Connect via SSH

• Connect with your own SSH client
  • Generate public & private keys
  • Upload public key
  • Connect with SSH
    • Connect with PuTTY (Windows)
    • Error messages during login
      • Error: Permission denied (publickey)
      • Error: No hostkey for host
  • Find key fingerprint in DNS
  • Connect with SFTP
  • Reuse connections with ControlMaster
  • SSH‑key‑forwarding

You can easily connect via SSH to your webhosting plan, directly through our Control Panel. This is done under the menu item "Website" -> "SSH access" in our Control Panel.

¶Connect with your own SSH client

To connect via SSH from your own computer to a Simply.com webhosting plan, you need to add a public key to the webhosting plan.

¶Generate public & private keys

If you do not already have an SSH key pair, you can generate one with the Linux command

ssh-keygen -t rsa

This will generate both a private and a public key on your computer.
Your public key will be located in the file "id_rsa.pub", and your private key will be located in the file "id_rsa".

You can also use the Windows program PuTTYgen.

¶Upload public key

Once you have your public key, you need to go to the Simply.com control panel, and under the individual product, from the "Website" menu, select the item "SSH access". Here you can add your public SSH key. Once this is done, you can connect via SSH to your webhosting plan.

¶Connect with SSH

You need to connect via SSH to ssh.simply.com, using the same username as for e.g. FTP.
To be able to log in with SSH, you must have uploaded a public key.

¶Connect with PuTTY (Windows)

If you want to connect with PuTTY, you can use Pageant to provide your private key when connecting.

¶Error messages during login

¶Error: Permission denied (publickey)

This error occurs when you do not send your private key during login. Check the configuration of your SSH client.
Make sure you send the key.

¶Error: No hostkey for host

This means that your SSH client is missing the server's host key in known_hosts. Add it with:

ssh-keyscan -t rsa,ecdsa,ed25519 ssh.simply.com >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts

¶Find key fingerprint in DNS

The server's SSH host keys are published as SSHFP records in DNS. This makes it possible to look up the server's key fingerprint and verify that the host key your SSH client is presented with really belongs to the server.

You can look up the fingerprints with dig:

dig -t SSHFP ssh.simply.com +short

Or with nslookup:

nslookup -type=SSHFP ssh.simply.com

OpenSSH can also verify the server's host key against SSHFP records in DNS itself:

ssh -o VerifyHostKeyDNS=yes ditbrugernavn@ssh.simply.com

¶Connect with SFTP

You can also transfer files securely with SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol). SFTP uses the same server and login as SSH, so you need to use the same username and public key as described above.

You can connect with the command:

sftp ditbrugernavn@ssh.simply.com

Alternatively, you can use a graphical client such as FileZilla or WinSCP. Select SFTP as the protocol, enter ssh.simply.com as the host, and use your username and your private key.

¶Reuse connections with ControlMaster

If you make many short SSH connections (e.g. via scripts, rsync or git), you can save time with OpenSSH's ControlMaster. It reuses an existing connection, so subsequent connections do not have to go through the entire login process again.

Add the following to your ~/.ssh/config:

Host simply
    HostName ssh.simply.com
    User ditbrugernavn
    ControlMaster auto
    ControlPath ~/.ssh/cm-%r@%h:%p
    ControlPersist 10m

After this, the first connection (ssh simply) creates a "master" connection, which all subsequent connections reuse – making them almost instantaneous.

You can also use ControlMaster directly from the command line, without editing your ~/.ssh/config:

ssh -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPath=~/.ssh/cm-%r@%h:%p -o ControlPersist=10m ditbrugernavn@ssh.simply.com

Subsequent connections with the same ControlPath then reuse the master connection.

¶SSH‑key‑forwarding

SSH‑key‑forwarding (agent forwarding) is not supported on Simply.com servers. If you need to make SSH connections from your web server to other servers, you must use alternative methods, such as placing a dedicated key on the server.