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I am a big fan of  [MySQL Shell](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-shell/8.0/en/). Until recently, I had only used MySQL Shell to connect to a local instance of MySQL running on my development machine.

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I recently needed to connect to a MySQL database on a Compute Instance in [OCI](https://www.oracle.com/cloud/). I wanted to use MySQL Shell but realized I needed to connect to the database using SSH. Fortunately, there is a way to tell MySQL Shell to connect using SSH.

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**Note:** *This post assumes you already have SSH access set up for your remote server using a private key.*

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First, open MySQL Shell by running this command from a command prompt:

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```
mysqlsh
```

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This will start MySQL Shell in JS mode. You should see something similar to the image below.

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 ![](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/Nppoj6VaOWRfwXBV5J5gk28cCGp2-8z93ke4.png)

Now that we are in Js mode of MySQL Shell, we use the `shell.connect()` command to connect to a MySQL server tunneled through an SSH connection.

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```
shell.connect({uri : "mysql://{user}:{password}!363@127.0.0.1:3306", ssh : "{ssh user}@{remote server}:22", "ssh-identity-file":"{absolute path to SSH key}" })
```

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Let’s break down the different bits of information we are using.

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* `{user}` - The MySQL user we want to connect to our server with
* `{password}` - The password for the above user. We can omit this, and we will be prompted to enter the password.
* `{ssh user}` - The user we want to connect to SSH with.
* `{remote server}` - The server IP or domain address for our remote server.
* `{absolute path to SSH key}` - The absolute path to our SSH private key file.

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**Note:** If you are on Windows, you will need to use a forward slash (`/`) as your path delimiter instead of a backslash (`\`). For example:

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```
C:/Users/Dan/.ssh/my-ssh-key
```

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Once we run the `shell.connect()`, you will see a message that we are connected.

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 ![](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/Nppoj6VaOWRfwXBV5J5gk28cCGp2-3ka3kmk.png)

You can see that we are using a `Classic Session`. This is because we specified port 3306 in our connection string. For this connection, we are not using the [X Protocol](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/internals/en/x-protocol.html), which means we will not be able to interact with a [MySQL Document Store](https://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/document_store.html) with this connection. If you want to use the X Protocol, which uses port 33060, you may need to open up ports on your server’s firewall.

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Also, note that we are still in JS mode. To switch to SQL mode, enter the following command:

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```
\sql
```

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We will then see this prompt:

 ![](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/Nppoj6VaOWRfwXBV5J5gk28cCGp2-ccb3khw.png)

Now that we are in SQL mode, we can run SQL commands against the remote database.

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Once we are done with our session, we can disconnect from MySQL Shell and close the SSH connection. To do this, we run the following command:

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```
\quit
```

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We can now see that our connection is closed.

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 ![](https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/Nppoj6VaOWRfwXBV5J5gk28cCGp2-6ac3kp5.png)

As you can see, using MySQL Shell over a secured connection using SSH is not that difficult.

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:::info
Also published [here](https://scottstroz.com/posts/2022/september/mysql-shell-ssh/).

:::

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