Manage Sessions

Sessions are Boundary resources created when connecting to a Target. A target allows Boundary users to define an endpoint with a protocol and default port to establish a session. Unless specified with a -host-id flag when establishing a session, Boundary will choose one Host from the target’s Host Sets to connect to at random.

In this section, we’ll show you the basics of how to start a session, view the session details, and cancel a session in Boundary using the CLI.

We assume you’re running Boundary in dev mode using the default target resource of ttcp_1234567890. We also assume you’ve authenticated using the CLI. See the output of boundary dev for these login values.

Start a Session

Connecting to a target creates a session in Boundary (via a call to the target to authorize a session for the user). To demonstrate what a session looks like we are going to connect to a tcp target with a default port of 22 for SSH access.

$ boundary connect ssh -target-id ttcp_1234567890 --
Proxy listening information:
    Address:             127.0.0.1
    Connection Limit:    1
    Expiration:          Wed, 30 Sep 2020 23:18:14 MST
    Port:                61991
    Protocol:            tcp
    Session ID:          s_h7vBIhH5SZ

For more information regarding different ways to connect to a target behind Boundary see Connect to Target under Getting Started and Advanced Session Establishment below.

View Sessions

CLIAdmin Console

View all sessions which Boundary has for the project p_1234567890 by listing them.

$ boundary sessions list -scope-id p_1234567890
Session information:
    ID:                 s_h7vBIhH5SZ
        Status:           active
        Created Time:     2020-09-30T15:18:14-07:00
        Expiration Time:  2020-09-30T23:18:14-07:00
        Updated Time:     2020-09-30T15:18:35-07:00
        User ID:          u_1234567890
        Target ID:        ttcp_1234567890

We can get a more detailed view of a specific session by reading it.

$ boundary sessions read -id s_h7vBIhH5SZ
Session information:
    Auth Token ID:       at_51XQGx0bzk
    Created Time:        Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:14 MST
    Endpoint:            tcp://localhost:22
    Expiration Time:     2020-09-30T23:18:14-07:00
    Host ID:             hst_1234567890
    Host Set ID:         hsst_1234567890
    ID:                  s_h7vBIhH5SZ
    Status:              active
    Target ID:           ttcp_1234567890
    Type:                tcp
    Updated Time:        2020-09-30T15:18:35-07:00
    User ID:             u_1234567890
    Version:             2
    Scope:
        ID:                p_1234567890
        Name:              Generated project scope
        Parent Scope ID:   o_1234567890
        Type:              project
    States:
        Start Time:        Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:35 MST
        Status:            active
        End Time:          Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:35 MST
        Start Time:        Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:14 MST
        Status:            pending

Cancel a Session

CLIAdmin Console

To send a request to Boundary to cancel a session:

$ boundary sessions cancel -id s_h7vBIhH5SZ
Session information:
    Auth Token ID:       at_51XQGx0bzk
    Created Time:        Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:14 MST
    Endpoint:            tcp://localhost:22
    Expiration Time:     2020-09-30T23:18:14-07:00
    Host ID:             hst_1234567890
    Host Set ID:         hsst_1234567890
    ID:                  s_h7vBIhH5SZ
    Status:              canceling
    Target ID:           ttcp_1234567890
    Type:                tcp
    Updated Time:        2020-09-30T15:19:17-07:00
    User ID:             u_1234567890
    Version:             3
    Scope:
        ID:                p_1234567890
        Name:              Generated project scope
        Parent Scope ID:   o_1234567890
        Type:              project
    States:
        Start Time:        Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:19:17 MST
        Status:            canceling
        End Time:          Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:19:17 MST
        Start Time:        Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:35 MST
        Status:            active
        End Time:          Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:35 MST
        Start Time:        Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:18:14 MST
        Status:            pending

Boundary then cancels the session and move it into a “Terminated” state.

Advanced Session Establishment

Above, we discussed connecting to a target using the boundary connect command. In addition to this we can create a session to a target and connect to that session in separate steps. This is accomplished using the boundary targets authorize-session command, which generates an authorization token that a user can use to start a session via boundary connect -authz-token at their own convenience.

$ boundary targets authorize-session -id ttcp_1234567890
Target information:
    Authorization Token:   $LONG_STRING_OF_TEXT
    Created Time:          2020-09-30T15:18:14-07:00
    Host ID:               hst_1234567890
    Scope ID:              p_1234567890
    Session ID:            s_h7vBIhH5SZ
    Target ID:             ttcp_1234567890
    Type:                  tcp
    User ID:               u_1234567890

Note: You can also provide a -host-id flag in the request above which ensures connecting using the provided Authorization Token will connect you to this specific host.

$ boundary proxy -authz $LONG_STRING_OF_TEXT
Proxy listening information:
    Address:             127.0.0.1
    Connection Limit:    1
    Expiration:          Wed, 30 Sep 2020 23:18:14 MST
    Port:                61991
    Protocol:            tcp
    Session ID:          s_h7vBIhH5SZ

With the above address and port information we can now connect to our local proxy and have our tcp traffic sent through the Boundary system.

$ ssh 127.0.0.1 -p 61991
...