gcloud alpha compute ssh

NAME

gcloud alpha compute ssh - SSH into a virtual machine instance

SYNOPSIS

gcloud alpha compute ssh [USER@]INSTANCE [--command=COMMAND] [--container=CONTAINER] [--dry-run] [--force-key-file-overwrite] [--plain] [--ssh-flag=SSH_FLAG] [--ssh-key-file=SSH_KEY_FILE] [--strict-host-key-checking=STRICT_HOST_KEY_CHECKING] [--troubleshoot] [--zone=ZONE] [--internal-ip     | --tunnel-through-iap] [--network=NETWORK --region=REGION : --dest-group=DEST_GROUP] [--ssh-key-expiration=SSH_KEY_EXPIRATION     | --ssh-key-expire-after=SSH_KEY_EXPIRE_AFTER] [GCLOUD_WIDE_FLAG …] [-- SSH_ARGS …]

DESCRIPTION

(ALPHA) gcloud alpha compute ssh is a thin wrapper around the ssh(1) command that takes care of authentication and the translation of the instance name into an IP address.

To use SSH to connect to a Windows VM, refer to this guide: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/connect/windows-ssh

The default network comes preconfigured to allow ssh access to all VMs. If the default network was edited, or if not using the default network, you may need to explicitly enable ssh access by adding a firewall-rule:

gcloud compute firewall-rules create --network=NETWORK default-allow-ssh --allow=tcp:22

gcloud alpha compute ssh ensures that the user's public SSH key is present in the project's metadata. If the user does not have a public SSH key, one is generated using ssh-keygen(1) (if the --quiet flag is given, the generated key will have an empty passphrase).

If the --region and --network flags are provided, then --plain and --tunnel-through-iap are implied and an IP address must be supplied instead of an instance name. This is most useful for connecting to on-prem resources.

EXAMPLES

To SSH into 'example-instance' in zone us-central1-a, run:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a

You can also run a command on the virtual machine. For example, to get a snapshot of the guest's process tree, run:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a --command="ps -ejH"

When running a command on a virtual machine, a non-interactive shell will typically be used. (See the INVOCATION section of https://linux.die.net/man/1/bash for an overview.) That behavior can be overridden by specifying a shell to run the command, and passing the -t flag to SSH to allocate a pseudo-TTY. For example, to see the environment variables set during an interactive session, run:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a --command="bash -i -c env" -- -t

If you are using the Google Container-Optimized virtual machine image, you can SSH into one of your containers with:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a --container=CONTAINER

You can limit the allowed time to ssh. For example, to allow a key to be used through 2019:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a --ssh-key-expiration="2020-01-01T00:00:00:00Z"

Or alternatively, allow access for the next two minutes:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a --ssh-key-expire-after=2m

To use the IP address of your remote VM (eg, for on-prem), you must also specify the --region and --network flags:

gcloud alpha compute ssh 10.1.2.3 --region=us-central1 --network=default

POSITIONAL ARGUMENTS

[USER@]INSTANCE

Specifies the instance to SSH into.

USER specifies the username with which to SSH. If omitted, the user login name is used. If using OS Login, USER will be replaced by the OS Login user.

INSTANCE specifies the name of the virtual machine instance to SSH into.

[-- SSH_ARGS …]

Flags and positionals passed to the underlying ssh implementation. The '--' argument must be specified between gcloud specific args on the left and SSH_ARGS on the right. Example:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a -- -vvv -L 80:%INSTANCE%:80

FLAGS

--command=COMMAND

A command to run on the virtual machine.

Runs the command on the target instance and then exits.

--container=CONTAINER

The name or ID of a container inside of the virtual machine instance to connect to. This only applies to virtual machines that are using a Google Container-Optimized virtual machine image. For more information, see https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/containers.

--dry-run

Print the equivalent scp/ssh command that would be run to stdout, instead of executing it.

--force-key-file-overwrite

If enabled, the gcloud command-line tool will regenerate and overwrite the files associated with a broken SSH key without asking for confirmation in both interactive and non-interactive environments.

If disabled, the files associated with a broken SSH key will not be regenerated and will fail in both interactive and non-interactive environments.

