Comments on: Beginning SSH on Ubuntu

By: ssh and scp | My Technical Pages

ssh and scp | My Technical Pages — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:30:56 +0000

[...] I just read an article on principialabs.com showing how to do the following steps in a simpler way using [...]

By: Eats Wombats

Eats Wombats — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:07:23 +0000

Update:

My mistake was painfully simple: trying to SSH in the wrong direction, from the machine with the public key.

I’m not the only one to have done this so I posted a note to launchpad suggesting some clarification of the docs which are not at all clear on this (as well as on the authorized-keys filename). A diagram would help too.

I should say that the PubkeyAuthentication was already done and that no changes are needed to sshd_config at all.

This is helpful:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=238672

By: Eats Wombats

Eats Wombats — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:01:35 +0000

You don't mention the need to have

PubkeyAuthentication yes

in sshd_config. I have done this but I'm not clear (yet) on what other things I should do at the same time, if any.

Loved the "Go forth and SSHify!"

By: Eats Wombats

Eats Wombats — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:51:46 +0000

Useful article. There’s a possible discrepancy with the info here

https://help.ubuntu.com/8.04/serverguide/C/openssh-server.html

you advise using authorized_keys, the Ubuntu site uses authorized_keys2.

I’m guessing that it depends on what’s in the sshd_config file, but the debian site (http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/152) is also a little confusing. I thought RSA was older but, not according to this.

I’m here because the Ubuntu page above isn’t working for me — trying to get passwordless authentication working. The first problem was I had forgotten I had a firewall rule blocking port 22 (smacks forehead!). It would be good in such docs if assumptions were enumerated with tests to verify applicability.

I think it’s particularly important for anything that will enable a new (to Ubuntu) user to set up a good backup regime. I’m looking to run rsync from my laptop over ssh.

Your docs are considerably better than the official ones! Thanks

By: john

john — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:35:07 +0000

try this -

web based ssh client, very useful when you’re behind a strict firewall.

http://www.browsershell.com

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:23:56 +0000

Nick, thanks for the kudos. I’m probably not qualified to comment directly on your setup. To connect to my SSH server from the WAN, I simply forward a port on my router’s config page, and link it to LAN IP of the Linux box running the server. Then, instead of typing ssh myaccount@192.168.xx.xx, I type ssh myaccount@my.WAN.IP, and the router takes care of the rest.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 19:37:08 +0000

Great article! Just one question though. If I wanted to connect to my home network from somewhere on the internet, and didn't want to connect only to my firewall server (connected directly to the internet), what would the syntax be? For example, if my networks' IP is 71.58.214.207 (firewall server eth0) and I want to access 192.168.0.123 (ftp server connected to firewall server eth1), how would I do that?

I know that you can just ssh into the firewall server and then into the ftp one, but I would imagine there is an easier/more secure way.

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:47:24 +0000

Mike, thanks a bunch for the tip. I included a note for OSX users in the text above.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:07:30 +0000

Thank you for this wonderful guide. I would like to add for any OSX users who are reading this, and realize we don’t have ssh-copy-id. Just use this simple command:

cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh account@remoteserver.com "cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys"

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 30 May 2008 14:39:42 +0000

Thanks also to muffinman for his comment on reddit, regarding the use of the ~/.ssh/config file rather than editing /etc/hosts directly.