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Hatch, the emergency shell

Hatch is how you reach your servers when nothing else works: you lost the network, locked yourself out with a firewall rule, or the server won't boot. It's an SSH service of ours, not on your server. Through it you can:

• open a server's console;
• start, shut down, reboot, stop or reset it;
• boot it into rescue and back;
• reinstall it.

You can use it on the servers of every organization you own or administer. Each option works as it does on your account page, so your plan's features and the server's status apply.

Add your SSH key

Hatch signs you in with an SSH key, never a password.

1. On your account page, open Security → SSH keys, then Add a key.
2. Paste your public key. That's the line in your .pub file, for example ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub. Never paste the private key.
3. Enter your current password.

Ed25519, ECDSA, security keys (sk-…) and RSA keys of 2048 bits or more work. We email you whenever a key is added. To make a key, run ssh-keygen -t ed25519.

Connect

When Hatch is offered, the SSH keys card shows the command to use, for example:

ssh -p 2222 'you@example.com'@hatch.example.com

The key says who you are, so any user name works; the card shows your email. A key can be on only one account: for a second account, make a second key.

The first time you connect, your SSH program asks whether to trust the host key. Check that it matches the fingerprint on the card.

After you sign in, pick a server, then:

• c: the console. Press Ctrl-] to leave it. If it stays blank, press Enter.
• p: power.
• r: rescue.
• i: reinstall. You type the server's name to confirm.
• b: back to your servers. q quits.

Hatch closes after 30 minutes without typing. It doesn't run commands or copy files (scp, sftp).

Keep it safe

A key reaches every server you manage, so:

• remove keys you no longer use;
• remove a key at once if you think it was copied (its open sessions end within a minute);
• also change your password if you think a key was copied.

The card shows when each key was last used. Every Hatch sign-in and action is recorded in your organization's activity.