colab-ssh 0.2.51

Google colab SSH connector

Google Colab-ssh

Connect to Google colab via ssh easily

What is Colab-ssh

Colab-ssh is a light-weight library that enables you to connect to a Google Colab virtual machine using an SSH tunnel.

User interface is still required in order to create the Colab virtual machine

Installation

To install Colab-ssh library, you need to run this command

pip install colab_ssh --upgrade --user

Getting started

1. Open Google Colab and run this code in one of the code cells

# Install colab_ssh
!pip install colab_ssh --upgrade

from colab_ssh import launch_ssh, init_git
launch_ssh(ngrokToken,password)

# Optional: if you want to clone a github repository
init_git(githubUrl)

• password is your ssh password that you want to choose
• ngrokToken is your ngrok token that you can get from here
• githubUrl is your github HTTPS clone url (usually ends with .git)

Avoiding passwords

Instead of setting a password, you can access the SSH tunnel using your own pair of keys.

IMPORTANT: For this to work you need to setup your git repository by using the function git_init()

How it works ? : We get your public key from the repository passed into the git_init() function and then we add it to the authorized_keys file (found in ~/.ssh folder).

You need to follow these steps:

1. Create a pair of SSH key
2. Copy your public key (should be inside the file id_rsa.pub)
3. In the root of your github repository, create a folder called .colab_ssh and a file within it called authorized_keys
4. Paste your public key inside the file .collab_ssh/authorized_keys

Using VSCode to connect Google Colab

Once you run the code in the Getting Started section you will notice a message like this

...
Successfully running tcp://0.tcp.ngrok.io:XXXX
...

• XXXX is the port provided by ngrok

You can now open VSCode and add this to your SSH Configuration

Host google_colab_ssh
  HostName 0.tcp.ngrok.io
  User root
  Port XXXX

Make sure you replace XXXX with the port you just obtained

Then connect to the remote google_colab_ssh.

Contribution

Well for now, try to discover things yourself.