Your shell account is your identity and membership on ~horse — username and password credentials carry across most services. Once you're in, you have access to mail, XMPP, IRC via soju, git hosting, and secure temporary file sharing. Learn more about how we protect user data in our security overview. Not yet a ~horsie? Sign up.

Authentication

Shell access requires an SSH key — password authentication over SSH is disabled. Submit your public key during signup, or petition ky to add it after the fact.

You are still required to set a password with passwd after your first login. Services that authenticate via PAM (mail, XMPP, Git, and others) will use your shell password. All services tied to PAM credentials are marked on the home page.

Generating a Key

If you don't have an SSH key yet, generate one with an SSH client or shell via the ssh-keygen command:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519

This creates two files in ~/.ssh/: id_ed25519 (private — keep this secret) and id_ed25519.pub (public — this is what you submit during signup). If your client requires RSA, use -t rsa -b 4096 instead.

Access

The shell is reachable over multiple networks. All use port 22.

• Clearnet: tilde.horse
• Yggdrasil: ygg.tilde.horse
• Tor: horse6wso4zzwbczt5x3nl5uxr7a3z7cpkooint6myrk7mvhynamquqd.onion
• I2P: horse64cl3qmul5ozcopmhtash6x4pgajwj3v5xg7qhoaua7fcbq.b32.i2p

Connecting over Tor or I2P

Tor — torsocks

torsocks wraps any TCP application to route it through Tor. With Tor running locally:

torsocks ssh username@horse6wso4zzwbczt5x3nl5uxr7a3z7cpkooint6myrk7mvhynamquqd.onion

I2P

With proxychains-ng, configure it to use I2P's built-in SOCKS5 proxy (default 127.0.0.1:4447):

proxychains ssh username@horse64cl3qmul5ozcopmhtash6x4pgajwj3v5xg7qhoaua7fcbq.b32.i2p

Alternatively, create a Standard client tunnel in the I2P tunnel manager pointing to horse64cl3qmul5ozcopmhtash6x4pgajwj3v5xg7qhoaua7fcbq.b32.i2p on port 22, with a local port of your choice (e.g. 2222). Then connect to that local port directly:

ssh -p 2222 username@127.0.0.1

Clients

Linux, macOS, and Windows all ship with OpenSSH — open a terminal and use ssh directly. On mobile, iSH (iOS) provides a local shell with OpenSSH, Termux (Android) does the same, and Termius is a dedicated SSH client available on both platforms.

Publishing Your Website & Capsule

Every ~horsie gets dedicated directories linked in their home directory for publishing personal content:

• Web (HTTPS): Place your HTML, CSS, images, and text files inside ~/public_www/. They are immediately published and served at https://tilde.horse/~<username>/.
• Gemini: Place your .gmi files inside ~/public_gemini/. Your capsule is served over the Gemini protocol at gemini://tilde.horse/~<username>/.

Environment & Installed Tools

~horse runs Alpine Linux. Common terminal applications ready to use in your shell include:

• Multiplexers: tmux, screen
• Chat & IRC: profanity (XMPP), weechat, irssi
• Mail Clients: neomutt, aerc, mutt
• Browsers: amfora (Gemini), w3m, lynx

Host Key Fingerprints

Verify these match when connecting to the server for the first time:

ED25519: SHA256:CefmghvT6ljpAK7qQFN3OO//nGu3fGvakz/60YB0mhE
ECDSA:   SHA256:66wILWg3H67ljk+M+TBadZdGEmij3K9y1pOr9AljsVE
RSA:     SHA256:19U8mupBohmFUaPGbM79dOAVGT3Qjum8YW7Z41SuCPE