Installing cob-cli

In order to install cob-cli you will need to:

1. Generate a pair of public/private keys
2. Create a GitLab account
3. Install pre-requisites
4. Install cob-cli
5. Register your public key
6. Configure ssh connection

1. Generate SSH keys

In order to access both the GitLab repository of the CoB server you want to interact with and the server itself, you will need to generate a pair of SSH keys (a public and a private key). You can follow this guide provided by GitLab explaining how to generate an SSH key pair and how to add the public key to your GitLab account.

ssh-keygen -t ed25519

Once completed, you should have two new files in your .ssh folder:

~/.ssh/id_ed25519 # This is your private key
~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub # This is your public key

WARNING

Password protected keys are currently not supported

2. Create GitLab account

Skip this step if you already have an account and wish to use it.

Go to GitLab.com register page and create your new account.

WARNING

After creating your account, make sure to add the newly generated public key to your GitLab account as well.

TIP

To verify that your configuration is correct, run the command ssh -T [email protected].

If everything is set up properly, you should see a message like: Welcome to GitLab, @<your-GitLab-username>!

3. Install pre-requisites

To fully utilize cob-cli, make sure you have the following command-line utilities installed on your computer:

• rsync;
• git
• NodeJs ( >= v16);

Mac and Linux users should install these dependencies using their preferred package system.

Windows

Although cob-cli is primarily designed for Unix-based systems, Windows users have two options for running it:

• by leveraging the Windows Subsystem for Linux (check WSL Installation Guide and then follow the Linux instructions): our recommended approach
• by installing windows native versions of cob-cli's dependencies: when installing WSL is not possible

install rsync

Windows users can use cwRsync Client, a standalone packaging of rsync and ssh.

1. Download the latest zip from itefix.net
2. Unzip the downloaded file to an appropriate location (we sugest C:\Users\<user>\Documents\Apps)
3. Add the bin sub-directory to your PATH, before the entry for C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH, so that the included version of ssh is preferred over the one included in Windows.

TIP

To test that rsync is correctly configured run the command rsync -V. You should get the following output:

rsync version 3.4.1 protocol version 32
Copyright (C) 1996-2025 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.
Web site: https://rsync.samba.org/
Capabilities:
    64-bit files, 64-bit inums, 64-bit timestamps, 64-bit long ints,
		socketpairs, symlinks, symtimes, hardlinks, no hardlink-specials,
		hardlink-symlinks, IPv6, atimes, batchfiles, inplace, append, no ACLs,
		no xattrs, optional secluded-args, iconv, prealloc, stop-at, crtimes
Optimizations:
    no SIMD-roll, no asm-roll, openssl-crypto, no asm-MD5
Checksum list:
    xxh128 xxh3 xxh64 (xxhash) md5 md4 shal none
Compress list:
    zstd 124 zlibx zlib none
Daemon auth list:
    sha512 sha256 shal md5 md4
rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. See the GNU General Public Licence for details.

TIP

To confirm that the correct version of ssh is used, run the command ssh -V. You should get the following output:

OpenSSH_9.9p2, OpenSSL 3.0.15 3 Sep 2024

The version string should not include any mention of windows

install git

We recommend installing git with WinGet:

winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget

install Node.js

We recommend installing Node.js versions using NVM for Windows (The Microsoft recommend way).

After nvm is installed, you can install an appropriate version of node with:

nvm install 16.20.2

4. Install cob-cli

To install cob-cli, simply execute the following commands in a terminal:

1. Run npm install -g cob-cli.
2. Type cob-cli help to verify that cob-cli has been installed correctly.

5. Register your public key.

To access any <server_name>.cultofbits.com server, you must request authorization. Please reach out through the appropriate channels and provide the following information:

• Name
• Email
• Company
• Public key
• Server name to access

You will be notified once your access is granted, along with the username to use for connecting to the servers.

6. Configure SSH connection

Next, you need to configure your SSH connection by editing (or creating, if it doesn’t exist) the file ~/.ssh/config. Add the following lines to the file, ensuring that the indentation on lines 2 to 5 is preserved:

Host *.cultofbits.pt
   User <your username>
   Port 40022
   AddKeysToAgent yes
   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

After configuring the ~/.ssh/config file, you should be able to run the following command without needing to provide additional information, other than your private key passphrase if you set one.

ssh <server_name>.cultofbits.pt