SSH connection from within the app-vm container.

Once you've opened an SSH session to the main container, it can sometime be handy to be able to make ssh connections to external servers, for example to be able to do things like drush sql-sync @stage $vm.

This is a 2 step process.

1. Username

This first think you need is to make sure your username matches what is expected server-side, and not the default "vagrant" user. To ensure consistency, the best way is to create a custom ansible role in your ~/.CodeEnigma/ce-vm/5.x/ce-vm-custom folder so that it applies to all of your projects. Refer to "Ansible customisation" for details, but in a nutshell:

  • copy the ce-vm/examples/ce-vm-custom folder that comes with the template you have generated at http://ce-vm.codeenigma.net to ~/.CodeEnigma/ce-vm/5.x/ce-vm-custom (if you don't have one already).
  • edit ~/.CodeEnigma/ce-vm/5.x/ce-vm-custom/ansible/app.yml and uncomment the custom.ssh role line
  • edit the example template in the matching role (~/.CodeEnigma/ce-vm/5.x/ce-vm-custom/ansible/roles/custom.ssh/templates/config.j2) to your needs

The example looks like this, and you will of course need to replace hosts and username with your own:


Host *.codeenigma.net
User dummy

Host *.codeenigma.com
User dummy

You can then apply your changes with vagrant provision for existing projects (new projects will pick it up automatically), and this will be copied on the guest as ~/.ssh/config.

2. SSH Agent forwarding

Next thing you need is to tell your ssh-agent to forward your key to the guest container. This is currently still a manual step you need to perform before vagrant ssh'ing into the app-vm.

It usually is as simple as ssh-add, or ssh-add ~/.ssh/my-key.rsa if you have several keys and you want to pick one in particular.