--plain

Suppress the automatic addition of ssh(1)/scp(1) flags. This flag is useful if you want to take care of authentication yourself or use specific ssh/scp features.

--ssh-flag=SSH_FLAG

Additional flags to be passed to ssh(1). It is recommended that flags be passed using an assignment operator and quotes. Example:

gcloud alpha compute ssh example-instance --zone=us-central1-a --ssh-flag="-vvv" --ssh-flag="-L 80:localhost:80"

This flag will replace occurences of %USER%, %INSTANCE%, and %INTERNAL% with their dereferenced values. For example, passing 80:%INSTANCE%:80 into the flag is equivalent to passing 80:162.222.181.197:80 to ssh(1) if the external IP address of 'example-instance' is 162.222.181.197.

If connecting to the instance's external IP, then %INSTANCE% is replaced with that, otherwise it is replaced with the internal IP. %INTERNAL% is always replaced with the internal interface of the instance.

--ssh-key-file=SSH_KEY_FILE

The path to the SSH key file. By default, this is ~/.ssh/google_compute_engine.

--strict-host-key-checking=STRICT_HOST_KEY_CHECKING

Override the default behavior of StrictHostKeyChecking for the connection. By default, StrictHostKeyChecking is set to 'no' the first time you connect to an instance, and will be set to 'yes' for all subsequent connections. STRICT_HOST_KEY_CHECKING must be one of: yes, no, ask.

--troubleshoot

If you can't connect to a virtual machine (VM) instance using SSH, you can investigate the problem using the --troubleshoot flag:

gcloud alpha compute ssh VM_NAME --zone=ZONE --troubleshoot [--tunnel-through-iap]

The troubleshoot flag runs tests and returns recommendations for four types of issues:

• VM status
• Network connectivity
• User permissions
• Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) settings
• VM boot

If you specify the --tunnel-through-iap flag, the tool also checks IAP port forwarding.

--zone=ZONE

Zone of the instance to connect to. If not specified and the compute/zone property isn't set, you might be prompted to select a zone (interactive mode only).

To avoid prompting when this flag is omitted, you can set the compute/zone property:

gcloud config set compute/zone ZONE

A list of zones can be fetched by running:

gcloud compute zones list

To unset the property, run:

gcloud config unset compute/zone

Alternatively, the zone can be stored in the environment variable CLOUDSDK_COMPUTE_ZONE.

At most one of these can be specified:

--internal-ip

Connect to instances using their internal IP addresses rather than their external IP addresses. Use this to connect from one instance to another on the same VPC network, over a VPN connection, or between two peered VPC networks.

For this connection to work, you must configure your networks and firewall to allow SSH connections to the internal IP address of the instance to which you want to connect.

To learn how to use this flag, see https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/connecting-advanced#sshbetweeninstances.

--tunnel-through-iap

Tunnel the ssh connection through Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy for TCP forwarding.

To learn more, see the IAP for TCP forwarding documentation.

--network=NETWORK

Configures the VPC network to use when connecting via IP address or FQDN.

--region=REGION

Configures the region to use when connecting via IP address or FQDN.

--dest-group=DEST_GROUP

Configures the destination group to use when connecting via IP address or FQDN.

At most one of these can be specified:

--ssh-key-expiration=SSH_KEY_EXPIRATION

The time when the ssh key will be valid until, such as "2017-08-29T18:52:51.142Z." This is only valid if the instance is not using OS Login. See $ gcloud topic datetimes for information on time formats.

--ssh-key-expire-after=SSH_KEY_EXPIRE_AFTER

The maximum length of time an SSH key is valid for once created and installed, e.g. 2m for 2 minutes. See $ gcloud topic datetimes for information on duration formats.

GCLOUD WIDE FLAGS

These flags are available to all commands: --access-token-file, --account, --billing-project, --configuration, --flags-file, --flatten, --format, --help, --impersonate-service-account, --log-http, --project, --quiet, --trace-token, --user-output-enabled, --verbosity.

Run $ gcloud help for details.

NOTES

This command is currently in alpha and might change without notice. If this command fails with API permission errors despite specifying the correct project, you might be trying to access an API with an invitation-only early access allowlist. These variants are also available:

gcloud compute ssh

gcloud beta compute ssh