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SSH key setup

Setting up local SSH keys​

If you don't already have a private SSH key, typically located at ~/.ssh/id_rsa, you will need to create one. Fortunately, this is an easy task.

Optionally, you can create a SSH key specifically for use with the swarm, next to your other SSH key(s).

# Create a new SSH key
ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa_swarm -t rsa -N '' -C "your@email.com"

# Copy key to server
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa_swarm root@123.23.12.123

Edit your local SSH config file​

Assuming you've already added your SSH public key to /root/.ssh/authorized_keys on your server, consider adding a host entry to your local ~/.ssh/config file to make things easier:

~/ssh/config
Host *
    Port 22
    UseKeychain yes

# ...

Host swarm
    HostName 123.23.12.123
    User root
    # The next line is optional, it defaults to ~/.ssh/id_rsa
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_swarm
Host alias

Now ssh root@123.23.12.123 becomes ssh swarm
This alias makes it easy to connect or reference your server in projects.

Adding a git remote​

In order to push and deploy apps to the swarm, we need to add a git remote to our project repository.
Swarmlet creates a user named 'git' on the server, this user handles incoming changes.
If a project doesn't exist already, a new repo will be created on the swarm named <project-name>.

Remote user

When specifying a remote, the remote user must be 'git'. And because we've updated our ~/.ssh/config file, we can specify the host by it's name, 'swarm' in this example.

Adding a git remote in a project that points to your server is as easy as running:

# Syntax:
git remote add <name> <user>@<host>:<project-name>

# Example:
git remote add swarm git@swarm:my-app

Now you can deploy an app simply by running git push swarm master
Pretty easy to remember!