teleport/docs/4.3/user-manual.md

title	description
Teleport User Manual	Manual for how to manage user identities, share sessions for SSH and Kubernetes access using the command line and the Web UI.

Teleport User Manual

This User Manual covers usage of the Teleport client tool, tsh and Teleport's Web interface.

In this document you will learn how to:

• Log into an interactive shell on remote cluster nodes.
• Copy files to and from cluster nodes.
• Connect to SSH clusters behind firewalls without any open ports, using SSH reverse tunnels.
• Explore a cluster and execute commands on specific nodes in a cluster.
• Share interactive shell sessions with colleagues or join someone else's session.
• Replay recorded interactive sessions.

In addition to this document, you can always simply type tsh into your terminal for the CLI reference.

Introduction

For the impatient, here's an example of how a user would typically use tsh:

# Login into a Teleport cluster. This command retrieves user's certificates
# and saves them into ~/.tsh/teleport.example.com
$ tsh login --proxy=teleport.example.com

# SSH into a node, as usual:
$ tsh ssh user@node

# `tsh ssh` takes the same arguments as OpenSSH client:
$ tsh ssh -o ForwardAgent=yes user@node
$ tsh ssh -o AddKeysToAgent=yes user@node

# you can even create a convenient symlink:
$ ln -s /path/to/tsh /path/to/ssh

# ... and now your 'ssh' command is calling Teleport's `tsh ssh`
$ ssh user@host

# This command removes SSH certificates from a user's machine:
$ tsh logout

In other words, Teleport was designed to be fully compatible with existing SSH-based workflows and does not require users to learn anything new, other than to call tsh login in the beginning.

Installing tsh

• Windows Users: Download tsh Binary

• Mac Users: Download Mac Teleport Binary. Includes tsh

• Mac Users with Homebrew: brew install teleport

• Linux Users: Download Linux Teleport Binary. Includes tsh

  !!! note The Teleport package in Homebrew is not maintained by Teleport. We recommend the use of our own Teleport packages.

User Identities

A user identity in Teleport exists in the scope of a cluster. The member nodes of a cluster may have multiple OS users on them. A Teleport administrator assigns allowed logins to every Teleport user account.

When logging into a remote node, you will have to specify both logins. Teleport identity will have to be passed as --user flag, while the node login will be passed as login@host, using syntax compatible with traditional ssh.

# Authenticate against the "work" cluster as joe and then
# log into the node as root:
$ tsh ssh --proxy=work.example.com --user=joe root@node

CLI Docs - tsh ssh

Logging In

To retrieve a user's certificate, execute:

# Full form:
$ tsh login --proxy=proxy_host:<https_proxy_port>,<ssh_proxy_port>

# Using default ports:
$ tsh login --proxy=work.example.com

# Using custom HTTPS port:
$ tsh login --proxy=work.example.com:5000

# Using custom SSH proxy port, which is set on the Auth Server:
$ tsh login --proxy=work.example.com:2002

CLI Docs - tsh login

Port	Description
https_proxy_port	the HTTPS port the proxy host is listening to (defaults to 3080).
ssh_proxy_port	the SSH port the proxy is listening to (defaults to 3023).

The login command retrieves a user's certificate and stores it in ~/.tsh directory as well as in the ssh agent, if there is one running.

This allows you to authenticate just once, maybe at the beginning of the day. Subsequent tsh ssh commands will run without asking for credentials until the temporary certificate expires. By default, Teleport issues user certificates with a TTL (time to live) of 12 hours.

!!! tip "Tip"

It is recommended to always use [`tsh login`](cli-docs.md#tsh-login) before
using any other `tsh` commands. This
allows users to omit `--proxy` flag in subsequent tsh commands. For example
`tsh ssh user@host` will work.

A Teleport cluster can be configured for multiple user identity sources. For example, a cluster may have a local user called "admin" while regular users should authenticate via Github. In this case, you have to pass --auth flag to tsh login to specify which identity storage to use:

# Login using the local Teleport 'admin' user:
$ tsh --proxy=proxy.example.com --auth=local --user=admin login

# Login using Github as an SSO provider, assuming the Github connector is called "github"
$ tsh --proxy=proxy.example.com --auth=github --user=admin login

When using an external identity provider to log in, tsh will need to open a web browser to complete the authentication flow. By default, tsh will use your system's default browser to open such links. If you wish to suppress this behaviour, you can use the --browser=none flag:

# Don't open the system default browser when logging in
$ tsh login --proxy=work.example.com --browser=none

In this situation, a link will be printed to the screen. You can copy and paste this link into a browser of your choice to continue the login flow.

