Start a project

A winch project is a directory with a winch.yaml file. Create the directory:

mkdir example && cd example

Add your server to winch.yaml:

name: example

hosts:
  web1.example.com:
    user: admin

name is the name of the project. hosts lists your servers. user is the user that winch logs in as: root, or a user with passwordless sudo.

winch connects with ssh and uses your SSH config. If ssh web1.example.com does not work, add the address of the server:

hosts:
  web1.example.com:
    address: 203.0.113.10
    user: admin

To check that winch can reach the server, run a command on it with winch exec:

winch exec web1.example.com -- uptime

web1.example.com: sending the helper (amd64)
web1.example.com
   11:35:55 up 2 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

You see the output of uptime from the server.