SSH Access to Oracle Virtual Machine

Here we’ll look at gaining remote, Secure Shell (SSH) access to an Oracle virtual machine (VM) instance. If you don’t have one set up you can look through the first few sections of my article here to see how it’s done! For remote access we’ll be using PuTTY, which you can download here.

Having set up your VM make sure it is currently running. Next we will need to note the IP address to connect to via SSH. Go to your “Instance Details” page for the VM. From here you’ll need to make a note of the “Public IP Address”.

Having obtained your Public IP address, open PuTTY and enter it under the “Host Name (or IP address)” field. Leave the “Port” number as ‘22’ (the default SSH port).

Next on the side menu, expand the “SSH” menu, and navigate to “Auth”. When you set up the VM instance you should have provided it with a public key, at this stage you will need the corresponding private key. From here select “Browse” and point it to your SSH private key that matches that public key. Now click “Open” to initiate your connection.

PuTTY will now change to display a terminal-like screen. Assuming this is the first use of the VM, you will need to use the default user. As of writing this article (07/01/2020), this should be ‘opc’. Type this in, hit enter, and you’ll have access to the VM.

If you want to speed up this login process, you can navigate to the “Data” menu under “Connection”. In the “Auto-login username” field enter ‘opc’.

If you navigate back to the “Session” menu, you can enter a name under “Saved Sessions”, and hit “save”. If you do so, in future you can just double click the saved name from the list and PuTTY will initiate the ssh connection for you.

Questions, comments? You can find me over on LinkedIn.

* All views are my own and not that of Oracle *