Published
Category: terminal
Tags: terminal ssh vscode

SSH on CADE

SSH VScode integration

Me and probably others dislike terminal based editors. They have their advantages but for people who have used an IDE all their life it is not always ideal. Here's how to run VSCode so you don't have to use those.

This guide is separated into two steps. 1. Make your ssh keys and setup SSH into a CADE machine - This one above is kind of optional since its not required to make it work, it's just wildly inconvenient without it 2. VSCode extension setup and remote dev install

1 SSH Keys

Setup OpenSSH
  1. Open the Settings panel, then click Apps
  2. Under the Apps and Features heading, click Optional Features
  3. Scroll down the list to see if OpenSSH Client is listed
  4. If it’s not, click the plus-sign next to Add a feature
  5. Scroll through the list to find and select OpenSSH Client
  6. Finally, click Install
Common Instructions
  1. Open up your terminal emulator (Powershell for Windows, Terminal for MacOS and Linux)
  2. Run ssh-keygen
  3. If you already have an ssh key you can reuse that. To check if you have one, see if you have a directory in your home directory called .ssh (~/.ssh) with a file called id_xxx.pub where xxx is an encryption method, commonly rsa or ed25519
  4. When running this program you probably don't want to give your key a passphrase, since you don't want to have to entire a password every time we use it
  5. You can usually just press enter until the program completes
  6. Open up your newly generated ssh key pub file, which has the format id_xxx.pub from the ~/.ssh folder. (See 2a for more info).
  7. Copy the line that appears. You'll need it for later. This is your public key
  8. It should look something like this:
ssh-ed25519 AAAAC3NzaC1lZDI1NTE5AAAAIMRSgiBte9Px92dZCj33fiA/HHpVHnD55/+Y0KB0W7fn stefan.b.todorov@gmail.com
  1. SSH into your CADE machine. This is done normally, but I'll give helpful links and example command
  2. Example command: ssh [email protected]
  3. Available target machines
  4. The number of the lab machine doesn't actually matter as all info is transferred between them all.
  5. Add your public key to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file
  6. The directory ~/.ssh may not exist and you may need to make it with mkdir
  7. The file authorized_keys may not exist and you may need to make it
  8. I would recommend using nano to create the file if you don't like lots of terminal text editors. Exit with CTRL+X then Y then ENTER
  9. Just paste the public key as is, if there's one already, add new line
  10. Exit everything!

2 VSCode setup

  1. Open up VSCode
  2. Install these extensions
  3. Remote - SSH link
  4. Project Manager link this one is optional but highly recommended
  5. Add a remote SSH Host by opening the command palette (CTRL + P or COMMAND + P then type >Add new SSH Host...)
  6. Run the command labeled Remote-SSH: Add new SSH Host... (it will show up before you finish typing)
  7. Type in the ssh command above you used to connect to the CADE machine.
  8. Add to whatever config file you'd like, the first one is recommended.
  9. After you've set that up, use the command palette to run Remote-SSH: Connect To Host...
  10. Connect to the machine you just added
  11. If it's your first machine connection it should be the first option
  12. Go to File > Open Folder and open any folder, I prefer ~ (your home folder)
  13. Go to the Project Manager extension section on the left (looks like two folders)
  14. Hover over favorites and click the save icon to save the current place as a "Project"

You're done!

Seriously that's it. You can use the terminal inside VSCode to do whatever you need to like compiling.

If you need to reconnect to CADE, you don't need to do steps 4-11 again, just go to the Project Manager extension section and click on the profile you just made!

Again, if you have issues leave a discussion below and I will do my best to answer / update the guide.