How to access your Xen console

A powerful feature of the Xen software is the ability to access your Console.
This feature enables you to bypass your networking entirely, and login as if you were
in front of a physical computer at the keyboard.

For instance, if your ssh were to stop working, you would be unable to connect to your vps.
By using the console, you would still be able to login, as if standing at a virtual keyboard.

The steps involved in using your Xen console include: *Generating a console key in the QCP *Download the key from the QCP *Using the key to ssh into your vm's Host *Logging into your vm's login prompt.

Once you have generated and downloaded your key, you will need to ssh into hostn.quantact.com,
where host(n,1,2,3,etc) is your host. You can find your host in the home page of the QCP.

To use this key on Windows with http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html Putty,
you will need to first import the QCP key into putty's internal format.
This requires the http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/puttygen.exe puttygen.exe program.
Importing your key will produce a .ppk file, which can then be used directly with putty.exe to ssh into your host.


Click on the Load Button.


Select IDENTITY File you downloaded from the Profile section in the members area.


Enter your passphrase.


Click okay on the PuTTYgen Notice.


Click the Generate Button and move your mouse around.


Enter your Key Passphrase.


Click Save Private Key



Now in putty, enter your host server address, which is found in your Members Area Overview Page

Welcome to Quantact.

This overview shows the current status of your Virtual Dedicated Server. 

Your VDS is currently Started
Your host server is host3.quantact.com
Your current configuration is Centos 4.2 
You have no job(s) queued to run. 
You have no new help ticket answer(s). 

Go to Auth under SSH in the left hand menu and click the Browse button.


Select the file you generated in puttygen and click open.


Now click Open and you will start connecting to the host server.

Enter your server name.

login as: myserver
password: *******************

Remember, the QCP Console Keys will not be installed into your VM.
They will not allow you to access your VM directly via ssh.
You must setup your own keys inside of your VM if you wish to use non password access.

If you would like to connect from a linux client, use the following:

ssh -2 -i IDENTITY.$account_name -l $account_name hostn.quantact.com