[plug] Remote machines

[Craig Ringer]

> Another PLUGger and I are both doing the same Linux course at Uni , but
> by distance education so we can't use the uni computer labs.  To finish
> some homework we need to do some stuff on remote machines and we want to
> connect out cmputers via the Internet for this purpose.  I am using Red
> Hat 7.1 and the KDE windows manager.  What do I need to do to

> enable Telnet

DONT! Telnet is dangerously insecure and obsolete anyway. Unless you 
like sending your passwords over a connection vulnerable to sniffing 
(clear-text passwords over the internet!), hijacking, spoofing, and 
man-in-the-middle attacks. I'll take ssh's two-way authenticated and 
encrypted system myself, especially since its just as easy to use as telnet.

Enable ssh. Its easier anyway with a modern distro. Just use rpm to 
install ssh off your distro CDs, or even better download the latest 
version from Red Hat.

Now I'm noit sure what you want: run an ssh server on your home machine 
so you can connect _to_ it, or use ssh to connect to lab machines _from_ 
home. Both are equally easy - just install the sshd and ssh rpms 
respectively.

> find out my IP address
"ifconfig ppp0" if you're on dial-up is the easiest way. By this I 
assume you want to connect _to_ your home machine from work. Tip: most 
internet providers use dynamic IPs assigned by DHCP etc. Check out 
http://dyndns.org/ for a handy free service that offers a workaround. 
There are clients (ddclient is what I use) for linux systems that 
automate the dynamic updates.

> allow him to dial in and authenticate
Eh? dial in? You can dial in _or_ use ssh over the 'net, not both. I 
reccomend the 'net option. If you mean connect and authenticate, all you 
need to do is make sure sshd is running and give him a user account 
using the normal red hat tools.


Steps:

-Install ssh and sshd from RH CD.
-Set up dyndns and ddclient so you have a hostname like "bob.dyndns.org" 
that always points to your machine (unless its offline).
-Create a user account for anyone you want to be able to log in, and set 
a password for them on the user account.
-Give the person the username, password, and hostname to connect to.
-They must install ssh to connect.
-they just use "ssh -u username bob.dyndns.org" to connect to you.
the -u can be left off if their local login name is the same as the one 
you created for them.

Hope this helps.

Oh, and even if they use windows they can still ssh into your machine - 
look for TerraTerm Pro SSH, a free ssh client for windows.

Perhaps one of the Red Hat types on the list can give more detail.

-- 
Craig Ringer
GPG Key Fingerprint: AF1C ABFE 7E64 E9C8 FC27  C16E D3CE CDC0 0E93 380D
	-- if it ain't broke, add features 'till it is.