An SSH (Secure Shell) session is a useful means of direct communication with your Virtual Server, giving you remote access to your virtual machine. It is used to install software, modify configuration files and much more. It can also be used to test scripts and generally manage your web site(s) and applications. Many times, users need to access the command line interface (Shell) on their server in order to complete tasks or make changes which are not support by a graphical user interface (GUI). Please see the following steps on how to access the shell on your VPS:
If you are running Windows:
1. Download PuTTY: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe
2. Double click the executable file to open the PuTTY Program
3. In the “Host Name (or IP address) section, enter your servers hostname
4. In the port section, enter your servers SSH port. (Default SSH port is 22)
5. At the bottom of the program, click the “Open” button.
6. It may ask you to confirm your servers fingerprint. If it does, you can safely click “Yes” on the popup dialog box.
7. It will ask you for your login, enter “root” without the quotes to login as root and hit enter.
8. Enter your password, then hit enter. You will now be logged into your server as the root user. (Please note, upon entering your root password, you will not see any characters echoing to the screen.)
If you are running Linux / Mac:
1. Open up your local computers terminal.
2. Type in the following: ssh root@server_ip_address -p22 where server_ip_address is the IP address to your server and 22 is the SSH port assigned to your server (Default SSH port is 22).