SSH, the Secure Shell protocol can be used for a encrypted connection to another computer. When talking about SSH, it is also considered as the tool to connect to a computer for remote administration. In this article, I will show how to connect to a remote computer with a SSH tool.

Almost all the information on this website is aimed on linux. But not because only Linux can be used in connection with servers, the reason is that the server's operating system is based on Linux. However, this does not mean that a Windows or Mac computer can't be used to maintain a Linux server over SSH. There are many Windows and Mac SSH-tools available for this purpose.

Here are a few such tools. I did not test them since I am only using the standard OpenSSH client on Ubuntu.

Installation

On most Linux-systems, SSH can be installed from the packet manager:

$ sudo apt-get install ssh

There is no further configuration needed.

First connection

Connecting to a remote computer is done with the following command:

$ ssh username_on_remote_computer@remote_computer_IPaddress

Example:

$ ssh root@192.168.1.10

When connecting to a compter the first time, the authenticity of the connection has to be established. To make sure the connection goes to the right remote computer, SSH shows the RSA key fingerprint for identification. This is mainly important if you are connecting to a remote computer which is not in your local network. If you are sure that the connection is correct, type "yes", hit ENTER and SSH will add the new host to it's list of known hosts. After the host has been added to the list, you are asked to enter the login password of the user. The successful login is shown with a welcome message and the command line now starts with a "#" (instead of a "$" which is used for the local terminal).

From now on, all your actions are executed on the remote computer until you type "exit" to cancel the SSH connection. Type "exit" if you want to cancel the SSH connection.