CLI Docs - tsh login

Inspecting SSH Certificate

To inspect the SSH certificates in ~/.tsh, a user may execute the following command:

$ tsh status

> Profile URL:  https://proxy.example.com:3080
  Logged in as: johndoe
  Roles:        admin*
  Logins:       root, admin, guest
  Valid until:  2017-04-25 15:02:30 -0700 PDT [valid for 1h0m0s]
  Extensions:   permit-agent-forwarding, permit-port-forwarding, permit-pty

CLI Docs - tsh status

SSH Agent Support

If there is an ssh agent running, tsh login will store the user certificate in the agent. This can be verified via:

$ ssh-add -L

SSH agent can be used to feed the certificate to other SSH clients, for example to OpenSSH ssh.

If you wish to disable SSH agent integration, pass --no-use-local-ssh-agent to tsh. You can also set the TELEPORT_USE_LOCAL_SSH_AGENT environment variable to false in your shell profile to make this permanent.

Identity Files

tsh login can also save the user certificate into a file:

# Authenticate user against proxy.example.com and save the user
# certificate into joe.pem file
$ tsh login --proxy=proxy.example.com --out=joe

# Use joe.pem to login into a server 'db'
$ tsh ssh --proxy=proxy.example.com -i joe joe@db

By default, --out flag will create an identity file suitable for tsh -i but if compatibility with OpenSSH is needed, --format=openssh must be specified. In this case the identity will be saved into two files: joe and joe-cert.pub:

$ tsh login --proxy=proxy.example.com --out=joe --format=openssh
$ ls -lh
total 8.0K
-rw------- 1 joe staff 1.7K Aug 10 16:16 joe
-rw------- 1 joe staff 1.5K Aug 10 16:16 joe-cert.pub

SSH Certificates for Automation

Regular users of Teleport must request an auto-expiring SSH certificate, usually every day. This doesn't work for non-interactive scripts, like cron jobs or CI/CD pipeline.

For such automation, it is recommended to create a separate Teleport user for bots and request a certificate for them with a long time to live (TTL).

In this example we're creating a certificate with a TTL of 10 years for the jenkins user and storing it in jenkins.pem file, which can be later used with -i (identity) flag for tsh.

# to be executed on a Teleport auth server
$ tctl auth sign --ttl=87600h --user=jenkins --out=jenkins.pem

CLI Docs - tctl auth sign

Now jenkins.pem can be copied to the jenkins server and passed to -i (identity file) flag of tsh. Essentially tctl auth sign is an admin's equivalent of tsh login --out and allows for unrestricted certificate TTL values.

Exploring the Cluster

In a Teleport cluster, all nodes periodically ping the cluster's auth server and update their status. This allows Teleport users to see which nodes are online with the tsh ls command:

# This command lists all nodes in the cluster which you previously logged in via "tsh login":
$ tsh ls

# Output:
Node Name     Node ID                Address            Labels
---------     -------                -------            ------
turing        11111111-dddd-4132     10.1.0.5:3022      os:linux
turing        22222222-cccc-8274     10.1.0.6:3022      os:linux
graviton      33333333-aaaa-1284     10.1.0.7:3022      os:osx

CLI Docs - tsh ls

tsh ls can apply a filter based on the node labels.

# only show nodes with os label set to 'osx':
$ tsh ls os=osx

Node Name     Node ID                Address            Labels
---------     -------                -------            ------
graviton      33333333-aaaa-1284     10.1.0.7:3022      os:osx

CLI Docs -tsh ls

Interactive Shell

To launch an interactive shell on a remote node or to execute a command, use tsh ssh.

tsh tries to mimic the ssh experience as much as possible, so it supports the most popular ssh flags like -p, -l or -L. For example, if you have the following alias defined in your ~/.bashrc: alias ssh="tsh ssh" then you can continue using familiar SSH syntax:

# Have this alias configured, perhaps via ~/.bashrc
$ alias ssh="/usr/local/bin/tsh ssh"

# Login into a cluster and retrieve your SSH certificate:
$ tsh --proxy=proxy.example.com login

# These commands execute `tsh ssh` under the hood:
$ ssh user@node
$ ssh -p 6122 user@node ls
$ ssh -o ForwardAgent=yes user@node
$ ssh -o AddKeysToAgent=yes user@node

Proxy Ports

A Teleport proxy uses two ports: 3080 for HTTPS and 3023 for proxying SSH connections. The HTTPS port is used to serve Web UI and also to implement 2nd factor auth for the tsh client.

