ArghWebWorks

I’ll be honest, I do a lot of command line work. Of course you know by now that Telnet, the granddaddy of connecting-to-command-line programs isn’t very secure, so reasonable people ( and even a few unreasonable ones ) have turned to an encrypted protocol called SSH for their command line needs.

I ssh to the servers my sites are on in order to look at server statistics. I can’t stand automatically generated passwords with numbers, letters, capital letters, punctuation and more than thirty-five characters. They’re irritating, though pretty secure, I’ll admit. So here’s what to do in order to connect more automatically with your server.

First, make sure you have SSH access. With Site 5, it took me an email. With Hostgator, it took an email and a scanned copy of my driver’s license. No big deal, really. Ok, now you’ve got access to the server, what next?

I like a SSH client named Putty. Don’t use this in countries that outlaw encryption, for gods’ sake! Download Putty and PuttyGen ( you’ll need this in a couple of minutes). You can save them to your desktop, or to a thumbdrive, or whatever. Save the files.

Then run PuttyGen by double clicking on the icon. You want to create a SSH RSA 2 key. Click “generate.” You’ll need to “create some randomness” by moving the cursor around the blank area. Nothing fancy, just move the mouse. Click “save public key” to save the public key. You’ll want to come up with some identifying name for it; let’s use myserver.pub. And then you’ll need to save the private key. Click “Save Private Key” and it’ll ask you for a passphrase. A passphrase is a good idea, but if your computer is in your house and nobody else uses it, et cetera, you may not need one. Use your judgement. If you’re doing this on a laptop or a thumbdrive, you’ll want to use a passphrase. It’s just like a password. Enter “myserver.ppk as the name of the key and click OK to continue.

Hopefully this is the only time you’ll need your password for your account at your host. Click on the putty.exe file and run it. Type the name of your host ( possibly www.domainname.com, however you’d normally connect ) into the host box and make sure “ssh” is selected for connection type. Connect, and type in your password. You’re logged in now! Yay! See if there’s already a .ssh directory there with the command “ls .ssh”. If it’s not there, create the .ssh directory with the command “mkdir .ssh.” Chmod it to usable only by you: “chmod 700 .ssh”.

Enter the .ssh directory ( cd .ssh ) and look for a file named “authorized_keys.” If it’s not there, don’t worry, we’ll create it. Go back to where you saved your public key ( above, with the PuttyGen software. The public key is the one named “myserver.pub.” Open it up with a text editor like notepad. It should look something like this:

ssh-rsa AAB3NzD+rXhGEB9Bt6kEotYi/+gvcGKrRpeNIIekJvnCj4jAsmu9eQHgwxJq1rsTqo0iJAw0B6w0LPn+0omkorYcqA89OK/gsI1VuFuS+WV4oFCXbRBqJJkdkxz972uOqj/rn7re/zn3oKzsPhqUKCtdjz/c7S/zAX5DLT/DDhWkzS4QzrlZYWI0H8ruKh7ZcmOd7texXFkFFRYca7djvsFIbLQ//KVMAZ2l78r53SSvnNd2GoF3n9yvQsslze0t7Dh9t1i4Hni53rc990jpw==

with a comment at the right end of it ( leave the comment there ). Copy that entire thing. Go back to the Putty window and type “cat >> authorized_keys” and hit return. The cursor will drop to the next line. Paste in your public key, hit enter, and then hit “Ctrl-D” and enter, and your authorized keys file will be complete. You’ll want to “chmod 600 authorized_keys” to make sure that only you can read it. Or write it. Make sure the file is only one line long; the ssh key shouldn’t be broken into separate lines.

Ok, exit from your putty program. Close it up and restart it. Enter your server’s host name again in the box, and ensure it’s set for SSH. On the left hand window pane, go to “connection” and then to “rlogin.” Enter your username. Then go down a little more in the left window and hit “SSH” and then “Auth.” Use the myserver.ppk private key for authentication. It’s just like every other file- browse box. Make sure you go back to the left hand pane, back up to “Session” and save it. You’ll need to enter a name in the “name” box and then press “save.”

To use it, double click on the saved name in the little window. If everything went according to plan, Putty will read the private key (you’ll need your passphrase here if you used one ), generate the public key, and then use that to authenticate with the server, and then log you in.