You may login to your own nodes remotely via SSH as the user site_admin. Before attempting to do so, ensure that you have already uploaded your public SSH key to the website and waited at least an hour for the key to propagate to your nodes. See the User's Guide for more information about creating and uploading an SSH key. To login to one of your nodes, specify site_admin as the login name, the path to your private key file (e.g. ~/.ssh/identity), and the node to login to (e.g. planetlab-1.cs.princeton.edu):

ssh -l site_admin -i ~/.ssh/identity planetlab-1.cs.princeton.edu


    

The site_admin account is not isolated in a VServer as all other accounts are. The site_admin user may execute a variety of administrative programs in /usr/local/planetlab/bin via sudo:

# See all processes (including those running in VServers)


sudo /usr/sbin/vps ax


# See /var/log/messages


sudo 
NOT CURRENTLY SUPPORTED Contact support@planet-lab.org if you need this functionality.


# See all network traffic


sudo /usr/sbin/tcpdump


# Shutdown (halt) the node in 5 minutes



sudo /sbin/shutdown -h 5 "Scheduled maintenance, please save your work and logout"


# Set my password for console login


sudo /usr/bin/passwd site_admin


# Disable my password for console login


sudo /usr/bin/passwd -d site_admin


    

The last two commands may be especially useful if your nodes are connected to monitors and keyboards, are located in a secured environment, and you wish to be able to login to them on their consoles. To login to a node on the console, specify site_admin as the user and the password you set with /usr/bin/passwd as in the example above.