How-To Set Up SSH Forwarding on Mac OS

Last Updated: Nov 20, 2025

Introduction

When setting up compute clusters on Crusoe Cloud, a common use case is to use ssh  forwarding to be able to connect to a VM, and from that VM connect to other machines in your VPC. This double hop scenario is common for system admins to manage VMs in their cluster. 

Prerequisites

• Local terminal set up with OpenSSH access (MacOS comes preinstalled with this. Windows Machines will require separate setup)
• Multiple VMs created in Crusoe Cloud with your ssh  public key added in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys directory on all the VMs you wish to access

Steps-by-Step Instructions

1. On your local terminal, set up your ~/.ssh/config file to allow for ssh Forwarding

   • # cat ~/.ssh/config
     Host *
         User ubuntu
         IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
         ForwardAgent yes

2. Add your specific key using ssh-add with the path to your private key

   • # ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa

3. Verify that ssh key was added successfully

   • # ssh-add -l 

4. ssh to an instance on Crusoe Cloud, and verify that you can ssh from that instance to another VM in the same VPC over Internal IP. 

   • #  ssh 216.86.169.79 
     ...
     # ubuntu@slurm-compute-node-0:~$ ssh ubuntu@172.27.55.215
     ...
     # ubuntu@slurm-compute-node-1:~$

Additional Resources

SSH to VMs Crusoe Docs

Serial Console Crusoe Docs