How to ssh into rancher desktop node?

Question

I just started to use Rancher and request to correct me for any wrong terminology.

Earlier I was using minikube on Macbook which provide SSH easily using minikube ssh for troubleshooting. As I am newbie to Rancher Desktop and wanted to do SSH on Rancher Desktop node similar to minikube.

I googled for same but unfortunately I didn't get any fruitful answer. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

On recent versions (1.3 on) you can use the rdctl utility, which ships with Rancher Desktop, and run rdctl shell COMMAND or rdctl shell to ssh into the VM.

Answer 2

You can access using below(first line):

$LIMA_HOME="$HOME/Library/Application Support/rancher-desktop/lima" "/Applications/Rancher Desktop.app/Contents/Resources/resources/darwin/lima/bin/limactl" shell 0

lima-rancher-desktop:/Users/kulsharm2$ uname -a Linux lima-rancher-desktop 5.10.103-0-virt #1-Alpine SMP Tue, 08 Mar 2022 10:06:11 +0000 x86_64 Linux

Answer 3

you should be able to use limactl show-ssh NAME where NAME is the name of your rancher node (which you can list using limactl list).

alternatively, you can also use ps -ef | grep rancher which will list the rancher processes, some of which containing ssh information:

126693404  2136  1983   0 Thu12PM ??         0:00.01 ssh -F /dev/null -o IdentityFile="/Users/xxxxxx/Library/Application Support/rancher-desktop/lima/_config/user" -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -o UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null -o NoHostAuthenticationForLocalhost=yes -o GSSAPIAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=publickey -o Compression=no -o BatchMode=yes -o IdentitiesOnly=yes -o Ciphers="^[email protected],[email protected]" -o User=xxxxxx -o ControlMaster=auto -o ControlPath="/Users/xxxxxx/Library/Application Support/rancher-desktop/lima/0/ssh.sock" -o ControlPersist=5m -p 49314 127.0.0.1 -- sshfs :/tmp/rancher-desktop /tmp/rancher-desktop -o slave -o allow_other

you can then manually ssh by using the same port and identity file as the command is using. In this case:

 ssh -p 49314 -i '/Users/xxxxxx/Library/Application Support/rancher-desktop/lima/_config/user' xxxxxx@localhost

This is, for sure, less convenient but seems to be working well.