If a Teleport proxy is configured to listen on non-default ports, they must be specified via --proxy flag as shown:

tsh --proxy=proxy.example.com:5000,5001 <subcommand>

This means use port 5000 for HTTPS and 5001 for SSH.

Port Forwarding

tsh ssh supports the OpenSSH -L flag which forwards incoming connections from localhost to the specified remote host:port. The syntax of -L flag is as follows, where "bind_ip" defaults to 127.0.0.1:

-L [bind_ip]:listen_port:remote_host:remote_port

Example:

$ tsh ssh -L 5000:web.remote:80 node

This will connect to remote server node via proxy.example.com, then it will open a listening socket on localhost:5000 and will forward all incoming connections to web.remote:80 via this SSH tunnel.

It is often convenient to establish port forwarding, execute a local command which uses the connection, and then disconnect. You can do this with the --local flag.

Example:

$ tsh ssh -L 5000:google.com:80 --local node curl http://localhost:5000

This command:

1. Connects to node
2. Binds the local port 5000 to port 80 on google.com
3. Executes curl command locally, which results in curl hitting google.com:80 via node

SSH Jumphost

While implementing ProxyJump for Teleport, we have extended the feature to tsh.

$ tsh ssh -J proxy.example.com telenode

Known limits:

• Only one jump host is supported (-J supports chaining that Teleport does not utilise) and tsh will return with error in the case of two jumphosts, i.e. -J proxy-1.example.com,proxy-2.example.com will not work.
• When tsh ssh -J user@proxy is used, it overrides the SSH proxy defined in the tsh profile and port forwarding is used instead of the existing Teleport proxy subsystem.

Resolving Node Names

tsh supports multiple methods to resolve remote node names.

1. Traditional: by IP address or via DNS.
2. Nodename setting: teleport daemon supports nodename flag, which allows Teleport administrators to assign alternative node names.
3. Labels: you can address a node by name=value pair.

If we have two nodes, one with os:linux label and one node with os:osx, we can log into the OSX node with:

$ tsh ssh os=osx

This only works if there is only one remote node with the os:osx label, but you can still execute commands via SSH on multiple nodes using labels as a selector. This command will update all system packages on machines that run Linux:

$ tsh ssh os=ubuntu apt-get update -y

Short-lived Sessions

The default TTL of a Teleport user certificate is 12 hours. This can be modified at login with the --ttl flag. This command logs you into the cluster with a very short-lived (1 minute) temporary certificate:

$ tsh --ttl=1 login

You will be logged out after one minute, but if you want to log out immediately, you can always do:

$ tsh logout

Copying Files

To securely copy files to and from cluster nodes, use the tsh scp command. It is designed to mimic traditional scp as much as possible:

$ tsh scp example.txt root@node:/path/to/dest

Again, you may want to create a bash alias like alias scp="tsh --proxy=work scp" and use the familiar syntax:

$ scp -P 61122 -r files root@node:/path/to/dest

Sharing Sessions

Suppose you are trying to troubleshoot a problem on a remote server. Sometimes it makes sense to ask another team member for help. Traditionally, this could be done by letting them know which node you're on, having them SSH in, start a terminal multiplexer like screen and join a session there.

Teleport makes this more convenient. Let's log into a server named "luna" and ask Teleport for our current session status:

$ tsh ssh luna
>luna $ teleport status

User ID    : joe, logged in as joe from 10.0.10.1 43026 3022
Session ID : 7645d523-60cb-436d-b732-99c5df14b7c4
Session URL: https://work:3080/web/sessions/7645d523-60cb-436d-b732-99c5df14b7c4

Now you can invite another user account to the "work" cluster. You can share the URL for access through a web browser, or you can share the session ID and she can join you through her terminal by typing:

$ tsh join <session_ID>

!!! note

Joining sessions is not supported in recording proxy mode (where `session_recording` is set to `proxy`).

Connecting to SSH Clusters behind Firewalls

Teleport supports creating clusters of servers located behind firewalls without any open listening TCP ports. This works by creating reverse SSH tunnels from behind-firewall environments into a Teleport proxy you have access to.

This feature is called "Trusted Clusters". Refer to the admin manual to learn how a trusted cluster can be configured.

