Cloud Shell

By default, your Cloud Shell session starts in your tenancy home region, where Cloud Shell provides 5 GB of encrypted persistent storage for your home directory. When your Cloud Shell session is in your tenancy home region, you can make local changes to your home directory and continue working on your project in later Cloud Shell sessions in your tenancy home region. You can also launch Cloud Shell in the selected Console region. See Cloud Shell and Regions.

Cloud Shell is free to use (within your tenancy's monthly limits) and doesn't require any setup or prerequisites other than an IAM policy granting access to Cloud Shell. Your Cloud Shell includes a VM provisioned for you that executes in its own tenancy (so it doesn't use any of your tenancy's resources) and hosts your shell in an Oracle Linux OS while you're actively using Cloud Shell.

To understand how to access and use Cloud Shell, see Using Cloud Shell.

Cloud Shell runs on Oracle Linux 8.

In addition to the OCI CLI, the Cloud Shell VM running Oracle Linux 8 comes with current versions of many useful tools and utilities, including:

• Git
• Java
  Note
  
  

  Cloud Shell now enables you to install an Oracle Java release by using the Toolkit for Java Download. For more information, see Toolkit for Java Download.

• Python
  Note
  
  Multiple versions of Python are included in Cloud Shell. Use csruntimectl to switch Python versions. For example: run "csruntimectl python list" to get a list of available Python version, and "csruntimectl python set <python-alias>" to switch the Python version.
• Oracle GraalVM JDK 17 and Native Image
• Most OCI SDKs, including:
  • Java
  • Python
  • Go
  • TypeScript and JavaScript
• SQLcl
• kubectl
• helm
• maven
• terraform
• ansible
• nodes
• podman
  Note
  
  Docker Engine is no longer installed on Oracle Linux 8-based Cloud Shell. Podman provides a similar container management experience with a daemonless architecture. For backward compatibility, Cloud Shell provides a "docker" alias which is a wrapper of the command "podman". You can use either the "podman" or "docker" command to run containers with commands largely compatible with Docker. For more information on podman, see the Oracle Linux Podman User's Guide.

  When you run the podman login or docker login command to sign in to a container registry, the auth.json file is written at the following location, /run/user/<uid>/containers/auth.json for example, /run/user/1101/containers/auth.json.

• buildah
• skopeo
• runc
• iputils
• jqmake
• tmux
• vim
• NPM
• wget
• zip/unzip
• nano
• emacs
• pip
• bash
• sh
• tar
• nvm
• mysql-community-client
• mysqlsh
• ipython
• OCI-powershell-modules (x86_64 only)
• GoldenGate Admin client (x86_64 only)
• Fn Project CLI

  Required to work with OCI Functions.

  Note
  
  When using the Fn CLI in Cloud Shell, OCI Functions doesn't support the creation and deployment of functions based on multi-architecture images and doesn't support applications with multi-architecture shapes. The architecture of the Cloud Shell session must match the architecture of the application.

To use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you must be given the required type of access in a policy written by an administrator in the tenancy's root compartment, whether you're using the Console or the REST API with an SDK, CLI, or other tool. If you try to perform an action and get a message that you don't have permission or are unauthorized, confirm with your administrator that you have been granted access.

allow group <GROUP-NAME> to use cloud-shell in tenancy

allow group <DOMAIN-NAME>/<GROUP-NAME> to use cloud-shell in tenancy

If you're new to policies, see Managing Identity Domains and Common Policies and Creating a Policy and Dynamic Group.

Keep the following limitations in mind when using Cloud Shell:

• Docker Engine is no longer installed on Oracle Linux 8-based Cloud Shell. Podman provides a similar container management experience with a daemonless architecture. For backward compatibility, Cloud Shell provides a "docker" alias which is a wrapper of the command "podman". You can use either the "podman" or "docker" command to run containers with commands largely compatible with Docker. For more information on podman, see the Oracle Linux Podman User's Guide.

• By default, Cloud Shell limits network access to OCI internal resources in the Cloud Shell session region, which is your tenancy home region unless you use regional launch. To access OCI internal resources in a non-home region, launch Cloud Shell in that region by using regional launch, or enable Cloud Shell Public Network. Your administrator must configure an Identity policy to enable Cloud Shell Public Network. For more information, see Cloud Shell Networking.

