DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / podman / podman-machine-ssh.1.en
podman-machine-ssh(1) General Commands Manual podman-machine-ssh(1)

podman-machine-ssh - SSH into a virtual machine

podman machine ssh [options] [name] [command [arg ...]]

SSH into a Podman-managed virtual machine and optionally execute a command on the virtual machine. Unless using the default virtual machine, the first argument must be the virtual machine name. The optional command to execute can then follow. If no command is provided, an interactive session with the virtual machine is established.

The exit code from ssh command will be forwarded to the podman machine ssh caller, see Exit Codes ⟨#Exit-Codes⟩.

Rootless only.

--help

Print usage statement.

--username=name

Username to use when SSH-ing into the VM.

The exit code from podman machine ssh gives information about why the command failed. When podman machine ssh commands exit with a non-zero code, the exit codes follow the chroot standard, see below:

125 The error is with podman itself

$ podman machine ssh --foo; echo $?
Error: unknown flag: --foo
125

126 Executing a contained command and the command cannot be invoked

$ podman machine ssh /etc; echo $?
Error: fork/exec /etc: permission denied
126

127 Executing a contained command and the command cannot be found

$ podman machine ssh foo; echo $?
Error: fork/exec /usr/bin/bogus: no such file or directory
127

Exit code contained command exit code

$ podman machine ssh /bin/sh -c 'exit 3'; echo $?
3

To get an interactive session with the default virtual machine:

$ podman machine ssh

To get an interactive session with a VM called myvm:

$ podman machine ssh myvm

To run a command on the default virtual machine:

$ podman machine ssh rpm -q podman

To run a command on a VM called myvm:

$ podman machine ssh  myvm rpm -q podman

podman(1), podman-machine(1)

March 2021, Originally compiled by Ashley Cui acui@redhat.com ⟨mailto:acui@redhat.com⟩