How to setup servers, group and SSH credentials

Note. Enable the NOPASSWD sudo option for SSH users.

Note. Do not use special characters in your password.

Note. If you are using CentOS Stream 9, generate the ECDSA SSH key instead of RSA.

This article describes how to create a local user to log into Roxy-WI, a group for the user and the server, and how to add an SSH key to connect to a new server.

SSH key generation

First, create a local user on the server where you are installing the agent, and select the authentication method for the user. You can either generate an SSH key or set the password, but using the key is more secure. For an SSH key, upload its public part to the server with the command ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/mykey user@host.

Group creation

Then, create a new group for your user and server. To do this, go to the Roxy-WI Admin area => Groups section and click Add. In the pop-up window, enter the group name and group description, if necessary, and click Add.

User creation

Next, create a new Roxy-WI user for your local user. Go to the Admin area => Users section and click Add. Fill in the following form:

Name — enter a user name;
Password — create a password to access Roxy-WI;
Active — check this box to make the user active immediately upon creation;
Email — enter a user email;
Role — assign a role to your user, which determines the user’s set of permissions. Read more about user roles here;
Group — select the group you’ve created in the previous step.

SSH credentials creation

After that, create a remote user in Roxy-WI. Go to the Admin area => SSH credentials section and click Add. Fill in the form:

Name — enter the alias name that will be displayed in the “Credentials” parameter of the Servers section;
SSH key — check this box to enable key-based authentication. If unchecked, password authentication is used instead;
Group — select the group you’ve created in step 2;
Username — enter a user name for SSH access. Use the name from the previous step.

If you selected SSH authentication in step 1, upload the private part of the key to Roxy-WI. In the Admin area => SSH credentials section, select the alias name from the previous step, enter the private key in the “Key” field, and click Upload. If your SSH key is protected with a passphrase, enter it in the SSH key passphrase field as well.

Roxy-WI also encrypts both passwords and SSH passphrases. To ensure that no one but you can decrypt your passwords, generate your own salt.

Note. Ubuntu 21.xx and Centos Stream 9 may have a problem with the RSA key. Therefore, generate an ECDSA key.

Adding a server

Finally, add a new server. Go to the Admin area => Servers section and click Add. Fill in the form:

Name — your server name, which is displayed on all RMON pages;
IP — your server IP address;
Port — the port used for SSH connections, port 22 is used by default;
Enable — check this box to display your server on all Roxy-WI pages. If you uncheck this box, the server will be hidden after it is created;
Virt — you can add a VRRP address for quick access to an active server. Check this box to display the server only on the Stats and Overview pages. It may be useful to hide additional metrics or additional alerts. For example, you can enable metrics only on the VRRP address and get information only from active servers.;
Add in SMON — check this box to add the server for checking by SMON ping;
Scan the server — check this box to scan the server for HAProxy, NGINX, Keepalived, and Firewalld services;
Slave for — select a master-server for your server, if necessary. "Not slave" is set by default;
Description — additional information for your server, if necessary;
Credentials — credentials for SSH access you’ve created in step 4;
Group — the group your server will be added to. Select the group you’ve created in step 2;

Click Add and the server will be added to the Servers tab and to the group you’ve selected.

Note. Make sure that your server group and your user group are the same. Otherwise, the server will only be available in the Servers section and not in any other sections.

To check if the connection with the new server has been successfully established, click Check. If everything is OK, Roxy-WI will display the "Connect accepted" message.