker logs <container> is the right place to look for them. Just to check, I logged in with VSCode, and when it logs in successfully, I don't see any related logs to the successful login as well.

It's really weird that vscode works properly, which points me towards the extension that positron is using for ssh which is different from the one vscode is using, if I understand correctly. I think that this issue is local on my client.