Bonus material

Parts that did not fit.

[FIXME: should be moved to another tutorial SSH: beyond login]

SSH keys and proxy (bonus section)

  • SSH is the standard for connecting to remote computers: it is both powerful and secure.

  • It is highly configurable, and doing some configuration will make your life much easier.

SSH keys and proxy jumping makes life way easier. For example, logging on to Triton from your Linux workstation or from kosh/lyta.

For PuTTY (Windows) SSH keys generation, please consult section “Using public keys for SSH authentication” at [1]

On Linux/Mac: generate a key on the client machine

ssh-keygen -o  # you will be prompted for a location to save the keys, and a passphrase for the keys. Make sure passphrase is strong (!)
ssh-copy-id aalto_login@triton.aalto.fi   # transfer file to a Triton, or/and any other host you want to login to

From now on you should be able to login with the SSH key instead of password. When SSH key added to the ssh-agent (once during the login to workstation), one can login automatically, passwordless.

Note that same key can be used on multiple different computers.

SSH proxy is yet another trick to make life easier: allows to jump through a node (in OpenSSH version 7.2 and earlier -J option is not supported yet, here is an old recipe that works on Ubuntu 16.04). By using this, you can directly connect to a system (Triton) through a jump host (kosh): On the client side, add to ~/.ssh/config file (create it if does not exists and make it readable by you only):

Host triton triton.aalto.fi
    Hostname triton.aalto.fi
    ProxyCommand ssh YOUR_AALTO_LOGIN@kosh.aalto.fi -W %h:%p