Teleport is software which provides an SSH Jump Host (or Bastion host) service in a secure, modern, way, with support for role-based access control, and single sign-on.
It is a replacement for the ecAccess SSH service, and is operated by the CD Apps team and User Services.
This service is under development. Please continue to use the existing ECAccess service!
Overview
The Teleport service provides:
- Single SSH hop from client systems anywhere on the internet to servers inside ECMWF (ecGate, HPC, etc)
- Web single sign-on using ECMWF's website and the HID token
- Eight hour sessions allowing multiple connections between re-authentication
- Integration with standard tools such as the OpenSSH ssh client, and ssh-agent
The single sign-on step is performed using an application called "tsh
", every eight hours.
After that you use standard ssh or scp to connect to systems inside ECMWF.
Downloading tsh
The tsh
application is required to perform user authentication once every eight hours.
tsh
is open source, very portable, and has minimal dependencies.
- Download from the Gravitational website and place into your
$PATH
The binary is available for Linux 32-bit, 64-bit, and ARM, as well as Windows 64-bit and a signed package for MacOS.
MacOS users can also use homebrew for installation (brew install teleport
).
User Authentication
Once every eight hours, you will need to refresh your tokens by logging in to the ECMWF website.
SSH connections can remain active for longer than eight hours, but new ones will require re-authentication.
First Time
Run tsh
, giving the location of our gateway:
tsh login --proxy=shell.ecmwf.int:443
Your default web browser will open and you should login with your email address, workstation password, and then HID Token code.
If you're already logged in to the ECMWF website, or have recently logged in to this service, the password prompt might be skipped.
Subsequent Occasions
tsh login
Connecting to hosts through the gateway
Windows users should skip to our Guide for Windows SSH to ECMWF.
OpenSSH 7.3 or later has a simple command line option to connect via our gateway (shell.ecmwf.int
) to the destination-host
:
ssh -J username@shell.ecmwf.int username@destination-host
For example, if your username is ab0
and you wish to connect to ecgate
:
ssh -J ab0@shell.ecmwf.int ab0@ecgate
The OpenSSH configuration setting for this is named ProxyJump
:
Host ecgate User ab0 ProxyJump ab0@shell.ecmwf.int
See the Legacy Configuration note below if your ssh client is older than 7.3.
If your connection fails after working for some time, it could be because your tokens have expired. You can check them:
$ tsh status > Profile URL: https://shell.ecmwf.int:443 Logged in as: firstname.lastname@ecmwf.int Cluster: shell.ecmwf.int Roles: * Logins: ab0 Valid until: 2020-06-22 23:26:30 +0100 BST [EXPIRED] Extensions: permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty
Destination Hosts available
The hosts available through the Teleport gateway are:
- Linux VDI (both legacy OpenSUSE and CENTOS 8 beta)
- Physical office workstations
- ecGate
- HPC2020 TEMS
Configuring passwordless login
With the initial configuration you may be prompted for a password at the destination-host
.
For login without a password, add the Teleport certificate authority to your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
file:
curl -fs https://nexus.ecmwf.int/repository/internal-teleport-configs/prod/teleport_user_ca.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
This configuration will allow access to any host which mounts the same $HOME
directory.
Windows Clients
There are various ways to initiate SSH from Windows 10, so it depends on your system and your preferences.
We recommend using the Windows Subsystem for Linux if you can (on your own machine), followed by starting the SSH Agent and then connecting as for Linux/MacOS systems.
Alternatively, you can use:
Other Notes
SSH Agent is required
If you have logged in but ssh fails to connect, it may be that your SSH agent is not running.
The Agent can be started and tokens refreshed this way:
eval $(ssh-agent -s) tsh logout tsh login
And this will make sure the Agent continues to run in your environment:
echo 'eval $(ssh-agent -s)' >> ~/.bash_profile
SCP, X11, Agent, and Port Forwarding
scp, agent, and port forwarding will work through the Teleport gateway.
X11 forwarding will work in a couple of months when we have an update from the vendor.
Legacy Configuration
For OpenSSH clients older than 7.3, the following configuration can be used:
# ~/.ssh/config file: Host ecgate User ab0 ProxyCommand /usr/bin/ssh -q -W %h:%p ab0@shell.ecmwf.int
Difficult client environments
You might not be able to download and run tsh
, or access our web login service, from where you wish to use ssh.
Instead you can use (or copy) the identity file which tsh
stores in $HOME
:
# ~/.ssh/config file: Host ecgate User ab0 IdentityFile ~/.tsh/keys/shell.ecmwf.int/firstname.lastname@ecmwf.int ProxyCommand /usr/bin/ssh -q -i ~/.tsh/keys/shell.ecmwf.int/firstname.lastname@ecmwf.int -W %h:%p ab0@shell.ecmwf.int
This is a good way to access Teleport credentials via a shared file system from any host.