Accessing the Droplet

Before deploying or maintaining applications, you’ll need to set up a way to access the droplet: a local system account to connect to and an ssh key pair to connect with. This requires access to the digital ocean or the droplet itself, please ask for assistance if it is available.

ssh

If you haven’t already, set up your local .ssh directory in your local user directory.

• generate an ssh key pair on your local computer with ssh-keygen
  • make sure you use a passphrase that is memorable and secure - you will have to type this every time you want to access the droplet, including pushing updates to your app
• add the new key pair and host to your .ssh/config like so:
  • the username needs to match the new user we will create on the droplet

Host bci-droplet droplet.bci4kids.ca
	HostName droplet.bci4kids.ca
	User <your_droplet_username>
	PubkeyAuthentication yes
	IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_bci_droplet

Use the terminal in the digital ocean web interface or otherwise ask somebody with droplet access to complete the below steps on your behalf.

create a new user¹

Log in as root or otherwise use sudo. If doing this for someone else, ideally let them enter their own password during account creation.

adduser <new_user>

In the likely event that super user privileges are required:

gdpasswd -a <new_user>

add ssh public key to the droplet²

su <your_username>
mkdir .ssh
chmod 700 .ssh
vi .ssh/authorized _keys

Paste your public ssh key (.pub) into the authorized_keys file, then update file permissions

chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys

You should now be able to connect to the droplet in the terminal using ssh bci-droplet or ssh <your_username>@droplet.bci4kids.ca and entering the same passphrase you used to generate your key pair

References