1 Topic by paulie
  • paulie
  • I could tell you a thing or two
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2009-10-28
  • Posts: 11

Enabling SSH Access on your VPS

Should you need to enable ssh access on your VPS you should follow the instructions below :

1) Login to your VPS as administrator (by default your VPS is shipped with a permission set that only allows the administrator to enable or disable SSH access).
2) Navigate to the domain that you want to enable ssh access for and click on "Setup" (Plesk 8.6) or "Web Hosting Settings" (Plesk 9.5)
3) Scroll down to the Account Preferences section and the Shell access to server with FTP user's credentials
4) Our recommended choice here would be to select /bin/bash (chrooted) if the access is for a third party (this is for safety though it is possible that this environment will be too restrictive), or /bin/bash if for yourself or a trusted colleague.  If the drop down is greyed out then you didn't login as the administrator!
5) You will get a popup warning regarding the security implications and dangers of enabling ssh access.  You should read and digest this then click OK on the popup and OK to save your new settings.

NB : If you are setting up SSH access for a developer then you should change your ftp password (and your username) prior to passing credentials to your developer.  You should also where possible pass these details over by phone rather than email.  Once any work is done by the developer you should then change your ftp username and password again.   For further security we recommend firewalling SSH access through the Plesk firewall (Modules -> Firewall -> SSH) to as small a subset of IPs as possible.

Last edited by paulie (2010-11-08 16:21:07)