Remotely Connect to the Linux Desktop/Server

[Eli]

Whether you're a network/system administrator or not, it sometimes requires some knowledge on how to use remote login protocols such as ssh, rlogin and telnet. The knowledge on remote connectivity is important and extremely useful if you regularly work remotely on other machines, servers, transfer data between computers/servers, for example using SCP (Secure Copy - scp -r or rsync -avz -e ) commands, or remotely provide troubleshooting solutions.

Here, we introduce one of these leading tools, OpenSSH. Developed by the Open BSD group and released under Simplified BSD License. OpenSSH is a powerful multi-platform tool for secure remote login with the SSH protocol. It is capable of providing large suite of secure tunneling while encrypting all traffics to eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. OpenSSH however, offers a number of authentication methods and sophisticated configuration options.

How to install and use OpenSSH in your Linux distribution?

Assume you are using Ubuntu Linux (change commands to suit your needs), install OpenSSH server and OpenSSH client:

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1. $sudo apt-get install openssh-server
2. $sudo apt-get install openssh-client

Get the IP address of the Desktop/server you would like to connect:

$ifconfig

After knowing the IP address, you can always use ssh protocol to connect to the Desktop or server as follows:

$ssh Desktop/server_to_connect IP_Address

then Enter the password of the Desktop to connect to.

Sometimes you are not able to connect directly to an organization Desktop (assume you are at home and you want to connect to the organization Desktop in the office) using your personal Desktop because the connection is not trusted. If you have access to an organization server, don't worry, you will be able to connect. The idea is to move inside the organization server and then ssh Desktop IP address:

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1. $ssh username@server_IP_Address

Enter server password.

After moving inside the server, ssh your desktop:

$ssh Desktop_to_connect_IP_Address

Enter remote Desktop password

That's it.

[Robot]

Interesting, one of the best Linux hacks!