Installation

There is a good guide for obtaining and installing the Secure Shell client on a variety of platforms at:

http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/internal/comp-net/guides/ssh_7/

The main site for the source code is from ftp://ftp.cs.hut.fi or one of the mirror sites.

Because the versions of Secure Shell client for platforms other than Unix/Linux vary quite considerably we only discuss the Unix/Linux version here.

If you want to be able to login without presenting a password please read section 10.0.2 on RSA keys. If you do not use RSA keys then you can use ssh just like rlogin or telnet to login to the remote machine. You will be asked for your Unix password. However everything you type is encrypted between your local machine and the remote server so your password will cannot be viewed. The first time you use either ssh or scp (secure copy) to connect to a remote machine you will be asked if you want to continue. Please answer yes (not y and not Y). Secure shell generates a unique key which identifies the remote host - so for instance it cannot be easily replaced by another machine masquerading as that remote host:

[nrcb@mypc]$ ssh vmserve
Host key not found from the list of known hosts.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes

If your remote username is different from the local one you will need to use the syntax:

[nrcb@mypc]$ ssh user@vmserve

where user is your remote username.