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Get a Shell on a Device

By the end of this tutorial you'll have opened a live shell session on one of your devices and replayed the recording of that session.

Goal​

Open an SSH session on a fleet-onboarded device, and replay the recording it leaves behind.

Prerequisites​

  • A device onboarded per Connect your first device, online in Fleet Manager.
  • Signed in with an active workspace — recordings are scoped to your workspace, and Shell Access shows a sign-in prompt if you aren't.
  • Your workspace role needs shell access. If the action described below isn't there, ask your workspace admin to grant it.

Open a shell​

  1. In Fleet Manager, find your device in the device list and click its Open Shell action (shown as a terminal icon).
  2. Bringup opens a new tab in the desktop app's Terminal panel with an SSH session already connected to the device.
  1. Use the terminal as you normally would. When you're done, close the tab to end the session.

Every session opened this way is recorded automatically — there's no separate step to turn recording on. Authentication uses short-lived SSH certificates that Bringup issues for you, not a password or a long-lived key you have to manage yourself. And like the rest of the connection to your device, the session rides the same outbound-only channel you set up in Connect your first device: the device never opens an inbound port for this.

Replay the recording​

  1. Open Shell from the sidebar — its panel is titled Shell · Recordings — or run Shell: Open Recordings from the command palette.
  2. Find your session in the table (it also shows the size transferred so far). While the terminal tab is still open, its row shows a pulsing Live badge in place of a duration; once you close the session, the badge is replaced by the final duration. Use the search box or the Device/User/date filters above the table if you have a lot of sessions.
  3. Click Play on the row to replay it in the built-in terminal player.

In the player, you can pause/play, drag the scrubber, and cycle playback speed (1×, 2×, 4×, 8×). Skip idle compresses gaps longer than 2.5s so you don't sit through dead air. Keyboard shortcuts work too: Space to play/pause, the arrow keys to seek ±5s, and Shift with an arrow key to seek ±30s. You can also export the session as an asciinema .cast file or a plain-text transcript from the player header — both are saved to your Downloads folder.

Verification​

  • The new terminal tab shows a connected shell prompt for the device.
  • Back in the Shell panel, your session appears in the recordings table with the right device and user, and replaying it shows what happened in the terminal.

Troubleshooting​

  • "Sign in to view session recordings." — you're not signed in to Bringup. Click Sign in in the panel, or see Sign In.
  • The recordings list shows an error mentioning you're "not signed in to this organization, or your session lacks access to its recordings." — switch to the workspace that owns the device using the workspace switcher (see Sign In), then retry.
  • No Open Shell action on the device — your workspace role likely doesn't include shell access. Check with your workspace admin.
  • The recordings table stays empty — you haven't opened a shell on a device yet. Open one following the steps above, then come back and refresh.