Accessing your server

How to reach your TurboStack server - your system user, where to find its password, adding an SSH key, and creating FTP or SFTP users.

You reach your server over SSH for a shell, or over FTP and Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) for files. Both use a system user: the account that owns your application's files.

This page is the short version, and links to the detail.

1. Your system user

Everything you do on the server happens as a system user, not as the administrator (root). It owns the files of the applications under it, so working as that user keeps file ownership correct.

You can have more than one, for example a separate account per website.

2. Find its password

Open the host and go to the Credentials tab. It lists the access details per account: SSH and FTP users with their passwords, and the database credentials.

Passwords are hidden until you click the eye icon, and every value has a copy button.

See Credentials.

3. Or use an SSH key instead

A key is more convenient than a password and safer. Add your public key on the host's SSH tab, and you can log in without typing anything. You can also require keys and switch password login off completely.

See SSH access.

4. For files: FTP or SFTP

You can create dedicated FTP or SFTP users, each with its own home directory, separate from your main account. That is useful when a designer or an agency needs to reach one folder and nothing else.

A host uses either FTP or SFTP for all of its users, not both at once.

See FTP and SFTP access.

Root access

You do not get root, and the server's root password is not shown. Hosted Power manages the server itself, so that the machine keeps matching the configuration you publish.

That does not leave you stuck. Your system user may run a short list of administrator commands: reloading PHP, Nginx or Varnish, and clearing caches. The tscli tool covers the everyday operations. See Administrator access for the full list and what each one affects.

If you need something outside that list, Support can do it for you.

Credentials - where the passwords are
SSH access - keys, password login, port
FTP and SFTP access - create a file-transfer user
Administrator access - what you may run as root
tscli command-line reference