AAPT Home > Support Information > Web Hosting > SSH

Using SSH

AAPT's hosting platform allows access via the SSH protocol on port 2222. The version of ssh connect is currently running is SSH Version 1.2.27 (the free internation version) using protocol version 1.5.

You can get the SSH from http://www.ssh.com/ or http://www.openssh.org

How to log in

1. Create public/private key pair on your local machine.

The first step in the process of login into hosting using ssh is to setup your public/private key pair. If you have already done this (eg. if you already use ssh), procede to step 2.

The ssh package includes a program called ssh-keygen. Running it will create the keys you want. (In a unix environment the keys will normally be placed in /home/username/.ssh)

For Windows users, the author of the popular PuTTY SSH client has created PuTTYgen, which can be used to generate SSH1 (RSA) keys.

2. Copy your public key to the authorized_hosts file on hosting.

Log into hosting using telnet and your OTP (as usual) and create a directory called .ssh off your home directory. Copy the file identity.pub (sometimes called identity.hostname) from the .ssh directory on your local host, and put it in a file called authorized_keys in the .ssh directory on hosting.

You should now have a structure something like :-

/home/cagename/.ssh/authorized_keys

on hosting, and something like :-

/home/username/.ssh/identity.pub and

/home/username/.ssh/identity

on your _local_ machine. identity.pub is your public key, and identity is your private key.

3. Log in.

You should now be able to log into hosting with a command like :-

$ ssh -l cagename -p 2222 hosting.connect.com.au
Enter passphrase for RSA key 'user@domain': passphrase
Warning: Remote host denied X11 forwarding,
perhaps xauth program could not be run on the server side.
Last login: Fri Aug 31 13:58:06 2001 from host.example.com

  ***** This service is for authorised connect.com.au users only *****

************************************************************************
* WARNING:  It is a criminal offence to:                               *
*           i. Obtain access to data without authority                 *
*                   (Penalty 2 years imprisonment)                     *
*           ii Damage, delete, alter or insert data without authority  *
*                   (Penalty 10 years imprisonment)                    *
************************************************************************

No mail.
bash$

Troubleshooting notes

Our ssh daemon listens on port 2222 instead of the default ssh port of 22. (hence the -p 2222 in the example ssh command)
Note the American spelling of authorized_keys.
Watch your file permissions. 644 or user read write, group read, other read should work fine.
If cutting and pasting your public key across to hosting, make sure that the file isnt corrupted with extra carriage returns or spaces.
If it still isnt working, use the '-v' switch to turn on verbose messages whilst logging in.
Protect your private key. SSH is only as secure as the machine you are connecting from. Like all other internet protocols, once a hacker has control of your local machine, connections you make to other machines can be hijacked and monitored.