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School of Mathematics

Obtaining and Using Secure Shell (SSH)

Computer Systems Guide
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Ssh is used for encrypted point to point terminals and data copying across the internet. Ssh can be used for getting command line terminals to remote computers (similar to telnet) or to securely copy data using the scp command. Ssh is more secure than it's telnet and ftp predecessors.

If the unix command line is new to you, pick up a book on Unix from a local library.

If ssh, scp and rsync are new to you, check their manual pages by running a command like man ssh.

Remote Shells with SSH

To get a terminal shell on the remote computer shell.example.edu with a username johndoe, you can open a terminal on your local computer and run the command: "ssh johndoe@shell.example.edu". Then you'll be prompted to enter your password.

The Fedora 8 Linux distribution has terminals available in the "Applications > System Tools" menu. Mac OS X keeps the Terminal application in the folder "/Applications/Utilities/".

Windows users generally use a program like PuTTY, and will enter the hostname in the initial dialog window, click "ok" and enter the username and password on the terminal window that opens up.

If you have a specific hostname like birch.math.umn.edu just replace that hostname for shell.example.edu in the command above.

File Transfer with SFTP

Command Line SFTP

To copy a file to a remote host using the command line, use a command to specify the source to copy from and the destination to copy to. 
scp options source destination
Remote files are specified with a username, a host and a file (or directory). 
user@hostname:file
In the case below the -r option enables recursion so the directory foo and it's contents will be copied. 
scp -r foo/ jdoe@shell.example.edu:~
You can also copy from a remote host to a local host... 
scp -r jdoe@shell.example.edu:~/foo ~

Drag and Drop SFTP

Desktop programs are available that let you drag and drop files between remote hosts and your desktop. Often they'll have you specify the user, host and password on an initial config screen. After connecting the SFTP sofware will show two panels, one panel, or mount the sftp connection as a network drive. Then you can drag and drop between the panels and your desktop, file manager, or finder window.

See the web site for the software you plan to use.

SSH Software

Various free (or free for noncommercial use) ssh clients are available for different operating systems:

Unix

OpenSSH, DropBear SSH or Lsh. The OpenSSH page also has pointers to clients for various other platforms, and may be more current than this page.

Graphical and text user interfaces are available for ssh with the gftp and midnight commander software.

Windows

PuTTY which includes a (command-line) scp client.

There's a nice Windows scp client which is described at WinSCP. You should use this instead of ftp, and it will work to connect to most unix machines.

If you would like to run X applications on your local windows desktop from a Unix machine using Putty and XWin32 please read this page.

Macs OS 9

Try MacSSH which supports version 2 of the SSH protocol. If you need SSHv1 suport, try NiftySsh.

Macs OS X

You can use Fugu, or MacFusion to transfer files using a graphical interface. MacFusion integrates with the OS X finder and will freeze the desktop finder on 10.4 or earlier, so run MacFusion on 10.5 or higher. The shareware program Fetch is also available.

If you don't want to install software, or prefer using a command line, use the program /Applications/Utilities/Terminal to use the unix commmand line ssh and scp commands.

Public Host Keys

It is wise, although not strictly necessary, to pre-install public host keys. If you'd like to do so, or if you'd like to check if a machine's key has really changed, the public host keys for the various math systems are collected here:

For OpenSSH ssh2 clients: ssh_known_hosts2.
The University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute maintains a ssh information page with links to many different client implementaions of ssh.

Institute of Technology
math.umn.edu/systems_guide/ssh.html
Last Modified June 26, 2008
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