How to add an SSH key to VS Code and connect to a host - The Load Guru (2023)

SSH keys are the first line of defense against brute force attacks on your server and are essential for any serious developer. Learn how to add an SSH key in VS Code and connect to a host without creating a password.

Los"visual studio code connect to remote server” is a tool that allows users to connect to a remote computer using SSH. This tutorial will show you how to add an SSH key and use the command line tool in VS Code.

This guide will show you how to add an SSH key to VS Code so you can set up an SSH connection via key exchange. In this article, you'll learn how to configure Visual Studio Code to connect via SSH by exchanging keys for a user with sudo permissions (in this case, homelab) and the built-in root user.

previous requirements

• Windows version of Visual Studio Code. This lesson will use version 1.5.1.1.
• Windows 10 (SSH is required and comes pre-installed)
• A remote SSH host – For this tutorial, an OpenSUSE host with SSH enabled will be used.
• In VS Code, you've already created an SSH host (see this article).

SSH key generation

To get started, you'll need to create a public and private SSH key on your Windows computer.

1. Open PowerShell on your local computer and run ssh-keygen. The default path for your keys is C:users<username>.ssh.
2. Provide the folder path to save the public and private keys. The default is C:Users<user>.sshid_rsa.
3. An optional pass is provided. If you specify a password, the private key will be encrypted with that password.

Using ssh-keygen to generate a key

When finished, you will now have two files (keys) in the folder where you saved the keys, called id_rsa.pub (public key) and id_rsa (private key). By default, these keys will be in the C:Users<user>.ssh folder.

Associate your SSH user and load the public key from the SSH host

Then the public key (id rsa.pub) must be transferred to the remote SSH user's authorized keys directory. You can load the key using VSCode's built-in browser.

Using VS Code and SSH to set up an SSH key exchange connection

1. Open the user's home folder if you previously set up an SSH host in VS Code. The statement uses the homelab user in this scenario.
2. In your home directory, create a .ssh folder and upload the id rsa.pub file.
3. Change the file name to authorized keys (lower case). This is an example that you can see below.

Uploading SSH host public key

Your public key has now been successfully connected to your SSH user. Without a password, you will be able to sign in again.

Associating the root user with the public key

You can SSH in as your regular user or as the built-in root user if you assign the same key to both.

This will transfer the /.ssh/authorized keys to /root/.ssh/authorizedkeys for the root user. You can achieve this using the following command:

sudo mkdir -p /root/.ssh && sudo cp ~/.ssh/authorized_keys /root/.ssh/authorized_keys

transfer the administrative user's public key to the root user's folder

Sudo administrative permissions are required to associate your key with the root user. You can find more information about sudo here.

On Windows, you should now be able to log into the root account via SSH without having to provide a password.

Using YaST, add your public key to the root user graphically.

If you want to learn visually, you can use the OpenSUSE YaST configuration software to do the same. This will do the same thing as moving the authorized key file to the root user, but in a friendlier way.

YaST is a configuration tool for the OpenSUSE Linux distribution.

A Windows Guy in a Linux World: YaST and the Desktop is a related post.

1. Upload your id rsa.pub file to your home directory using VS Terminal Code:

Terminal VS Code

2. In VSCode Terminal, type sudo yast.

3. Once in YaST, go to Security and Users —> User and Group Management using the arrow keys. Press Enter to enter the User and Group Management section. This step takes you to the YaST user administration screen.

How to access the user and group management page

4. In YaST, press Alt+S to change the filter from regular users to system users.

5. Go to the root. To modify, press alt+i and then alt+s to access the keys section. This is shown in the following animation:

How to access SSH public key settings

6. Press alt+a to go to the id rsa.pub file you uploaded earlier and press alt+o to confirm. The fingerprint must have been assigned to the root user.

7. Keep pressing alt+o to exit the menus, then alt+q to exit. This is shown in the following animation:

To accept, keep pressing alt+o.

At this stage, you have successfully performed a key exchange to root! Now delete the /home/<user>/id_rsa.pub loaded on your Linux host if you wish.

Using the key to authenticate

Finally, you need to use the newly produced key to test the connection. For that, first:

Open a PowerShell console and try running ssh <user>@<ip> to test login as your user and root user. This guide uses the home lab user as a normal user. If all goes well, you should immediately log into either account. You can see this below:

Test whether both users' key authentication is successful. There is no password prompt.

Now you can SSH in as root and the terminal didn't even ask for a password. SSH for Windows knew where to look for your private key (C:users<user>.sshid_rsa) and automatically used it to authenticate.

Using any of the users in Visual Studio Code

What if you need to connect to your remote SSH server with root and main administrator user accounts? In VS Code, you can create this situation using two possible configurations.

1. In VS Code, go to the sidebar and click on the Remote Browser button, then the gear under SSH Destinations as shown below.

Open the target configuration file for SSH

2. VS Code will ask you to choose a file. To choose the default file created earlier in this article, press Enter. As illustrated below, VS Code will open a configuration file for you to modify.

Editing the SSH target configuration file

3. Cut and paste the first three lines of the configuration below, separated by a blank line.

4. Change the second user from <your user> (homelab in the screenshot below) to root. Also, give them more descriptive names (the Host parameter) so you can tell the two configurations apart. Press Control+s to save:

Create two different destinations (even if it's the same machine)

Spaces and special characters affect the Host parameter. Use only hyphens and alphanumeric letters to name your host. The hostname is the same as the IP or DNS name. The IP address used in the example above is 172.25.179.190.

You now have two SSH targets: test-machine and test-machine-root, as shown in the image below.

Examples of SSH targets to connect

5. Right-click on the SSH target and choose Join Host in Current Window from the context menu as shown below.

You have full access to your system if you log in as root, including protected files.

Join the host

If you join the host in a new window, VSCode will start a separate instance with the new connection. This allows you to have root and <user> open simultaneously in two separate sessions. Don't confuse which is which!

Los"vscode remote ssh permission denied (public key)” is a message you might see if you are trying to connect to a host using SSH. This article will explain how to add an SSH key and connect to your host.

Related tags

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