Pistonite VM

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Configure User ​

This page is partially adopted from https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/General_recommendations

Add non-root user ​

We will be adding a non-root user. The example uses piston as the name.

Run

bash
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash piston
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash piston

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-m will create /home/piston. -G will add the user to the wheel group, which is used for sudo access.

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If you want to use a different shell, change the -s flag. The shell needs to be listed in /etc/shells. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Users_and_groups#Example_adding_a_user for more defailts.

Then set the password for the new user with

bash
passwd piston
passwd piston

Adding the wheel group to sudoer ​

Run

bash
EDITOR=nvim visudo
EDITOR=nvim visudo

Search for wheel and uncomment this line

%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL
%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Enabling SSH ​

Run

bash
systemctl enable sshd
systemctl start sshd
systemctl enable sshd
systemctl start sshd

SSH into the VM with your new user, replace <IP> with the IP address of the VM

ssh piston@<IP>
ssh piston@<IP>

WARNING

Your IP address might have changed. Run ip address to get it again

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If you can't login, make sure you have a shell set for the user that is listed in /etc/shells. For example /usr/bin/bash will not work out of the box and you need to use /bin/bash instead

(Optional) SSH Keys ​

It's more secure to use SSH key for login and disable password login for servers. However, since the VM is on your local computer, it's not really necessary.

If you still like to use SSH keys (for example, in case you type the password on stream accidentally), you can do that.

In Windows Powershell, run

ssh-keygen -t ed25519
ssh-keygen -t ed25519

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Windows use 2048 bit RSA keys by default. We use ed25519 here because it's better

You can change the key location or use the default. Optionally you can setup a passphrase for the key.

WARNING

You might want to change the location if you also have an SSH key for things like GitHub

Then run this in Powershell to copy the public key to the VM

type <path\to\key.pub> | ssh piston@<IP> "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
type <path\to\key.pub> | ssh piston@<IP> "mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

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Credit to https://chrisjhart.com/Windows-10-ssh-copy-id/ for the powershell command. If you have WSL, you can simply use

ssh-copy-id -i <path/to/key.pub> piston@<IP>
ssh-copy-id -i <path/to/key.pub> piston@<IP>

Now you can ssh into the VM with the key

ssh -i <path/to/key> piston@<IP>
ssh -i <path/to/key> piston@<IP>

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Save this as an powershell alias for easier access

Disable password login ​

With SSH key setup you can disable password login to be extra secure.

  1. Login via SSH with your key
  2. Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    sudo nvim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    sudo nvim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  3. Search for PasswordAuthentication. Uncomment the line and change it to no
    PasswordAuthentication no
    PasswordAuthentication no
  4. Save and exit nvim
  5. Restart the SSH service
    sudo systemctl restart sshd
    sudo systemctl restart sshd
  6. Logout with logout or Ctrl-D, and try to login with password. It should fail.
    ssh piston@<IP>
    ssh piston@<IP>