Quick SSH Access
This page decsribes a way to quickly establish a libp2p connection between a computer and your robot using an SSH tunnel. You can route DDS Router traffic over this tunnel to connect to your robot's DDS network, or use the Visual Studio Code ROS Extension to remotely debug your robot.
Warning
The IPFS Swarm stream used below is considered experimental, pending more documentation and testing.
(If you are on Jetson or Raspberry Pi, replace amd64 below with arm64)
wget https://dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/v0.24.0/kubo_v0.24.0_linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xvzf kubo_v0.24.0_linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd kubo
sudo bash install.sh
ipfs init
peer identity:. This is the 'routable cryptographic address' of your robot. You will need this to connect to your robot through the swarm.
ipfs config --json Swarm.RelayClient.Enabled true
ipfs config --json Experimental.Libp2pStreamMounting true
ipfs daemon
In another terminal window, configure the Stream Listener, which forwards from the /x/ssh protocol to the local SSH server. (The protocol name /x/ssh is arbitrary, but must be the same on the robot and clients):
ipfs p2p listen /x/ssh /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/22
wget https://dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/v0.24.0/kubo_v0.24.0_windows-amd64.zip -Outfile kubo_v0.24.0.zip
Expand-Archive -Path kubo_v0.24.0.zip -DestinationPath C:\opt\kubo
C:\opt\kubo\ipfs init
peer identity: 12D3XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. This is the 'routable cryptographic address' of your robot. You will need this to connect to your robot through the swarm.
ipfs config --json Swarm.RelayClient.Enabled true
ipfs config --json Experimental.Libp2pStreamMounting true
ipfs daemon
In another terminal window, configure the Stream Listener, which forwards from the /x/ssh protocol to the local SSH server. (The protocol name /x/ssh is arbitrary, but must be the same on the robot and clients):
ipfs p2p listen /x/ssh /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/22
Recall the peer identity of your robot from the setting up the robot. You will need this to connect to your robot through the swarm.
(If you are on Jetson or Raspberry Pi, replace amd64 below with arm64)
wget https://dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/v0.24.0/kubo_v0.24.0_linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xvzf kubo_v0.24.0_linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd kubo
sudo bash install.sh
ipfs init
ipfs config --json Swarm.RelayClient.Enabled true
ipfs config --json Experimental.Libp2pStreamMounting true
ipfs daemon
In another terminal window:
ipfs p2p forward /x/ssh /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/2222 /p2p/12D3XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
wget https://dist.ipfs.tech/kubo/v0.24.0/kubo_v0.24.0_windows-amd64.zip -Outfile kubo_v0.24.0.zip
Expand-Archive -Path kubo_v0.24.0.zip -DestinationPath C:\opt\kubo
C:\opt\kubo\ipfs init
ipfs config --json Swarm.RelayClient.Enabled true
ipfs config --json Experimental.Libp2pStreamMounting true
ipfs daemon
In another terminal window:
ipfs p2p forward /x/ssh /ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/2222 /p2p/12D3XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
SSH to your Robot
You can now open an SSH connection to your robot using the following command:
ssh -p 2222 user@127.0.0.1
or use Visual Studio Code's remote extension pack to connect to your robot.
The way this works is that the SSH client will attempt to connect to a local port, which is actually serviced by the client side IPFS daemon. IPFS will then access the set of computers running the libp2p swarm network to locate the shortest connection to your robot, even if it is behind a NAT, firewall, or over cellular.
On the Robot side, the IPFS daemon will unpackage the SSH connection and forward it to the local SSH server.