Assuming the "work" Teleport proxy server is configured with a few trusted clusters, a user may use the tsh clusters command to see a list of all clusters on the server:

$ tsh --proxy=work clusters

Cluster Name     Status
------------     ------
staging          online
production       offline

CLI Docs - tsh clusters

Now you can use the --cluster flag with any tsh command. For example, to list SSH nodes that are members of the "production" cluster, simply do:

$ tsh --proxy=work ls --cluster=production
Node Name     Node ID       Address            Labels
---------     -------       -------            ------
db-1          xxxxxxxxx     10.0.20.31:3022    kernel:4.4
db-2          xxxxxxxxx     10.0.20.41:3022    kernel:4.2

Similarly, if you want to SSH into db-1 inside the "production" cluster:

$ tsh --proxy=work ssh --cluster=production db-1

This is possible even if nodes in the "production" cluster are located behind a firewall without open ports. This works because the "production" cluster establishes a reverse SSH tunnel back into "work" proxy, and this tunnel is used to establish inbound SSH connections.

Web UI

Teleport proxy serves the web UI on https://proxyhost:3080. The UI allows you to see the list of online nodes in a cluster, open a web-based terminal to them, see recorded sessions, and replay them. You can also join other users in active sessions.

Using OpenSSH Client

There are a few differences between Teleport's tsh and OpenSSH's ssh but most of them can be mitigated.

1. tsh always requires the --proxy flag because tsh needs to know which cluster you are connecting to. But if you execute tsh --proxy=xxx login, the current proxy will be saved in your ~/.tsh profile and won't be needed for other tsh commands.

2. tsh ssh operates two usernames: one for the cluster and another for the node you are trying to log into. See User Identities section below. For convenience, tsh assumes $USER for both by default. But again, if you use tsh login before tsh ssh, your Teleport username will be stored in ~/.tsh.

If you'd like to set the login name that should be used by default on the remote host, you can set the TELEPORT_LOGIN environment variable.

!!! tip "Tip"

To avoid typing `tsh ssh user@host` when logging into servers,
you can create a symlink `ssh -> tsh` and execute the symlink. It will
behave exactly like a standard `ssh` command, i.e. `ssh login@host`. This is
helpful with other tools that expect `ssh` to just work.

Teleport is built using standard SSH constructs: keys, certificates and protocols. This means that a Teleport system is 100% compatible with both OpenSSH clients and servers.

For an OpenSSH client (ssh) to work with a Teleport proxy, two conditions must be met:

1. ssh must be configured to connect through a Teleport proxy.
2. ssh needs to be given the SSH certificate issued by the tsh login command.

SSH Proxy Configuration

To configure ssh to use a Teleport proxy on proxy.example.com, a user must update the /etc/ssh/ssh_config or ~/.ssh/config. A few examples are shown below:

# When "ssh db" is executed, OpenSSH will connect to proxy.example.com on port 3023
# and will request a proxied connection to "db" on port 3022 (default Teleport SSH port)
Host db
    Port 3022
    ProxyJump proxy.example.com:3023

The configuration above is all you need to ssh root@db if there's an SSH agent running on a client computer. You can verify it by executing ssh-add -L right after tsh login. If the SSH agent is running, the cluster certificates will be printed to stdout.

If there is no ssh-agent available, the certificate must be passed to the OpenSSH client explicitly.

When proxy is in "Recording mode" the following will happen with SSH:

$ ssh -J user@teleport.proxy:3023 -p 3022 user@target -F ./forward.config

Where forward.config enables agent forwarding:

Host teleport.proxy
  ForwardAgent yes

Passing Teleport SSH Certificate to OpenSSH Client

If a user does not want to use an SSH agent or if the agent is not available, the certificate must be passed to ssh via IdentityFile option (see man ssh_config). Consider this example: the Teleport user "joe" wants to login into the proxy named "lab.example.com".

He executes the tsh login command:

$ tsh --proxy=lab.example.com login --user=joe

His identity is now stored in ~/.tsh/keys/lab.example.com, so his ~/.ssh/config needs to look like this:

# ~/.ssh/config file:
Host *.lab.example.com
    Port 3022
    IdentityFile ~/.tsh/keys/lab.example.com/joe
    ProxyCommand ssh -i ~/.tsh/keys/lab.example.com/joe -p 3023 %r@lab.example.com -s proxy:%h:%p

Now he can SSH into any machine behind lab.example.com using the OpenSSH client:

$ ssh jenkins.lab.example.com

Troubleshooting

If you encounter strange behaviour, you may want to try to solve it by enabling the verbose logging by specifying -d flag when launching tsh. Also, you may want to reset it to a clean state by deleting temporary keys and other data from ~/.tsh

Getting Help

If you need help, please ask on our community forum. You can also open an issue on Github.

For commercial support, you can create a ticket through the customer dashboard.

For more information about custom features, or to try our Enterprise edition of Teleport, please reach out to us at sales@gravitational.com.