ssh

Easy SSH Automation

A script a day will allow you some freedom to play and build other useful and more complicated scripts. Every day, I attempt to make my life easier—by this I mean, trying to stop doing the repetitive tasks. If a process is repeatable; it can be scripted and automated. The idea to automate everything is not new, but try automating a command on a remote host. SSH is very flexible, and it comes with many options. My absolute favorite is its ability to let you run a command on a remote server by passing the -t flag. An example:

Secret Agent Man

It used to be that only the paranoid among us focused on strict security practices, yet these days, it seems like people are stepping up their games with respect to encryption, password policy and how they approach their computers in general. Although I always have considered myself more inside that paranoid camp than outside of it, I even have found myself stepping up my game lately.

One Port to Rule Them All!

I was chatting with Fred Richards on IRC the other day (flrichar on freenode) about sneaking around hotel firewalls. Occasionally, hotels will block things like the SSH port, hoping people don't abuse their network. Although I can respect their rationale, blocking an SSH port for a Linux user is like taking a mouse away from a Windows user!

AutoSSH, for All Your <CONNECTION LOST>

I love SSH. I mean, I really, really love SSH. It's by far the most versatile, useful, amazingly powerful tool in my system administration quiver. One of the problems with SSH, however, is that when it dies, it doesn't automatically recover. Don't get me wrong.

More Secure SSH Connections

If you need remote access to a machine, you'll probably use SSH, and for a good reason. The secure shell protocol uses modern cryptography methods to provide privacy and confidentiality, even over an unsecured, unsafe network, such as the Internet.

There's Browser in My SSH

No, there's SSH in my browser! Although it may not be as logical of a combination as chocolate and peanut butter, for Chromebook users, an HTML5 SSH client is pretty amazing. Granted, Google's "crosh" shell has SSH abilities, but it's a very limited implementation.

Safer Access without Passwords

How do you make sure that your passwords are safe? You can make them longer, complicate them by adding odd characters, making sure to use different passwords for each user account that you have. Or, you can simply skip them all together.