Plesk: SSH Access

This article provides a detailed guide on enabling and using SSH access through the Plesk administration tool. It describes how to log in, use SSH port 2121, and execute commands. It also lists available commands and tools such as Composer, PHP versions, and SSH keys. The article explains how to properly set up MySQL connections and offers tips for using WordPress CLI and Drupal. On Managed Servers, SSH is disabled by default and must be enabled through support.

Activation
Login / Connection Setup
Available Commands
Additional Notes

•  

  Activation

  1. Log in to the Plesk administration tool.
     
     If you no longer have the Plesk admin password, please refer to the article: Forgot Password
     
      
  2. Under the menu item Websites & Domains, you can enable SSH access for the system user under Web Hosting Access:
     
      
  3. Now select /bin/bash (chrooted) for SSH server access:

  Login / Connection Setup

  Use SSH port 2121:

  # ssh <username>@<server> -p2121
  [e-mail]'s password:
  user@server />

  Alternatively, you can connect using an SSH client such as PuTTY, iTerm, MacOS Terminal, or similar.

  Available Commands

  Basic Commands	awk, basename, cat, cd, chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, cut, date echo, env, expr, file, gawk, grep, hostname, less, ln, ls mkdir, more, mv, printenv, pwd, readlink, rm, sed, sleep sort, stat, stty, tail, timeout, touch, tput, tr, uname, uniq wc, which, xargs, zgrep, zless
  Network / File Transfer	curl, rsync, scp, ssh, ssh-keygen, ssh-keyscan, wget
  Editor	vi, vim, nano
  Compression / Archiving	gunzip, gzip, tar, unzip, zip, bunzip2, bzip2
  Search	find, grep, diff
  Database	mysql, mysqldump
  Developer Tools	composer (Version 2), composer1 (Version 1), composer2 (Version 2) git, patch, wp (WP-CLI) PHP 7.4: /usr/bin/php or php PHP 7.3: /opt/php73/bin/php PHP 8.0: /opt/php80/bin/php PHP 8.1: /opt/php81/bin/php PHP 8.2: /opt/php82/bin/php

  Additional Notes

  Here you will find further notes about SSH access.

  MySQL
  Composer
  SSH
  WordPress CLI / Drupal (drush / Drupal Console)
  PHP
  Customer Contributions
  Managed Servers

   

  MySQL

  Connection Setup

  The connection to the database server must be made via 127.0.0.1.

  For this, access from 127.0.0.1 must first be allowed in Plesk. To do this, click in Plesk under "Databases > User Management" on the respective user and then enable the option "Allow remote connections from" under "Access Control" and enter 127.0.0.1 in the field below.

  Afterwards, you can connect via shell as follows.

  Example:

  user@server /> mysql -h 127.0.0.1 -u <database_user> -p <database> 

  Composer

  Composer is globally installed in versions 1.x and 2.x and can be called as follows:

  $ composer
  $ composer1
  $ composer2

  Example

  $ composer create-project -s dev typo3/flow-base-distribution testproject
  Installing typo3/flow-base-distribution (dev-master 855c48407039a5917e4e4e35c92b841b99ab8b84)
  - Installing typo3/flow-base-distribution (dev-master master)
  Cloning master
  
  Created project in testproject
  Loading composer repositories with package information
  Installing dependencies (including require-dev)
  - Installing composer/installers (v1.0.13)
  Loading from cache [..]

  Example Composer Update with different PHP versions and increased memory_limit

  /opt/php73/bin/php -d memory_limit=2048M /bin/composer update
  /opt/php74/bin/php -d memory_limit=2048M /bin/composer update
  /opt/php80/bin/php -d memory_limit=2048M /bin/composer update
  /opt/php81/bin/php -d memory_limit=2048M /bin/composer update
  /opt/php82/bin/php -d memory_limit=2048M /bin/composer update

  SSH

  Adding Your Own SSH Key

  To connect without a password, you can add your public SSH key to the server at any time. Create a ".ssh" directory at the root level (/) and place the key in the authorized_keys file:

  user@server /> mkdir ~/.ssh && chmod 700 ~/.ssh 
  user@server /.ssh> cd .ssh 
  user@server /.ssh> vi authorized_keys 
  user@server /.ssh> chmod 600 authorized_keys

  sudo

  The sudo command is not required because PHP is executed directly with your own system user.

  For example, your CMS documentation may list the following commands:

  # sudo -u www.data php occ maintenance:mode --on
  # sudo -u www.data php occ db:add-missing-indices
  # sudo -u www.data php occ db:convert-filecache-bigint
  # sudo -u www.data php occ maintenance:mode --off

  You can run these commands directly in the shell as follows:

  php occ maintenance:mode --on
  php occ db:add-missing-indices
  php occ db:convert-filecache-bigint
  php occ maintenance:mode --off

  WordPress CLI / Drupal (drush / Drupal Console)

  No database connection possible

  When running wp commands, the following error is displayed:

  Error: Error establishing a database connection

  or with drush:

   * connect the database through a socket. The socket file may be
  wrong or the php-cli may have no access to it in a jailed shell.

  By default, the application sets "localhost" as the database host. Since the shell environment works with TCP, socket access is not possible. Therefore, a configuration change is necessary. You can either change "localhost:3306" to "127.0.0.1:3306" or make the config dynamic.

  Example WordPress (wp-config.php):

  /** Tell WP-CLI to use TCP instead of socket connection */
  if ( defined( 'WP_CLI' ) && WP_CLI ) {
  
  /** MySQL hostname for WP-CLI */
  define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1:3306');
  
  } else {
  
  /** MySQL hostname */
  define('DB_HOST', 'localhost:3306'); }

  PHP

  Changing PHP Version

  By default, PHP 7.4 is used when running the "php" command. However, you can adjust this with an alias according to your needs.

  Example PHP 8.0:

  alias php='/opt/php80/bin/php' 
  echo "alias php='/opt/php80/bin/php'" >> ~/.bash_profile
  
  export PATH=/opt/php80/bin:$PATH
  echo "export PATH=/opt/php80/bin:\$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile

  Customer Contributions

  Automated Deployments

  • Florian Moser - plesk-deployer: https://github.com/FlorianMoser/plesk-deployer

  Managed Servers

  On Managed Servers, SSH is not available externally by default. Please contact support to enable SSH access.