SiteGround launches advanced SSH feature

SiteGround has always been focused on providing feature-rich hosting solutions. As we continue expanding our extra services to portfolio, we have recently enabled SSH access on our shared hosting servers.

What is SSH?

Secure Shell (SSH), known as Secure Socket Shell, is a network protocol allowing secure remote access over an encrypted connection. It is widely used by network administrators and web developers looking to enable direct secure access to their host server.
Through an SSH connection you can easily manage your files and folders, modify their permissions, edit files directly on the server, etc. Both ends of the client/server connection are authenticated using a digital certificate and passwords are encrypted, providing a means for secure large data files transfer .

In-house developed SSH technology

So far so good, you probably already knew that – but why launching the service just now? As you know, at SiteGround we take great pride in our in-house technology innovations. We believe that technology should be designed to serve our clients’ specific needs, not the other way round.

The SSH technology we offer has been developed exclusively to meet the demands of SiteGround clients. Here are some of its main advantages:

1. Our SSH is installed in a chroot environment that is much more secure than what other SSH hosts offer. To put it simply – every customer with SSH gets access to their own secure, but restricted environment. The client is the only one allowed into it, but at the same time it blocks any access to the rest of the accounts hosted on the server. This is how we ensure providing greater flexibility for operations to those who need it, without affecting the rest of our clients in any way. In short – it’s a win-win combination.

2. The only authentication method we accept is through authentication keys for greater security. That way we ensure that even if someone has your login details, they will not be able to break into your account via SSH connection without the authentication keys.

3. We have designed the SSH service to allow greater flexibility to those who use it. The new SSH service allows you to set SSH connection permissions to your account depending on the IP address. Meaning, you have the opportunity to limit the SSH access to connections requested , for example, from your own IP address only.

4. For faster and easier management we integrated the custom SiteGround SSH solution in our cPanel. Therefore, all SiteGround clients can conveniently manage all features of their hosting accounts from one and the same place.

For more information on our SSH extra service, go ahead and visit our SSH tutorials section. All registered SiteGround clients can order the SSH extra service as an upgrade from their Customer Area.

On a final note, let me just give you a hint that the SSH upgrade is just the beginning of a campaign of delivering new and better extra services to the large and growing SiteGround community. So stick around for our season treats this winter.

Dima
Product Development – Marketing

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Dima Peteva

Head Of Brand And Culture

Dima is leading all brand initiatives at SiteGround, where she started as one of our first team members way back in 2004. Since then, she has played a key role in different departments starting with Billing, Project Management, and Marketing. She’s witnessed the company grow from a handful of people to 600+ team members and more than 2 million domains hosted today. When she’s not leading the creative efforts at SiteGround, you can find her organising the local CreativeMornings chapter or taking her one-year-old Vizsla dog on a long walk.

Comments ( 18 )

author avatar

davidp

Nov 11, 2009

Can I ask if shell commands via SSH will also be killed after 1 second or so of CPU time in the same way as it seems siteground throttles CPU from web activity on shared accounts? thanks.

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author avatar

Hristo Siteground Team

Nov 11, 2009

We do not kill processes executed via SSH after certain amount of time. We do, however, have a sophisticated monitoring system that detects and kills idle processes. In addition, if certain process causes increase in the server load it will be killed too by the monitoring system. Last but not least we have human monitoring 24/7 and suspicious processes can be killed manually. Hristo Product Development – Technical

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author avatar

Tim

Nov 17, 2009

Does this include access to rsync?

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author avatar

Hristo Siteground Team

Dec 03, 2009

I am afraid that rsync is not available for customers at this point.

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author avatar

james

Dec 08, 2009

Just signed up for this, but I can't use ssh -D to create a SOCK proxy. Worthless to me, then.

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author avatar

Hristo Siteground Team

Dec 09, 2009

Hi James, I am sorry that you wont be able to utilize our service. Note, however, that we have specifically stated that we do not allow proxy scripts to run on our shared hosting servers.

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author avatar

Adam

Feb 03, 2010

Will SSH access allow us to use command line utilities for installed programs? For example, will I be able to interact with my MySQL databases using the mysql and mysqladmin command line utilities? If it allows that, it is well worth it. There is a lot that I haven't been able to do with my website due to the difficulty of interacting with large databases without console access.

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author avatar

Hristo Siteground Team

Feb 17, 2010

Unfortunately you wont be able to start daemons and services on your server since that would be a serious security issue. You will be able, however, to run commands like mysql and mysqldump for example. If you have specific questions about whether a command will be available for you, please post a ticket in your Help Desk and our Support Team will reply to you with all the details you require.

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author avatar

barnet

Sep 04, 2010

Thanks for continuing to expand your services!

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author avatar

Steven

Sep 04, 2010

Just curious - how are you maintaining patch levels on the SSH software since you rolled your own? Do you have someone watching the code base to apply patches to your own?

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author avatar

stephenH

Jan 02, 2012

SSH doesnt have sync right..? or am i wrong ..?

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author avatar

Hristo Siteground Team

Jan 03, 2012

You can use the rsync command to sync files on our servers :)

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author avatar

margarita

Feb 10, 2018

Just to make sure, because the thread is quite old. Do you support rsync? And also do you support proc_open() και proc_close(), in case I want to "wp db export or import", if I would like to sign up for the Geek Package?

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author avatar

Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team

Feb 12, 2018

Yes, we do have rsync as well as WP-CLI pre-installed on all our servers :)

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author avatar

Anton

May 16, 2024

Do you have any documentation or articles covering how to use Rsync?

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author avatar

Lina Asenova Siteground Team

May 17, 2024

Hey there, currently, we do not have a dedicated article on using Rsync within our knowledge base. Rsync is commonly used for file synchronization and transferring in Linux environments, and it can be implemented via SSH on our hosting platforms. If you are familiar with SSH, you can initiate Rsync operations through the command line. For instructions on setting up SSH access with us, please visit: https://my.siteground.com/support/kb/what-is-ssh/ Once SSH is configured, Rsync can be utilized to sync files between your SiteGround account and other servers. For detailed guidance on Rsync commands or specific setups, you might find the general Linux documentation or the official Rsync website helpful. If you need further support or have additional inquiries, please don't hesitate to contact us. Here are the steps: stgrnd.co/contactus.

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author avatar

Richard Sage

Feb 21, 2023

If you could make the SSH usernames have _ rather than - between the two sections, it would save us small amounts of time over and over again because we could double-click on the value, rather than have to mouse-slide over it to select. Perhaps start with new ones, as changing old ones will require coordination.

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author avatar

Gabriela Andonova Siteground Team

Feb 23, 2023

We appreciate the suggestion, Richard. Implementation of such a change would certainly require some coordination with existing users. Thank you for your feedback, and we'll keep it in mind for future updates.

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