I am not sure about any other distro (as I have not tried them all), but in Ubuntu, the default keyring manager (also known as seahorse) comes with the ability to create public/private SSH key and help you set it up in the server.

1. In Ubuntu, open the “Password and Keys” app. Go to “File -> New“.

2. In the popup window, select “Secure Shell Key” and click “Continue”.

3. Enter a description for your SSH key and click “Create and Set Up”. You can, of course, select “Just Create Key” if you just want it to generate the keys and do nothing else.

If you click on the “Advanced option”, you can configure whether to use RSA or DSA for the encryption and the key strength. Most of the time, you can just leave this as default.

4. Next, enter a passphrase for your key. This is purely optional. To set a empty password, just leave it blank and click OK.

5. Lastly, enter your remote hostname, port and login name. If you don’t know your remote hostname, you can replace it with its IP address. Use the “:” to separate the hostname and the port, for example “maketecheasier.com:2233“. (If you are connecting via the default port, you can leave the port section empty)

6. It will then prompt you to enter your remote host login password. /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa

If everything goes well, your remote host will be properly set up to accept public/private key connection.

To accept to your remote host, you just have to enter the following command in the terminal:

ssh username@remote-host-ip-address

That’s it.

Thanks to Michael Stephenson for the tips.

1. Open a terminal. Type:

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Alternatively, you can also use the DSA (Digital Signing Algorithm) technology to create the public/private key.

ssh-keygen -t dsa

Note: There has been a lot of debate about the security of DSA and RSA. In my opinion, unless you are very particular and love to delve into the technical detail between the two technology, it doesn’t matter which of the two you choose. Both will work fine.

2. In the next screen, you should see a prompt, asking you for the location to save the key. The default location is the .ssh folder in your Home directory. You can just press “Enter” to accept the default setting.

3. Next, you will be prompted to enter passphrase. This is NOT the passphrase to connect to your remote host. This is the passphrase to unlock the private key so that no one can access your remote server even if they got hold of your private key. The passphrase is optional. To leave it blank, just press “Enter”.

4. Your public and private SSH key should now be generated. Open the file manager and navigate to the .ssh directory. You should see two files: id_rsa and id_rsa.pub.

5. Upload the id_rsa.pub file to the home folder of your remote host (assuming your remote host is running Linux as well). Connect to your remote host via SSH and use the following command to move the public key to the correct location.

cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
rm id_rsa.pub

6. Still in your remote host, open the SSH config file:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Scroll down the config file and make sure the following attributes are set correctly.

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes 
PasswordAuthentication no

Press “ctrl + o” to write and save the file, follow by “ctrl + x” to close the file.

7. Lastly, restart the SSH server in the remote host

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh reload

That’s it. You can now connect to your remote host with the following command:

ssh -i /path-to-private-key username@remote-host-ip-address

Image credit: eternicode @ DeviantArt

Overview

Let’s say you’re at the command line, and you’re running a long process like a kernel recompile. On some machines, that can take up to an hour. An average user might sit and wait. A clever user might background the job, or use the function keys to open a new TTY login. A screen user, however, has already thought ahead. Had screen been launched first (or automatically – more on that later) that user would just hit the proper key combo to create a new shell. And another, and another, if desired. Each one operates independently of the others and all output will remain on the appropriate screen session.

Some of you who like to use the ALT-CTRL-(F1 through F4) method may wonder how screen is any better. Several reasons actually, some of which would be:

1. Not limited to number of function keys
2. Ability to name each screen
3. Ability to detach/reattach screen sessions
4. “Status Bar” support
5. Multi-user shared screens
6. Split screens

A LOTS more.

Getting Started

As screen is included in nearly every major Linux distro, this guide will not cover installation. The simplest way to launch screen is to just open a terminal and type

screen

You might get a welcome screen, but otherwise you may not notice anything different. It just looks like a normal terminal right?

What you’re actually seeing is the default screen session, and you can think of it as a layer over your shell. Should you exit or detach the session, you’d be returned to your normal screen-less shell.

Adding and Navigating Screens

For starters, you’ll need to know one major key combo. This is the “magic” key combo that lets you access all the individual commands. What is this magical combination? Ctrl-A. For example, Ctrl-A followed by c will create a new screen. Ctrl-A and n will move to the next screen in line (if one exists). The following includes many of the most common action keys (all keys are case-sensitive):

• c – Create a new screen
• n – Move to next screen
• p – Move to previous screen
• S – Split screen into stacked regions
• | – Split to side-by-side regions (might not work on all systems)
• d – Detach screen
• A – Set screen title

Attaching/Detaching Screens

While there are many great uses for screen, this function could be called screen’s bread and butter. The ability to detach a screen, leaving it running, and pick it back up later is invaluable.

Let’s say you’re running the Minecraft server from last week, and it’s running on an old PC under your bed. Normally if you wanted to, say, enter commands at the server console, you’d have to pull out the machine, dig out a keyboard and monitor, run your commands, and push it all back. Had the server software been started in a screen session, you can just SSH into the server, re-attach the screen, and do what you need. When done, detach the screen, and the server will keep running even after you close the SSH session. Days/weeks/months later, you can log back into the server and reattach that screen to enter new commands.

.screenrc

Finally, we could not cover screen without at least a brief mention of the ~/.screenrc file. There are many many uses for this file, but as this is an introductory guide, we will not cover all possible options. Instead, we’ll just point out the well-loved hardstatus setting.

This option gives you a fantastically useful info bar that will persist across all screen sessions. Typically, it’s placed at the bottom and holds info such as time, hostname, and title/number of the current screen.

You can find example hardstatus codes all over the net with your preferred search engine, but here are a few to get you started.

#1

hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B} %d/%m %{W}%c %{g}]'

#2

hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string "%{+b Rk}(%{-b g}$LOGNAME@%H%{+b R}) (%{-b g}%C %a%{+b R}) %{-b g} %n %t %h"

#3

hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= M} %H%{= G} %l %= %{= w}%-w%{+b r}%n*%t%{-b r}%{w}%+w %= %{c}%d %D %{B}%c '

Installation and Setup

Most Linux distributions that ship KDE as an option or as the default desktop also distribute packages for KTorrent. For example, to install KTorrent on Kubuntu or other Ubuntu variants, just use the graphical installation program or open a terminal and run:

sudo apt-get install ktorrent

Once installed, start KTorrent on the machine where you want it to run. You will need to configure it before you start using it remotely. First, in the main menu, click “Settings” and “Configure KTorrent”.

Set the default save location to the place where you want your torrent files to be saved. The web interface will not allow you to access this setting remotely. Click “OK” to finish the configuration.

Next, click the “Plugins” tab on the left. Check the “Web Interface” box to enable remote management. Now, go back into “Settings” -> “Configure KTorrent” and click the “Web Interface” tab. You should probably use a login and password, but it is optional. Make sure the default web server port is not used by another application. If it is, change it to something else.

Click “OK”, and you should now have a KTorrent web server running on the computer. To verify that it is running, open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:8080/. Replace 8080 with the port number you used.

Starting KTorrent Remotely

If you are not completely obsessed with convenience, you can always start KTorrent directly from the host machine and keep it running in the system tray. If, however, you need to start it remotely, you can use SSH.

Before you go any further, you need to make sure your computer’s firewall will permit the port you will use for remote connection.

Next, login to the remote machine via SSH:

ssh -l username ipaddress

Replace “username” with the computer’s currently logged-in username and “ipaddress” with the local IP of the computer. You may also be able to use the computer’s host name. It will prompt you for a password and should give you access to the remote command line.

Finally, start ktorrent so that it opens on the user’s current X display rather than yours:

ktorrent --display :0 &

If the user is not logged in on :0 X display, change it to the appropriate number. If you are unsure that it worked, you can check to see if it is running:

ps aux | grep ktorrent

You now have the option of adding torrent URLs directly through SSH:

ktorrent /path/to/torrent/file/filename.torrent --silent

Alternatively, you can exit SSH and access KTorrent from the web interface.

Web Interface

The KTorrent web interface is very basic but gets the job done. First, open your web browser, go to the IP address or hostname of the computer running KTorrent, and add the port number to the end. For example:

http://192.168.1.1:8080

If it connects correctly, you will see the KTorrent header and login form. Enter the username and password you created during the initial setup. If did not make one, it should pass you straight through to the interface.

The first page you see will be the Torrents tab. To add a new torrent, click “Load Torrent”. There are two ways to load a torrent:

1) with the direct URL to a torrent file from a website or
2) from a downloaded file.

Once you have entered the URL or file, click “Upload Torrent”.

Click back on the Torrents tab to make any individual configuration changes to downloading or seeding torrents. The buttons to the left of each torrent allow you to start, stop, or remove them, and the page will continuously update to show you current download information.

For torrents with multiple files, the title will be displayed as a hyperlink. Click on it to configure individual files. Using the icons to the left of each file, you can set the download priority for each.

The third tab is “Settings”, but this only contains a fraction of the settings available in the actual KTorrent application. It allows you to configure upload/download speeds and also gives you some control over the web interface, such as automatic refresh.

When you are finished with your torrents, click “Logout”. Alternatively, if you are completely finished with KTorrent and all of your torrents are completed, you can click “Shutdown” to end the program completely.

For those who are not aware of the incident, if you are not located in United States, and you click the “Upgrade your account” in the Google Voice dashboard, you will get the error message ”Google Voice is not available in your country”.

From then on, you won’t be able to get to the Google voice dashboard or add credit to your Gmail CallPhone. Effectively, you are locked out from using the call services.

Luckily there is an easy way to fix this. All we need to do is to change our machine to an USA IP address and login to Google voice to cancel the upgrade. Here’s the steps:

In Windows/Mac:

1. Download and install Hotspot shield.

2. Run Hotspot shield

3. Open your browser and login to your Gmail account

4. Open another tab and go to https://www.google.com/voice/. Instead of the “Google Voice Unavailable” error message, you will now be prompted to setup Google voice.

We are not going to setup Google Voice since it is not available outside of USA yet, so what you need to do now is to click on the link “Cancel Your Upgrade”.

That’s it. Your account is unlocked. You can access your Google voice dashboard and add credit to your account.

In Linux

Since Hotspot Shield is not available for Linux, we have to use alternative method to connect to USA IP address.

One of the alternative is to connect to a remote IP using SSH. Once you are connected to the remote address, you can follow the same steps above to cancel your upgrade.

Does this method works for you? Let us know if you know of other ways to connect to a US IP address.

Rsync is a tool that allows you to keep two distinct directories in sync, either locally (two locations on the same machine, including attached devices) or remotely (local computer to server or even server to backup server). It is free and open source software and runs on Linux and most other Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD and Mac OS X.

Furthermore, those who prefer not to get their fingers dirty on the command line can use Grsync, a graphical frontend for rsync, available in most Linux distribution repositories.

Locations

Whether you are using the command line or a graphical program, location is key. You need to know the absolute paths to both locations you will be syncing. For example, if you are backing up a photo directory in your home folder, located in Pictures/2010/StateFair, you need to have the whole path, /home/username/Pictures/2010/StateFair.

For remote locations, the format is username@hostname.com:/path/to/directory

Rsync relies on SSH for remote backups, so the username you specify will need to be your SSH login identity for the remote computer or server. If you are syncing two local computers on your network, you may need to install OpenSSH server.

Local Backup

To perform a local backup to an attached drive or alternate location, specify the default location first, followed by the backup location.

rsync -avz /home/username/Pictures/2010/StateFair /media/disk/backup

The “-a” flag will tell rsync to archive the backup. The “-z” flag will tell rsync to compress the archive. The “-v” flag is “verbose” and will give you information about the backup.

Remote Backup

To backup a website to a backup server or local machine, login to the server via SSH. Then, from the command line, run rsync:

rsync -avz /home/username/www/public_html username@backup-server:/home/user/backup

It will prompt you for a password, which will be the one you use for SSH.

Incremental Backups

Rsync will perform incremental backups by default. This means that it will not recopy all of the files every single time a backup is performed. Instead, only the files that have been newly created or modified since the last backup will be copied. This will save time and network bandwidth, something which is very important if you are running a website or dedicated server.

If you want your backups to be automated and periodic, you can setup a cron job to run rsync at the times you specify. On a server, you might just create a basic shell script that runs rsync and drop the script into /etc/cron.daily or /etc/cron.weekly, depending on how often you want to perform backups.

Grsync

For a desktop or mobile computer, Grsync is a great tool you can use to simplify the rsync process and also save your sessions for future periodic use. Setup the source and destination exactly as you would with rsync.

Ubuntu user can install it via the Ubuntu Software Center, or simply click here to install.

The first box will be the source, and the second will be the destination. There are also numerous options, but unless you have something specific you need to configure, you can leave the default options and just press “Execute”.

Grsync will allow you to create multiple sessions so that you can backup a number of locations and keep the sessions on hand for future use. To add a new session, just click the “Add” button and give it a name. Grsync is free software and is available for Linux, Unix, Windows, and Mac OS X.

Finally, it should be noted that rsync is a great tool for backing up data, but nothing is perfect all the time. You should regularly check your backups to make sure they are successful and accurate. If all goes well, you will be able to backup your files quickly and easily.

There are so many advantages which come when you jailbreak your iPhone. Some of them include the use of Twidget which enables you to view your tweets on lock screen and the use of Winterboard to let you manage the themes in your iPhone. Additionally, jailbreaking your iPhone will give you total control over your iPhone file system. However, once your iPhone is jailbroken, it will become vulnerable and less secure; you will need to take extra measure to retain its security.

One reason why the hacker was able to get into the iPhones of the victims is because they haven’t changed the default password after they had them jailbroken. Considering the fact that “alpine” is the default password of the root directory, and that the whole world knows about this, you should take some time to change it into your own password which no one knows about–except you.

Perhaps, the reason why people leave their password unchanged after jailbreaking their iPhone is because they do not know how. If you are one of them, then this would be the guide you are looking for…

Change the Root Password of your iPhone

Before anything else, I assume you had your iPhone jailbroken…

1. Open Cydia and install MobileTerminal app; you will need this to launch the Terminal app.

2. Launch the Terminal app. Key in this command:

su

Now, key in the default password:

alpine

By doing this, you will be able to log in as the “root” user. It means that you will be able to access everything inside your iPhone while using this user. Also, always remember that the passwords will not be shown/echoed on screen.

3. Once you have done all of the above, you are ready to proceed to this next step.

Key in this command:

passwd

This command will let you change the password for the “root” user.  After you key it in, you will then be prompted to type and confirm your new password.

And that’s it! I am sure you will find this tutorial easy enough to follow. But anyway, let me remind you that you also need to have a strong password; what’s the use of having a password if anyone can easily crack it, right?

Choose a Strong Password

This one may not be new to you. However, there are still people who do not know how to create a password which is harder to crack. The fact is, majority of the people use their birthdays, surnames or a combination of their first and last names plus their birthdays. Believe me, those passwords can be easily cracked even by a grade-schooler. Here is a quick guide for you to come up with a really good password;

1. Always use a combination of Numbers, Letters and Characters.
2. Capitalize some of the Letters randomly.
3. Have as many characters as possible in your password. A minimum of six characters would be good enough.
4. Never ever use your First Name, Last Name, Birthday or the names of your family and friends. More often, people know more about you than you think they do.
5. If possible, use a string of characters which you can easily type without even looking at the keyboard.
6. Do not use any actual word because crackers have dictionaries which contain millions of possible passwords that they can easily run to crack your password. Never ever use the word “password.”
7. Always find an easy way to remember your passwords. Writing them down is always the worst option you can have.
8. Above all, never ever give your password to anyone.

More often, we treat our iPhones as diaries which hold some of our personal information which we do not want to be exposed to anyone we don’t know. Therefore, making them more secure is the best thing we can do to protect our privacy. I hope this article is helpful enough. If you think I lack some important things in here, please feel free to leave comments or suggestions below. Or, if you want to get updates from this site, enter your email below.

Today, I’ll be taking you through another tutorial that involves using SSH to take backups of your remote servers.

As you guys might be aware that I also run a website called Geeky Ninja which is hosted by the nice folks over at Dreamhost on a Linux server.

Even though Dreamhost keeps a backup of my site, as a webmaster I’m a little paranoid about backups and worry about losing my data all the time. That is why I also backup my site to a remote location occasionally. And this is where SSH comes in.

As you guy probably know that SSH is a secure encrypted protocol to communicate between two machines. Since SSH is not a text based protocol like telnet, it is possible to transfer actually binary files using this protocol and SCP is the utility that accomplishes this task on Unix/Linux based systems. SCP encrypts the files given to it using the SSH protocol and copies it to the remote destination that the user specifies.

Getting Started

First of all you need to make sure that the remote system that you want to copy the data from has ssh installed and running. In my case, that’s the remote webserver hosted at Dreamhost.

Login to the remote system and issue the “pwd” command to see your current directory.

Note down the path that pwd prints. Now, from your local system issue the following scp command.

Replace:
username with your real username on the remote system,
Remote_IP with the IP Address/Name of the remote system,
Remote_directory with the output of the pwd command from above and
backup_directory with the name of the directory on your local system where you want to store the backups.

That’s it. This command will copy all the files and directories under the remote_directory to the backup_directory on your local system.

Backing Up in Windows

The above instructions will work well for Unix/Linux based machines, but what if you use Windows as your desktop and want to make a backup of your data from the remote machine to your windows desktop ?

Well, in that case you can just use the excellent utility, WinSCP which is a graphical SCP client for Windows

WinSCP gives you the familiar Explorer like interface with full support for drag and drop. Just browse through the directory you want to backup on the right pane and drag it over to the left pane and say GoodBye to text only unsecure FTP sessions.

How do you guys backup your remote servers ? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: Carbonnyc

Luckily, there are several ways to encrypt your Internet connection on a public network, and one of my favorite is SSH tunneling. This may sound too technical a term for most of the casual users, but I can assure you that it is very easy to implement it.

What is SSH?

In short, SSH is a method (or technically, a protocol) that connects two computer in a secure encrypted manner. When two computers are connected via SSH, any data transfer between the two terminal are encrypted.  SSH Tunneling is simply a method where we use the connected  computer as a proxy to browse the web. When we browse the web (with our browser) via SSH tunneling, the proxy server will retrieve the web content and send it back to our computer via secure connection. Two major benefits of using SSH tunneling include:

1. Masking of your IP address
2. Secure connection to prevent hackers from sniffing out your data

SSH is mainly used in Linux and Mac, but Windows users can also use SSH with Cygwin.

Getting started

Before we start, there are a few things that you need to have:

• a SSH server.
• a SSH client. For Windows users, download Cygwin here.
• Login name and password to login to the remote computer

Note: If you own a website that is running on a third party web host, you already have a SSH server ready to use. You might need to your web host for permission to access via SSH.

On your Mac or Linux machine, open a terminal. Windows users open up the Cygwin application.

Type in the following command:

ssh -D 9999 login@domain.com

The default connection port for the SSH server is port 22, but this might vary across different SSH server. In this case, you will need to find the port number from your web host and enter in the command:

ssh -D 9999 -p PORT login@domain.com

where PORT is the port number to connect to.

The login is the name you are going to login while the domain can be an IP address or a domain name.

You will be prompted to enter your password.

Configuring your browser

In your browser, go to the options page and look out for the section to change your Proxy settings.

Check the button “Manual Proxy Configuration“. In the SOCKS field, enter “localhost” and 9999 for the port field.

Save and close the option page.

That’s it! Your connection are now secured.

Disconnect your SSH session

To disconnect from the SSH session, first, change the browser setting back to “Direct Internet Connection” (or whatever the previous setting).

Next, in your terminal, type

exit

This will disconnect your SSH session.

Have you tried SSH before? Share your experience in the comments.

Image credit: Dave Halley

1. WebFolder (webdav)
2. FTP
3. Microsoft Windows network drive (using Samba)
4. Secure shell (ssh)

Each one has its slightly unique features and requirements, and in this post, you will learn about each one.

There are two ways to start KNetAttach. One, which we already discussed, is to go to remote:/ in Dolphin or Konqueror. Then, simply click on Add Network Folder. The other method is to press Alt-F2, type “knetattach” and press Enter.

WebFolder

WebFolder relies on WebDAV, which allows you to create and use web-based folders. Many remote file storage services rely on this technology. To connect to a web  folder:

1. Select WebFolder from the “Add Network Folder” list and click “Next“.
2. Give it a name; something you will only use for identification.
3. Enter your username.
4. For Server, it is usually a full web address like http://webdav.yourdomain.com
5. Enter a folder name only if required by your host.
6. Check “use encryption” if HTTPS is available.
7. Check “create an icon for this remote folder” to use the connection again in the future.
8. Click “Save and Connect“.

It will prompt you for your password.  If you elect to save your password, it is a good idea to use Kwallet, which is enabled by default.

FTP and SSH

Connecting to FTP is nearly identical to other connection methods.

1. Give the connection a name.
2. Enter the username (Often, this is a full email address if you use shared hosting. Check with your host). If it is public FTP, usually the username is “anonymous”.
3. Enter the server (Usually just the domain name, like suchandsuch.com or ftp.suchandsuch.com).
4. Only change the port if specified by your host. 21 is the default.
5. Click “Save and Connect“.

The only difference with SSH is usually the port number. In addition to connecting to remote hosts for a website, this is a good method to use for connecting two Linux computers on a local network for file transfer. Just make sure that both hosts have openssh server installed.

Microsoft Windows network drive

For a connection to Windows, you will need Samba running and configured on your computer. If you are unsure what server information to use, navigate to remote:/ and then click on “Samba Shares“. It will show you the current windows shares on your network. When you click “Save and Connect“, it will prompt you for a username and password only if the samba share requires it.

Network Services

There is a button in the remote:/ section called “Network Services”, and it allows you to connect to zeroconf services. The idea behind zeroconf (zero configuration) is to connect to networked computers, printers, and various devices without any expert configuration. Linux uses a free implementation called Avahi. Many distributions enable the avahi daemon by default. It allows you to quickly discover and connect to FTP, Samba, HTTP, CUPS, and other protocols.

The remote:/ KIO combined with KNetAttach provides users with a full networking experience. Once you are connected to one of the above-mentioned services, you can navigate through them just as you would through folders and files on your own computer. You can drag and drop, copy and paste, and even delete all in real time.  When you are finished, just close the tab or window.

To follow this guide, you’ll need the following:

- Client computer with openssh-client installed (for Windows, use Putty)
- Server computer with openssh-server installed (Available on any UNIX-style system)
- A working set of login credentials on the server

If you don’t have a computer with an SSH server, you can use the same PC as both client and server for the sake of trying all this out. If you do have a (Linux, Unix, BSD) computer available to act as server, make sure to install the OpenSSH server software. Debian and Ubuntu users can get this easily with

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

1. Using SSH to securely copy files

This is my second favorite use for SSH. When you install the OpenSSH client on your machine, it typically comes with a file copy tool called SCP (Secure Copy). This can be VERY useful as a way to not only send files to your friends (who have openssh-server running) but to do it in a completely encrypted way.

For example, a friend of mine in Michigan is a studio engineer. He mixes audio tracks for a recording studio. Sometimes, when he wants a second opinion, he’ll send me what he’s working on so I can give him my opinion. Now, since this is all copyrighted music which has not even been released to the public, he’s naturally reluctant to post it on a filesharing service or web site, and the files are often too large for email. Instead, we transfer using SCP.

The format for an scp command is:

scp filename user@remote-host:/where/to/save/it

So my friend, on the other side of the country, would enter something like

scp MyNewMix.wav nick@joshs-computer.com:/home/nick/mixes

This example is assuming my computer is accessible from joshs-computer.com and that he has a user account on it named nick. His file will be copied to my computer over a fully encrypted connection without having to be stored at some third-party website or email server.

2. Mount a network drive securely

Now here is my #1 favorite use of SSH. If you’re a Linux user, you’re probably familiar with mounting drives. You have a device like a cdrom drive (say, /dev/hdc for example), and to access it, you mount it to a directory such as /media/cdrom. Well you can use that same principle with a program called SSHFS to mount a filesystem over a network/internet and attach it to a directory on your computer.

SSHFS is not part of the standard openssh package. It’s a separately developed program that you’ll install independently using your normal package manager.

Let’s go back to the example with my friend at the studio. Perhaps he’s got several new mixes for me instead of just one, or perhaps we do this so often that using SCP to transfer back and forth starts to become a hassle. Well, if he’s got openssh-server installed and I have an account on his computer, I can mount his hard drive to any directory I wish. The command follows the structure:

sshfs user@remote-host:/what/I/want /where/to/put/it

So to connect to Nick’s computer I’d use something like:

sshfs josh@nicks-computer.com:/home/nick/mixes /home/josh/nicks-computer

That would make it so that any time I access the folder /home/josh/nicks-computer from my machine, it would actually connect to Nick’s computer over SSH and give me access to all those files just as if they were sitting in a normal directory on my computer. Any changes I make are made to the files on his computer, it’s completely transparent. I can use whatever audio software I like to work with the files, they are completely oblivious to the fact that they’re really reading the file from 2500 miles away.

A word of warning about SSHFS: since it’s reading the files over the internet instead of locally, combined with the encryption overhead, SSHFS can be SLOW. You probably wouldn’t want to use it to access files that need lots of speed or are constantly being read or written.

There are many great uses for SSH and related tools. I’d love to hear what other tricks you may have. SSH tunneling, for example, can be hugely beneficial for some people, but doing it justice would require an article of its own. Do you have any other tips to get the most out of SSH?

Installation and setup

Before you begin you need to make sure that SSH client and server are installed on the correct computers. The host computer that will have the actual running applications needs to have SSH server running. On Ubuntu, it is not installed by default. Look for the packaged called “openssh-server” and install it. On the client computer, you will need “openssh-client“.

The other important preliminary step is to make sure both computers are connected to a network and that you can reach them via SSH. If the computers are in the same building, it will be easy. If not, you might have to configure the host computer to receive SSH connections through the firewall. See your router’s documentation for the correct method of port forwarding.

Connecting

1. Open a terminal emulator: Gnome terminal, Konsole or something similar.

2. Now connect to the host computer. As an example, if the host IP address is 192.168.254.76 and the host username is “bobolina”, you would type the following:

ssh -X -lbobolina 192.168.254.76

This tells SSH to forward the X server calls to the client computer.

3. At the password prompt, enter the password.

4. Run the application. For example, if you want to run Kwrite, just type the command:

dbus-launch kwrite &

(Note: you will need to have “dbus-launch” before KDE 4 applications. Other applications that do not require D-Bus should work without it).

Other Considerations

That is all it takes.  You should now be able to run remote X applications at will. This can be very helpful if, for example, you are running a computer with a very small hard drive, no hard drive at all or even one without a CD-ROM drive, all of which are common with many netbooks and low-cost mini desktops.

To automate this process, you could setup SSH public keys to connect without passwords and write an executable script. Also, if you need a full X session forwarded, you can use NX technology, available with the commercial NoMachine NX or with FreeNX (a free and open source alternative).

As with any network solution, security is always a concern. Using SSH provides a secure connection, but it does little good if your password is easy to guess and your firewall allows anyone to gain access to it. Once you have a secure plan in place, remote X forwarding is an excellent way load remote applications on demand and manage remote machines. The possibilities are only as limited to your imagination and the speed of your network connection. Experiment with different techniques, and let us know what you discover.