Welcome back,
Lets kick off with the thought that if you are here, you have clearly made it through the first couple of hurdles, which is good. From my last blog I recommended reading the Terminal guide posted by Kyral at the ubuntu forums here.
Next, remember I am clearly documenting my experience to help others. I am by no means a guru, but hope to someday attain this title.
What is SSH?
“OpenSSH provides secure remote access to your computer, allowing you to run command line and graphical programs, transfer files, and use a “port forwarding” capability to securely tunnel other protocols through firewalls and untrusted networks.” [Source: ubuntu community documentation]
We should update your package list by typing the command:
sudo apt-get update
Next, run the upgrade command which will installed updated versions of the programs on your computer.
sudo apt-get upgrade
To ensure you have the SSH software installed run the following commands:
sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client
This will check and install the packages if necessary. Once the command is completed, you can check the server SSH with two different commands:
ssh localhost
or
ssh username@youripaddress
Both of these commands should test the server. I have personally used the second one, and it should prompt to enter the user’s password. If you enter the password and can control the computer, you are good to go.
Next, I can only explain the methods I utilized to setup access through a dynamic ip address. I installed the “no ip client” on the server, and ran it. This would allow the me to set an address that would always know the changing ip address to my server. You can go to no-ip and set up your own. You will need your account name, password, and your host name. To install the software you should run the command:
sudo apt-get install no-ip
I have read that you must create a config file, but mine was already there when I installed it. So I just entered the command:
sudo noip2
This will prompt you for the information collected from the website, and if all works out prompt you for your password for the account used to access the server. If you succeeded, congratulations you can now work on your server from a remote location securely.
NOTE:I was initially having difficulties accessing my server from outside my home network. The problem was that once the signal got to my router it was lost in space. I corrected this by going to the router administration page, and forwarding port 22 (which is used by SSH by default) and directing it to the ip for my server. Remember, these are my experiences and I am cataloguing this for guidance and reference.
