SSH the easy way

Introduction

Secure SHell is a wonderful tool for remotely logging in to a system and doing work. Because of it's command-line nature SSH can be a bit intimidating, but it doesn't have to be: some of the graphics tools you might already know and love can be used in conjunction with SSH to make life easier.

Connecting to SSH with gftp

gftp is often used for connecting to FTP servers, but it can also be used to connect and easily manage files through SSH. Using gftp for SSH is almost as straightforward as FTP, the only difference is that you need to select SSH2 from the protocol drop down on the right hand side of the interface. (shown below) Using gftp you can send and receive files without having to remember scp syntax. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to remembering exact syntax, often I rely on man (manual) pages to help me. But even with manual pages I've made mistakes and I find that using a graphical SSH client like gftp helps me not make blunders.

Password-less SSH connections

Recently I started to work a lot more on a web server I have at home. I also managed to switch my wonderful fiancee to Linux (with her blessing), which meant we both had Linux systems to connect to the server. I've put accounts on both machines, a notebook and a desktop, so we can switch machines when we want. Our desktop is a bit more flexible because it has more power and storage. I sometimes find myself using it. It's also right by our patio, so we can look out at the sun and relax. The notebook is nice and flexible, allowing us to work anywhere. Often I want to SSH from both machines into the web server. So I have 2 clients and 1 server. For each of the clients I've made a ~/.ssh directory and generated ssh keys by running: ssh-keygen This is run as a regular user. It doesn't matter if you're running Debian, Fedora, or Ubuntu on the different machines (though it might matter if you have an ancient version of SSH). The web server is a PowerPC running Debian. The notebook runs Ubuntu and our desktop runs Fedora 10. Generating keys works the same way on all 3. Once you've generated your client SSH keys you want to copy your public key (~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) to the same user account on the server (don't use root). So if I'm charm on all machines I'm copying my charm key to the charm account on my server. Just do one client machine at a time. The client public key then gets copied to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server. Don't leave your id_rsa.pub in your home directory on your server. If you have more than one computer and you want to use different keys from both systems to log into the server concatenate the second/third/etc. client to the ~/ssh/authorized_keys on the server. The first time you SSH in from your client to the server you'll have to enter the password you used when you generated your SSH keys. After the first time it's just a matter of SSH server-address.