• Technical documents
• Emergencies
• Single Sign-On Services
• Network settings
• Serial Console Shell
  • Overview
  • Connecting To The Console Shell
  • Actions Menu
  • Changing Kernel
  • Reimaging Your Machine
  • Restarting Your Machine
  • Watchdog Rules Editor
  • Serial Console Keybindings
  • Using Putty to connect to the console shell

Connecting To the Console Shell

When you begin hosting with Bytemark we’ll provide details of how to connect to the console shell, but in case you forget or need access when you don’t have your mailbox handy this page describes how to connect.

Although the shell itself is unified and works in the same way regardless of whether you have a dedicated or virtual machine the process of connecting to it does differ.

If you use Windows, we recommend that you use Putty to connect. We have written a guide on how to use Putty to access the shell.

Virtual Machine Access

The shell is accessible through your normal SSH client so long as you know your machine’s username. If your machine is called “joebloggs”, you should connect to:

joebloggs@joebloggs.vmadmin.bytemark.co.uk

Upon a Linux machine you could connect by executing:

ssh joebloggs@joebloggs.vmadmin.bytemark.co.uk

If you’ve not used it before, the password for the admin shell will be the same as the random root password we originally set for your VM, which will be in the post-signup email you received from us.

If you’ve forgotten your pasword you can ask us to reset it for you.

Dedicated Shell Access

The shell may be accessed using the SSH key which was provided when your machine was installed. This key is typically located in the /root/ directory upon the machine when it is delivered to you.

To log on, you need to supply this key to your ssh client instead of a password. The name of the key file identifies your machine on our network, and determines the address to which you’ll need to connect in order to get to your shell:

If you are connecting from a Linux host, the command to use is:

ssh -i joebloggs.key dhshell@joebloggs.dhadmin.bytemark.co.uk

Note SSH insists that the permissions on the keyfile are 0700. If your key has different permissions you’ll receive a prompt for a passphrase, even if one has not been set.

With PuTTY on Windows use puttygen to convert the key, in the options before you log on, under Connection -> SSH -> Auth you can point it at the myserver.putty.key file under “Private key file for authentication”.

If you don’t have an SSH key for your machine you may ask us to send you a copy of it for you.