Good SSH Tutorial?

[Neil Goodman]

Hello,

I just set up an old computer with openSUSE 10.2 and now I am interested in setting it up with SSH so I can log into it from other computers on my home network. I've searched the openSUSE site and Google and all I can find are tutorials on how to set up SSH clients. Can anybody point me to a good SSH server tutorial written for people with no SSH experience?

Thanks.

[pavlo_7]

If you don't mind typing password every time you ssh to that machine, then the
command is simple:

ssh user@remote_machine

or

ssh user@IP_address_of_remote_machine

then type in password of the user, and you are in.
To exit, just type:

exit

[Neil Goodman]

So there is no setup required on the machine I'm trying to SSH into? I have tried that command, but I keep getting timeout errors. It could be related to the firewall on my router, but how do I know which ports to forward? There is also a firewall program running on the openSUSE machine which I know nothing about. Would that prevent SSH from connecting?

[Thrillhouse]

So there is no setup required on the machine I'm trying to SSH into?

No. There is. You need to make sure sshd is up and running and configured correctly. The config file is located in /etc/ssh/sshd_config. You can fine tune all sorts of options there, including a type of authentication, which you should probably make public key for security reasons. There's a tutorial for setting up SSH to use public key authentication here. Some more general links about setting up an SSH server can be found here and here. You can get started with those.

There is also a firewall program running on the openSUSE machine which I know nothing about. Would that prevent SSH from connecting?

It could. It may be blocking port 22 which is the standard SSH port but you should open up a different port number to allow SSH through anyways, also for security reasons. Another thing to consider is if the computer is sitting behind a router. The router will have its own firewall and it is likely that it could block you from making a connection to the machine. You'll have to configure the router to allow SSH through, too.

[Neil Goodman]

That is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!