• Cloud Shell provides 5 GB of storage for the VM home directory when the Cloud Shell session is in your tenancy home region. This storage is persistent between home-region sessions. After six months of nonuse, your tenancy administrator receives a notification that the storage will be removed in 60 days. Starting a Cloud Shell session in your tenancy home region resets the removal timer.

• Cloud Shell does not support mounting additional storage.
• Cloud Shell does not scan user files for malware or viruses.
• Cloud Shell sessions do not allow for any incoming connections, and there is no public IP address available.

• The OCI CLI runs commands against the region selected in the Console Region menu when Cloud Shell started. Changing the selected Console region does not change the OCI CLI target region for an active session. To change the target region, select the desired Console region and start a new Cloud Shell session.

• Cloud Shell sessions have a maximum length of 24 hours, and time out after 60 minutes of inactivity.
• Cloud Shell uses websockets to communicate between your browser and the service. If your browser has websockets disabled or uses a corporate proxy that has websockets disabled you will see an error message ("An unexpected error occurred") when attempting to start Cloud Shell from the Console.
• Cloud Shell is designed for interactive use with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources. Users who need additional storage for Cloud Shell or want to run non-interactive long-running tasks are encouraged to use Compute and Storage resources in their tenancy.
• For maximum compatibility, Cloud Shell includes Python version 2 and Python version 3. Python 2 is the default that will run when you enter 'python' at the command line. To run Python 3, enter 'python3' at the command line.
• The following reserved words can't be used as the user name for a Cloud Shell user: oci, root, bin, daemon, adm, lp, sync, shutdown, halt, mai, operator, games, ftp, nobody, oci, systemd-network, dbus, polkitd, tss, and apache. Attempting to create a Cloud Shell session when logged in with a user name (or the part of the name before the @ sign if the user name is an email address) that's one of these reserved words will result in an "Unexpected Error" message.
• Entirely numerical user names (for example, "1234") aren't supported by Cloud Shell.
• The Cloud Shell session time zone is UTC, and can't be changed.
• In a Cloud Shell terminal, root access and sudo aren't allowed, so packages requiring root privileges can't be installed. However, many packages offer versions that don't need root permissions. These can be unpacked and installed directly in the home directory.
• In a Cloud Shell terminal, ping command isn't allowed.
• Cloud Shell boots in FIPS mode, which might affect the behavior of some commands.
• Cloud Shell can't generate PKCS#1 keys when using the openssl command, because Cloud Shell boots in FIPS mode. FIPS mode requires that Cloud Shell generates PKCS#8 keys.
• Network Sources aren't supported for the Cloud Shell Service.
• For more information on Cloud Shell limits, see the Cloud Shell section in Limits by Service.

The first time you start a Cloud Shell session in your tenancy's home region, the service creates a persistent 5-GB block storage volume for your home directory in that region. Your home directory volume and the machine that runs your Cloud Shell session are located in your tenancy's home region.

When you use regional launch to start a Cloud Shell session outside your tenancy's home region, the machine that runs the session is located in the selected region. Your home directory in that region is ephemeral and is deleted when the machine is terminated.

Your home directory and the machine that runs your Cloud Shell session are regional resources and aren't shared across regions.

If you're a paid tier user, you can select a default architecture (ARM (aarch64), x86_64 or No Preference) for the Cloud Shell sessions.

By default, the architecture preference is set to No Preference. When this is selected, your Cloud Shell sessions will be based on either the x86_64 or ARM (aarch64) architecture, depending on the hardware available in the region.

Selecting an architecture

To select an architecture:

Open the Actions menu, which is accessible from within Cloud Shell or Code Editor, and select Architecture.

This displays the Architecture dialog:

The Architecture dialog shows the selected architecture.

To select the preferred architecture, select the appropriate radio button and then click the Confirm and Restart button.

Note

If a region doesn't support a particular architecture, you can't select that architecture.

Note

Before switching the Cloud Shell architecture, ensure that the tools and workloads are compatible with the architecture you're about to select.

After a successful architecture migration, you see the following notification: