Connecting VSCode to Multipass VM (Windows)

notes.md

• setup Multipass on Windows (recommened to enable Hyper_V)
• setup vscode and make sure you've the remote development extension pack installed
  • you've probably already done this
• start up a multipass vm for example

multipass launch --name fabric-dev --disk 80G --cpus 8 --mem 8G --cloud-init https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hyperledgendary/full-stack-asset-transfer-guide/main/infrastructure/multipass-cloud-config.yaml

• Find out the IP address of the machines thats created - multipass list will show you this. For example

C:\Users\014961866>multipass list
Name                    State             IPv4             Image
primary                 Running           172.31.125.88    Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
fabdev                  Running           172.31.121.24    Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
                                          172.17.0.1
fabric-dev              Running           172.31.118.103   Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
                                          172.17.0.1
fabric-dev-2            Running           172.31.124.235   Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
                                          172.17.0.1

• You will need to find the private ssh key that multipass uses; this should be at C:\ProgramData\Multipass\data\ssh-keys\id_rsa
• Copy this to you home directory (otherwise SSH will not use the file as it's 'too open')

copy C:\ProgramData\Multipass\data\ssh-keys\id_rsa %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\.ssh\multipass_id_rsa

• In VSCode, click on the remote development icon in the toolbar, and in the Remote Explorer, choose SSH Targets
• In the title bar of SSH Targets, click on the cog, and pick the default configuration file.
• Create an entry in this configuration file
  • change the HostName to the IP of the multipass created VM
  • ensure the identity file points to the file you copied
  • you can change the fabric-dev name if you have multiple entries

Host fabric-dev
  HostName 172.31.118.103
  User ubuntu
  Port 22
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  PasswordAuthentication no
  IdentityFile C:/Users/<your user>/.ssh/multipass_id_rsa
  IdentitiesOnly yes
  LogLevel FATAL

• When save, an entry for fabric-dev will appear in the SSH Targets view
• Click on the 'Open Window' icon next to it
• First time you'll be asked to confirm the system is Linux, and VSCode will setup it's remote server.
• Then you're good to go with browsing files, and also using the inbuilt terminal.