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General Information

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Contents

Please refer to the user's guide of your Charon product for full information. This section provides a brief overview of how to access a Charon-SSP host system using the Charon Manager.

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Prerequisites:

• Typically, Charon-SSP Manager is installed on a system on customer premises. This is the use-case described in this section. Other configurations are possible. For example, the Charon Manager could be installed on the Charon host itself and be displayed on a remote system using X11-Forwarding via an SSH connection. 
• For access via the public IP address of the Charon host instance:
  • The security configuration on your Charon host instance must at least allow SSH access. This allows the built-in SSH tunneling of the Charon-SSP Manger to work. Should you not use SSH tunneling, you must open up additional ports. However, if the connection runs over the Internet without a VPN, Stromasys strongly recommends to use SSH tunneling to protect your Charon-SSP cloud instance and any emulated systems running on it.
  • You must have the public IP address of the Charon-SSP host instance in the cloud. To determine this address refer to the instance information displayed on the cloud management console.
  • To use the Charon Manager integrated SSH tunnel, you need the private SSH key of the key-pair associated with your instance.
• For access via an SSH-based VPN or another VPN solution:
  
  • Active SSH-based VPN (see the general Charon-SSP user's guide) or other active VPN solution
    
  • Private IP address of the Charon-SSP host in the VPN

Initial management password configuration: before connecting to the Charon-SSP host in the cloud with the Charon Manager for the first time after the initial installation you must set the management password. This can either be done via the SSH command line (see the general Charon-SSP user's guide) or via the Charon Manager as described below. 

Starting the Charon Manager and Login to Charon Host

Starting the Charon Manager

To start the Charon-SSP Manager and to open the Charon Manager login window, log in on your Linux management system and use the following command:

$ /opt/charon-manager/ssp-manager/ssp-manager

On Microsoft Windows, click on the respective Desktop icon.

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Entering Charon Manager Login Information and Connecting to Charon Host

Step 1: the Charon Manager Login tab

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If the management password has not yet been set, perform the following steps:

• Enter the public IP address of your Charon-SSP host instance in the IP address field.
• Leave the Password field empty.
• Enable the SSH tunnel configuration (select ON).
• Change to the SSH tab to fill in the required information there.

If the management password has already been set, perform the following steps:

• Enter the public IP address or the private VPN IP address of your Charon-SSP instance in the IP address field.
• Enter the Charon-SSP management password.
• Enable the SSH tunnel configuration for communication across a public network unless you use a secure VPN connection.
• If the SSH tunnel is enabled, change to the SSH tab to fill in the required information there.

Step 2: the Charon Manager SSH tab

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If you use the integrated SSH tunnel, perform the following steps:

• Enter the Charon-SSP management user in the Username field. This is the user in whose authorized_keys file the public key has been installed.
• Enter the path to the private key file (click on the three dots next to the Private key field to open a file browser). You associated your cloud instance with this key-pair during instance creation.
• In rare cases, you may need to add the path to the public key on the local system.
• Enter the passphrase for the private key if required. 
• Adjust the server port (default 22) if required.

Please note: The public key of the key-pair must be in the .ssh/authorized_keys file of the management user of the instance.

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Step 3: connecting to the Charon host system

After entering all the required information, click on Connect to connect to the Charon-SSP instance.

If the management password still needs to be set, you will receive a prompt to enter the new password:

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• Enter the desired password in the New password field and confirm it in the Confirm password field.
• Then click on OK.
• The login process continues.

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Please note: The title bar of this screen indicates the managed system type in square brackets (conventional Red Hat installation in the example). In case of a cloud instance, it indicates the type of cloud. If the connection is created via the embedded SSH tunnel of the Charon Manager, the title bar will show that an SSH connection is being used. In the remaining sections of this document, screenshots from different Charon host systems may be used so the title bar may not always correspond to the Charon-SSP variant treated in this document. Older versions only show the address of the target system.

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