Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS

[manngobaum]

@girish
I tried this exact same setup. I was able to connect to the storage via SFTP and my SSH key and I copied my private SSH key as instructed to Cloudron.

When I now try to save the backup settings using SSHFS it keeps working and never finishes. The log says

Jan 14 11:40:33 box:shell addMount spawn: /usr/bin/sudo -S /home/yellowtent/box/src/scripts/addmount.sh [Unit]\nDescription=backup\n\nRequires=unbound.service\nAfter=unbound.service\nBefore=docker.service\n\n\n[Mount]\nWhat=uxxxxx@uxxxxx.your-storagebox.de:/\nWhere=/mnt/cloudronbackup\nOptions=allow_other,port=23,IdentityFile=/home/yellowtent/platformdata/sshfs/id_rsa_uxxxxx.your-storagebox.de,StrictHostKeyChecking=no,reconnect\nType=fuse.sshfs\n\n[Install]\nWantedBy=multi-user.target\n\n 10
Jan 14 11:40:44 box:shell addMount (stdout): Failed to mount
Jan 14 11:40:44 box:shell addMount code: 3, signal: null
Jan 14 11:42:04 box:shell removeMount spawn: /usr/bin/sudo -S /home/yellowtent/box/src/scripts/rmmount.sh /mnt/cloudronbackup

Not sure what else I can try.

Edit: magically and waiting one night it works now.

[chetbaker]

I'm sorry to reopen this, but I've been trying to connect Hetzner volumes and I'm stuck with the key-gen command at the server. I'm pretty sure there's something I'm understanding poorly, but I would like to connect the Volumes with my Cloudron instance, but there's no way I can run key-gen on the Volumes via SSH to get them connected.

XXXXXXXX /home > ssh-keygen
Command not found. Use 'help' to get a list of available commands.
XXXXXXXX /home > help
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The following commands are available:                                       |
|   ls                                  list directory content                |
|   tree                                list directory content                |
|   cd                                  change current working directory      |
|   pwd                                 show current working directory        |
|   mkdir                               create new directory                  |
|   rmdir                               delete directory                      |
|   du                                  disk usage of files/directories       |
|   df                                  show disk usage                       |
|   dd                                  read and write files                  |
|   cat                                 output file content                   |
|   touch                               create new file                       |
|   cp                                  copy files/directories                |
|   rm                                  delete files/directories              |
|   unlink                              delete file/directory                 |
|   mv                                  move files/directories                |
|   chmod                               change file/directory permissions     |
|   md5|sha1|sha256|sha512              create hash sum of file               |
|   md5sum|sha1sum|sha256sum|sha512sum  create hash sum of file               |
|   head                                show first lines of file              |
|   tail                                show last lines of file               |
|   grep                                search for specific string in files   |
|   stat                                stat files/directory                  |
|                                                                             |
| Available as server side backend:                                           |
|   borg                                                                      |
|   rsync                                                                     |
|   scp                                                                       |
|   sftp                                                                      |
|   rclone serve restic --stdio                                               |
|                                                                             |
| Please note that this is only a restricted shell which do not               |
| support shell features like redirects or pipes.                             |
|                                                                             |
| You can find more information in our Docs:                                  |
|   https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/storage-box/                               |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
XXXXXXXX /home >

[robi]

It doesn't appear that package exists on your server. Install it first.

[chetbaker]

@robi said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

It doesn't appear that package exists on your server. Install it first.

What I'm showing is the prompt logged on Hetzner Volumes, not a server

[robi]

@chetbaker Okay, then you can't generate the keys from there. Do it on your server and transfer the keys where you need them.

I'm sure they have a guide for this somewhere.

[jdaviescoates]

@chetbaker said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

Hetzner Volumes

Hetzner Cloud Volumes are a very different product to their Storage Boxes.

I don't think you can access them in the same way.

You can definitely use them as a Cloudron Volume though. I think you just have to mount them on your VPS server using fstab first.

[chetbaker]

@jdaviescoates said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

@chetbaker said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

Hetzner Volumes

Hetzner Cloud Volumes are a very different product to their Storage Boxes.

I don't think you can access them in the same way.

You can definitely use them as a Cloudron Volume though. I think you just have to mount them on your VPS server using fstab first.

Oh I'm sorry, just to clarify, I'm trying to use Storage Boxes as Cloudron Volume.

[jdaviescoates]

@chetbaker said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

Oh I'm sorry, just to clarify, I'm trying to use Storage Boxes as Cloudron Volume.

Ah, OK. I've got that set-up but I've only ever used CIFS and not SSHFS so not sure what you have to do myself sorry.

