How can I give remote access to my cluster, without creating new accounts and sharing passwords?


Issue: I need to give remote access to a support engineer or a developer to troubleshoot an issue, but I don't want to create a new user on the system and give out passwords

 

Solution: 

tmate (https://tmate.io/) is a tool that allows you to start a shared terminal session.

Once you start the program up, it will print ssh connection information that you can then share via email or ticket to allow Adaptive employees onto your system, without creating new accounts or sharing passwords.

Caveat: 

It should be noted that by default the connection will pass through tmate.io's servers. We have noticed that the session will occasionally hang for a few seconds, which is annoying as the support person will not immediately see the output of a command. This appears to be a problem with the server at tmate.io, possibly due to heavy session loads.

If you do not wish to use the default connection at tmate.io, you have two other options. One is you can follow their guide to set up your own server and use the configuration file generated in the process to initiate your sessions. This will require you to provide a server that can be accessed from the Internet, so our support staff can connect to your session. To use this approach refer to the "Host your own tmate server" section on https://tmate.io/.

The other option is to use Adaptive’s own tmate server to host your session. In order to do this, let Adaptive know and we will provide you with our own cutomized “tmate.conf” file, which you will need use to start tmate.  You will start it using the command-line “tmate -f tmate.conf” (or the full path to tmate.conf, if not in the same directory).

Some earlier versions of tmate will not recognize the format of our configuration file. We know it works for tmate 2.4.0 and later, but some Linux software repositoies only provide version 2.2.1. To resolve this issue, you can download version 2.4.0 directly from github by visiting this site: https://github.com/tmate-io/tmate/releases/tag/2.4.0. Note that you will have to choose the version appropriate for your architecture. If you have a previous version of tmate installed, you can either remove it first and then manually install the 2.4.0 executable, or install the new version over the old.  This download is for a statically linked binary version of "tmate", which requires no installation, so you can download it, then remove it when finished.  

 

 

 

 

Tags: remote access, share screen, tmate
Last update:
2021-09-09 19:06
Author:
Rob Greenbank
Revision:
1.6
Average rating:0 (0 Votes)

You cannot comment on this entry

Chuck Norris has counted to infinity. Twice.