SSH access

The SSH protocol is used to connect and authenticate users to the the SSH frontends of IoT-LAB sites and to embedded Linux boards. To that end, you have to associate your computer(s) SSH key(s) to your account.

Generate a new key

Run the following command in a terminal which generates a SSH key pair.

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa

When you’re prompted to “Enter a file in which to save the key”, press Enter. This accepts the default file location.

Enter a file in which to save the key (/home/you/.ssh/id_rsa): [Press enter]

For Windows users, you can use this command with Git Bash or Ubuntu on Windows or even use the Puttygen key generator tool (see Generate SSH Keys on Windows 10 for instructions).

Associate your key to your account

  1. Copy the SSH key to your clipboard, by copying the output of the following command.

    If your SSH key file has a different name than the example code, modify the filename to match your current setup. When copying your key, don’t add any newlines or whitespace.

    $ less ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
    
  2. From the webportal, once signed in, click the Account icon on the right to access to your account management
  3. Click on the SSH Keys tab.
  4. Paste your clipboard into text area.
  5. Click the Update SSH keys button.

Note that it is possible to have several SSH keys for your account, to access from different computers.

Test your access

Each IoT-LAB site has a SSH frontend reachable at the following address <site>.iot-lab.info. For example, try to connect to the Grenoble’s frontend:

$ ssh <login>@grenoble.iot-lab.info