LiquidFiles Documentation
LiquidFiles Documentation

Logging in to the System Console

While console login as root is permitted with LiquidFiles. That does not mean that making any changes are supported.

If you login to the console, it is assumed that you know what you are doing and are comfortable administrating Unix/Linux/CentOS systems.

If anything happens and you don't know how to fix it, you will likely have to re-install the LiquidFiles system to get back to a supported state.

Console login is only available after you've installed a valid license.

How do I login to the console in LiquidFiles?

Every system has a console, either you have a physical system to which you connect a keyboard and monitor, or you have a virtual system where the virtual system provides the console somehow. In VMware ESX for instance, there's a console tab.

VMware ESX Console Example

After you've clicked on the console tab (or where the console is located in your virtual system), you can click F1 to get to the login prompt.

Root password

You login as the user root. There's no default root password. You set the root password in Admin → System → Console Access:

Setting the Root password

Reset Root password

If you don't remember the root password, you need to reset it. To reset the Root Password, please go to Admin → System → Console Access. Click on the Root Password Tab and you will see the instructions there:

Setting the Root password

SSH Login

You can also use SSH with an SSH client like Putty (if you're using Windows).

When logging in, you need to enter the hostname or ip address of the LiquidFiles system, and specify TCP port 222 as per the screenshot below (LiquidFiles v2.x and earlier used TCP port 22 for SSH):

SSH Putty Example

The equivalent example on a Unix/Linux system would be:

user@system% ssh -p 222 root@172.16.5.131

SSH Login with SSH keys

If you're using LiquidFiles in Amazon AWS, you will need to login to LiquidFiles using SSH keys. The last step of setting up a Linux based EC2 image is that the installer will ask you to either generate or confirm which SSH key to use. To login to the command line on a LiquidFiles EC2 instance you will need to use this SSH key.

In the Windows based Putty client, you can select the SSH key to use by selecting Connection → SSH → Auth as in the screenshot below:

SSH Putty SSH Key Authentication

Depending on LiquidFiles version when you first installed LiquidFiles, the username to use when logging in would be either centos or liquidfiles (basically try one and if that doesn't work try the other).

To become root (superuser), after you've logged in please run:

[centos@liquidfiles ~]$ sudo bash

The equivalent example on a Unix/Linux system would be:

user@system% ssh -p 222 -i /path/to/private_ssh_key centos@liquidfiles.mycompany.com

SSH Access Control

If you wish to limit SSH Logins to certain hosts and networks, please go to Admin → System → Console Access. You'll see the following screen:

SSH Access Control Configuration

As per the screenshot, you can limit logins to this LiquidFiles system from certain hosts, ip addresses or networks. This is very useful if you have a general open network and all admin PC's on a specific network.