Connecting a server via SSH — Help

VPS Snaps connects to your servers over SSH to run database dumps and Docker backups. Your credentials are encrypted with AES-256-GCM before being stored.

What you need

Server IP address or hostname
SSH port (default: 22)
SSH username (commonly root or a dedicated backup user)
Password OR an SSH private key

Using an SSH key (recommended)

Generate a dedicated key pair for VPS Snaps so you can revoke access independently of your main key.

# On your local machine — generate a new key pair
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "vpssnaps-backup" -f ~/.ssh/vpssnaps_ed25519

# Copy the public key to your server
ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/vpssnaps_ed25519.pub user@your-server-ip

# Paste the private key contents into VPS Snaps when adding the server
cat ~/.ssh/vpssnaps_ed25519

Ed25519 keys are shorter, faster, and more secure than RSA. Use them if your server's OpenSSH version is 6.5+ (any modern server).

Minimum SSH user permissions

If you'd rather not use root, create a dedicated backup user with just the permissions needed:

# On the server
useradd -m -s /bin/bash vpssnaps-backup

# Allow running pg_dump / mysqldump without sudo
# (or add to the postgres group for PostgreSQL)
usermod -aG postgres vpssnaps-backup

For Docker backups, the user needs to be in the docker group: usermod -aG docker vpssnaps-backup

Testing the connection

After saving the server in VPS Snaps, click Verify Connection on the server detail page. This runs a quick SSH handshake and reports success or the specific error.

If verification fails with 'Connection refused', check that SSH is running on the configured port and your firewall allows connections from VPS Snaps IP ranges.