[girish]

@chetbaker said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

Please note that this is only a restricted shell

It says as much that it is a restricted shell. Not sure how to generate keys though, maybe a question for hetzner support.

[jdaviescoates]

@jdaviescoates said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

@chetbaker said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

Oh I'm sorry, just to clarify, I'm trying to use Storage Boxes as Cloudron Volume.

Ah, OK. I've got that set-up but I've only ever used CIFS and not SSHFS so not sure what you have to do myself sorry.

Ah, but Girish gave instructions above in this very thread!

As @robi said if you don't have ssh-keygen installed, install it.

[boydaihungst]

For me. It's silly. All the guide is out of date. With new created storage box, there isn't sub dir and ssh pub key is not yet allowed in storage box and storage box's pub isn't in my pc known_hosts, I have to add my pub key to storage and run sshfs command once time to get pub key of storage box. So because of new user without subdirectory, the "remote dir path" after colon should be RELATIVE path or empty "" in this case not "/". uxxxxxx@uxxxxxx.your-storagebox.de: /mnt/local/mount/path -o port=23,IdentifyFile=/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa ....

[SansGuidon]

Hey folks
I recently struggled a bit with those steps as well, but it was because I had set a passphrase for my SSH keys at creation time and Cloudron does not prompt for that anywhere.
Is that in the plans for the future @girish ?

Thanks !

[girish]

@SansGuidon how would automatic mounting on boot work if the ssh key had a passphrase? If you put the password in clear text in a config file, it's probably more insecure than having no password at all (especially if you reuse passwords or a part of it...).

[SansGuidon]

@girish it could be an option to do it manually the first time for security reasons, with login keyring asked once.
I mean I'd like that the option is at least given , and of course not hardcoding the passphrase in the form.

[girish]

@SansGuidon yeah, maybe. Have to investigate Feel free to open a thread in https://forum.cloudron.io/category/97/feature-requests and we can see how much interest is there.

[jdaviescoates]

@girish said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

@SansGuidon how would automatic mounting on boot work if the ssh key had a passphrase?

It wouldn't. But I've got the same problem.

I've already got a pair of SSH keys (with a passphrase) that I can successfully use to login to both my Storage Box and my VPS.

But of course this doesn't work for the Backup set-up because it requires a passphrase.

So, how can I create an additional set of non-passphrase keys just for use with the Storage Box?

Thanks!

[nebulon]

You should be able to follow the docs at https://docs.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/backup-space-ssh-keys for generating and using new keys.

[jdaviescoates]

@nebulon thanks but those Hetzner docs just aren't clear nor detailed enough and having read them lots of times I'm still none the wiser.

It says:

Warning: With the default settings, using ssh-keygen will overwrite an existing SSH key! As an alternative, with the parameter -f, you can specify a different file path.

But that just isn't enough detail for me.

It isn't at all clear about how to create/ add an additional pair of ssh-keys whilst keeping the existing ones intact.

[nebulon]

So you would create a new key pair with ssh-keygen -f ./newkey at least on linux. When prompted for a password, just press enter. Then you have the keypair in the current working directory where you ran that command.

From there you can upload the public portion of the key as mentioned in the hetzner docs and use the private key for your Cloudron configs.

[jdaviescoates]

@jdaviescoates said in Cannot mount Hetzner storage box for backups using SSHFS:

It says:

Warning: With the default settings, using ssh-keygen will overwrite an existing SSH key! As an alternative, with the parameter -f, you can specify a different file path.

But that just isn't enough detail for me.

It isn't at all clear about how to create/ add an additional pair of ssh-keys whilst keeping the existing ones intact.

OK, I had a play around and I've managed to do it:

On my local machine I did this:

ssh-keygen -f /home/josef/.ssh-storage/id_rsa
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): 
Enter same passphrase again: 
Your identification has been saved in /home/josef/.ssh-storage/id_rsa
Your public key has been saved in /home/josef/.ssh-storage/id_rsa.pub

Then I copied the public key i.e. ~/.ssh-storage/id_rsa.pub up to my Hetzner Storage Box by doing this:

cat ~/.ssh-storage/id_rsa.pub | ssh -p23 uxxxxxx@uxxxxxx.your-storagebox.de install-ssh-key
uxxxxxx@uxxxxxx.your-storagebox.de's password: 
Key No. 1 (ssh-rsa josef@josef-ThinkPad-T510) was installed in RFC4716 format
Key No. 1 (ssh-rsa josef@josef-ThinkPad-T510) was installed in OpenSSH format

Then I copied the contents of the private key i.e. ~/.ssh-storage/id_rsa into the private key box in the Cloudron backup configuration:

And then it worked - hooray!