Importing hosts

Supported sources

Every import creates SSH hosts. Sessions of other types in a source, such as RDP, VNC or Telnet entries in PuTTY or MobaXterm, are listed as skipped rather than imported. MangoSSH never writes to the source files.

Import from a file or another client

1. In the Dashboard's sidebar, click Import SSH sessions.

2. Choose the source under Import from. OpenSSH, PuTTY and MobaXterm scan straight away, looking in their usual places.

3. For Ansible and Terraform, click Browse… to pick the file, or type its path and click Scan. MobaXterm shows the same path box: fill it in only if its config was not found.

4. Review the list. Each row shows the name, user@host:port, the key file if any, its groups, and which file it came from. Notes about skipped entries appear in yellow above the list.

5. Untick anything you don't want, or use Select all. Rows whose name matches a host you already have are marked already imported and start unticked, so running an import twice does not create duplicates.

6. Click Import Selected. When it finishes, the footer shows how many were imported and any that failed. Click Done — Close.

The new hosts appear in the sidebar and on the Dashboard at once. Each import is recorded in the audit log with the source and the number of hosts.

What each source brings

OpenSSH config

Each Host block becomes a host named after its first non-wildcard pattern. MangoSSH reads HostName, Port, User, IdentityFile, CertificateFile, ServerAliveInterval, Compression, ForwardAgent, ProxyCommand and ProxyJump.

• Wildcard-only blocks (Host *) and Match blocks are skipped.
• Include is followed, up to eight levels deep. An Include with a wildcard pattern is skipped and reported.
• ProxyCommand is copied as written. Check its %h, %p and %r placeholders after importing.
• ProxyJump is shown on the row but not connected up, because the jump host may not exist in MangoSSH yet. Set the jump host on the host afterwards. See SSH hosts.

PuTTY and MobaXterm

From each SSH session: the session name, host, port, username and private key file. PuTTY's Default Settings entry is ignored. From MobaXterm, only sessions in bookmark sections are read. A MobaXterm SSH gateway comes across as a jump host shown on the row, to set up afterwards the same way as a ProxyJump.

Ansible inventory

Only the INI inventory format is read. A YAML inventory is not supported yet, and scanning one reports no hosts. What is understood:

• [group] sections, [group:children] for nested groups, and [group:vars] for shared variables.
• Ranges such as web[01:03].example.com and db-[a:c].
• ansible_host, ansible_port, ansible_user and ansible_ssh_private_key_file, plus the older ansible_ssh_host, ansible_ssh_port and ansible_ssh_user spellings. A port written on the name (db1:2222) also works.
• Ansible's precedence: a host's own variable beats its group's.

A host in several groups is imported once, with all of them. Membership includes parent groups from :children. For example:

[web]
web[01:02].example.com

[db]
db1 ansible_host=10.0.1.5 ansible_user=postgres

[prod:children]
web
db

[prod:vars]
ansible_user=deploy

This inventory gives three hosts. web01.example.com and web02.example.com are in groups web and prod, with user deploy. db1 is in db and prod, with its own user postgres.

On macOS and Linux, clicking Scan with the path empty reads Ansible's default /etc/ansible/hosts.

Terraform state

MangoSSH reads a local state file, format v4 (current) or v3 (older). For remote state, such as an S3 or Terraform Cloud backend, save a copy first with terraform state pull > terraform.tfstate. Data sources are ignored, and so is any instance without an address yet.

An instance without a name is called after its resource, such as web[0]. The row shows its full Terraform address. Groups are the resource name, plus the module (such as module.db) when the resource lives in one. Every host is imported on port 22. Azure is the only type that brings a username. For the rest, set one afterwards or type it at first connect. Windows VMs are imported as SSH hosts too, so remove any you don't reach over SSH.

Groups, tags and sign-in

• Source tag. Every imported host gets a tag naming where it came from, as listed in the table at the top. Search or filter by it to find a batch later.
• Group tags. Each Ansible or Terraform group becomes a tag group:<name>, such as group:prod. The first group also becomes the host's group in the sidebar. For Ansible that is the first matching group in the order the groups appear in the file.
• Sign-in. A host with a key file is set to key-only authentication with that key. Any other host is set to password, and MangoSSH asks for the password the first time you connect. No passwords are imported from any source.

Tags and groups are what policies and multi-host commands select on, so an imported inventory can be put to work straight away.

Add hosts from an IP scan

For machines that are on the network but in no file, scan for them.

1. Open Tools → IP Scan, enter a range and click Scan. Each address is probed on SSH, RDP, VNC, FTP and Telnet ports. No administrator rights are needed.

2. Click Add all found. One prompt asks for an SSH username for all of them (leave it blank to be asked at first connect) and a group, Scanned by default.

3. Every host that answered on port 22 and is not already saved (matched by IP) is added as an SSH host with password sign-in, tagged imported:ipscan.

Hosts found only on RDP or VNC are not part of Add all found. Use the ＋ Add button on their row instead.

Cloud instances

To list running instances straight from AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or Kubernetes, use Discover in the Dashboard's sidebar. It uses the provider's own command-line tool (aws, az, gcloud or kubectl) and the sign-in you already have there. Pick instances and click Add Selected. They are tagged imported:aws, imported:azure, imported:gcp or imported:kubernetes. Discover is not in the Secure (air-gapped) edition.

Troubleshooting