chaotic ssh guide

docs/abra/index.md

@@ -10,4 +10,4 @@ Once you've got `abra` installed, you can start your own Co-op Cloud deployment.
 - [Quick start](/abra/quickstart): You're ready to get started using `abra` :muscle:
 - [Upgrade](/abra/upgrade): You're looking for instructions on how to upgrade `abra` :arrow_heading_up:
 - [Hack](/abra/hack): You wan to hack on `abra` and help out with the development :woman_construction_worker:
-- [Troubleshoot](/abra/troubleshoot): `abra` ain't working and you'd like to know why :boom:
+- [Troubleshoot](/abra/trouble): `abra` ain't working and you'd like to know why :boom:

docs/abra/trouble.md

@@ -6,13 +6,49 @@ title: Troubleshoot
 
 You can use [this issue tracker](https://git.coopcloud.tech/coop-cloud/abra/issues/new).
 
-## I'm having a bad day, where do I find a human?
-
-Please see [the contact page](/intro/contact).
-
 ## SSH connection issues?
 
-TODO.
+`abra` tries its best to learn from your system configuration or command-line input what the correct SSH connection details are for a given server. This doesn't always work out. Here are some things to try to fix it.
+
+First, ensure that you can `ssh <my-server>` and things work. If you can't SSH to your server then neither can `abra`. If you have a password protected SSH key, then you'll need to make sure your `ssh-agent` is running and you've added your SSH key part:
+
+```
+eval $(ssh-agent -k)
+ssh-add ~/.ssh/<my-secret-key-part>
+ssh-add -L # validate loaded keys
+```
+
+The first thing `abra` will check for is the connection details listed in `abra server ls`. Check those details are correct. If you haven't managed to `abra server add` your server yet, then no details will appear in that list.
+
+`abra` will then try to read your `~/.ssh/config` entries and match the server domain against a `Host` entry. So, if you do `ssh myserver.com` and you have:
+
+```
+Host myserver.com
+  Hostname myserver.com
+  User myuser
+  Port 222
+  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/my@myserver.com
+```
+
+Then `abra` should have all it needs to build a working SSH connection. You can validate this by passing `-d/--debug` to your commands.
+
+However, sometimes, you use an alias in your SSH configuration, say:
+
+```
+Host mys
+...
+```
+
+So that you can simply type `ssh mys`. `abra` won't be able to match against those entries to discover connection details. You can use aliases to remedy this:
+
+```
+Host mys, myserver.com
+...
+```
+
+`abra` will try to read the relevant `IdentityFile` entry from your `~/.ssh/config` but if it can't make a match, it will rely on your key being added to the `ssh-agent`.
+
+Due to a limitation in our implementation, `abra` uses 2 methods of making SSH connections, the main `abra` -> `remote docker` connection using `/usr/bin/ssh` which can seamlessly pick up loaded SSH keys. However, for SSH host key checking, `abra` uses an SSH library & Golang SSH internals. We're working on resolving this to a single implementation but it is tricky work.
 
 ## "abra server ls" shows the wrong details?
 
@@ -30,4 +66,4 @@ docker context create <domain> --docker "host=ssh://<user>@<domain>:<port>"
 
 ## Command-line flag handling is weird?
 
-TODO.
+Unfortunately, there is a limitation in our underlying command-line library implementation for `abra` ([ref](https://github.com/urfave/cli/issues/1113)) (and more fundamentally in the design of flags in the Go programming language itself ([ref](https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/programming/GoFlagUIImportance))). We're aiming to work with upstream to resolve the flag handling but this it is not yet clear when this will be resolved.